EA Sports WRC (World Rally Championship) developed by Codemasters

[jztemple2]

The next WRC (FIA World Rally Championship) game is being done by Codemasters and will drop on November 3rd. The previous publisher, KT Racing, has lost its contract with the FIA and now the new game has been developed by Codemasters, the folks who brought you the DiRT series and especially DiRT Rally and DiRT Rally 2.0. Here are a couple of article excerpts and videos.

EA Sports WRC From Dirt Rally Creators Drops Nov. 3 With 70-Plus Race Cars

Four years since its release, Dirt Rally 2.0 remains the last word in rally simulations, and Codemasters is finally back with the long-awaited sequel. Only this time, it comes with the full World Rally Championship treatment, including the teams, drivers, cars, and stages. It's called EA Sports WRC, and it's barely two months away, slated for a Nov. 3 release.

WRC will launch with 17 rally locations—an impressive number that even goes beyond the 13 of the official 2023 calendar—with the Central European Rally co-hosted by Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic arriving in a free update after release. As for cars, it'll include not only all WRC, WRC2, and Junior WRC-class vehicles, but also 68 historic rally cars, which the studio says span six decades of the sport.

Why EA Sports WRC Is Rally’s Biggest Moment in Gaming History

EA Sports WRC, the first officially licensed FIA World Rally Championship sim from developer Codemasters, will feature 18 rallies out of the box when it launches on November 3. Five of those aren't even part of the official WRC calendar, but fictional locales were added on for good measure. It'll also boast 78 cars—10 current machines from the 2023 season as well as 68 from the sport's past.

If that's not enough for you, you can build your own, deciding engine placement and component selection, as well as interior and exterior styling. And if the ever-relentless pursuit of speed starts wearing you down, you can opt for a regularity rally instead, where the consistency of your pace, rather than the pace itself, will decide success.

If that sounds like a lot of content, particularly for the first entry in a properly licensed series based on a sport, that's because it is. The original Dirt Rally launched with three rally locations, while Dirt Rally 2.0 featured six before downloadable content. The single-player careers in both games were rather barebones, with some rather simplistic staff management elements that were a brief distraction in between driving, and the longest special stage in either title ran for 10 miles. By contrast, WRC's longest trials sniff at 20 miles. You can chalk up Codemasters' switch to Unreal Engine, from its long-running, proprietary Ego Engine, as the move that made those lengthy routes possible.

There's no getting around it: WRC is a massive game. It's certainly the largest that the team formerly responsible for the Colin McRae Rally and Dirt franchises has ever crafted, and it's made even more impressive because really, Codies didn't have to do any of it. Ship the rallies on the 2023 calendar and the cars that contested it, and your golden. Coast on the name recognition of and association with the top flight of rallying. From NBA 2K to EA's own Madden NFL, this is how it typically goes in sports games. Thankfully, the team had other ideas.

"We've got the 14 official locations from the WRC calendar—13 on disc and one via update—and then we've got these five bonus locations as well," Codemasters Senior Creative Director Ross Gowing told The Drive in an interview. "And the bonus locations were sort of things we'd started working on, and then the WRC license came in and we went, 'We should make a game with all of it in!' And then here we are some years later."

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EA Sports WRC Preview: Dirt Rally 3.0 by Another Name

Rally simulators are the white whale of sim racing. Very few developers have nailed them, plenty have come close, and practically all of the old franchises have died off. Fans of sim racing have no doubt noticed that the Dirt series seemed to sputter to an unceremonious end after developer Codemasters was acquired by Electronic Arts (EA). After a couple years of silence, now we can see what the former Dirt team was working on: EA Sports WRC. And I got to sample a preview build ahead of its launch.

This is a clean-sheet reboot for the WRC franchise. It has nothing in relation with the milquetoast simcade WRC titles of the last decade, and comes with a new EA Sports prefix to its name. It’s still the official WRC game, now developed by a true triple-A developer with decades of rally sim experience. It might be called WRC now, but it’s even better than that: This is the rebirth, continuation, and expansion of the beloved Dirt Rally.

[Kasey Chang]

Been playing this for the past 2 hours, and I'd say... I like it, and I'm not a WRC grognard, nor do I have a set of wheel/pedals. I'm playing on controller only. I set the difficulty to medium (You've played other WRC games before, as I've just finished the WRC5 championships, from JWRC to WRC2 to WRC) and it's... interesting so far. Just got to week 3 of my career, spent it hiring engineers, and used the first 2 on a Manufacturer's rally and a regular (fictional) Rally, albeit the event length is set to short... only 2 stages per rally. So far, at 50%, I'm beating the AI pretty handily in the Historical H1 and S1600 classes (both FWD).

Engineers each have specialities and cuts down on repair times of their specialties if you suffer damage on the rallies. You can choose quick fix, full fix, or replace, depending on your budget and time constraints. As you can only hire limited number of engineers, and at the beginning your selection will suck, there's some "strategy" depending on who's available.

I did try the Rally School, and some of those requirements are pretty neat, like don't exceed certain speed, try left foot braking (which it can apparently simulate on regular Xbox controller) and so on. But some of the UI is a bit borked. There are twelve lessons, each of which should be repeated for gravel, asphalt, and snow. So why does it jump back to lesson 1 EVERY TIME I finish one of these lessons?!?! And I'm expecting more of a DirtFish or Team O'Neal style "drive anywhere" arenas. None of that here.

The rally themselves, the stages, are pretty good, pretty long, but not excessively long. They are roughly 5 or so miles in length, and I generally finish them in about 8 minutes each. Load time is not excessive even though the game warn you that it was developed on and expects an SSD. Tried both day and night stages, and so far it's pretty good, with water splashes, and jumps as well.

I need to get a Rally3 car to participate in jWRC, which starts soon.

There are scenarios, called "Moments" here, that basically have you do some super-difficult stage, trying to recreate some classic rally moments, often Group B night / rain scenario. The problem here is it seems a good portion of the events needs the 2024 update or EA Play subscription (?!)

You can also do Club events, which is basically off-line MP played with friends in competition, but you need to register with EA Racenet.

Or organize your own championship, pick car level, length, and individual stages.

There's also quickplay and whatnot.

In career mode, there's Design your own car in the builder section, and customize it any way you want, subject to your chief engineer's skills (so a bit of RPG). There's also a budget involved, and you should stay within budget. The "benefactor" (sponsors, basically) have goals and rewards if you meet the goals. Every week, one of the various events will give you a sponsorship relation boost. But you can't race EVERY week, as some of the weeks you need to rest, hire/fire engineers and teammates (yes, you can manage your team and hire/fire teammates who drives the other cars in your garage) Some of the weekly events will allow you to add slots for more engineers, more cars, and so on. As well as training the engineers to gain skills and proficiency, at the "opportunity cost" of racing or doing other things.

A lot of things to do, and so far, quite playable. Will keep playing.