[Hilo Oficial] Twisted Metal

Twisted Metal creator David Jaffe has said he’s not going to pander to European sensibilities, despite the franchise’s history of under-performance outside the US.

“What we’re not going to do is go ‘how do we cut the balls off this spirit, of this essence, just in order to say maybe we’ll get more fans,” Jaffe told Eurogamer
at E3.

“There are games that can survive that kind of neutering, but Twisted Metal isn’t one of them. If you don’t get it, you don’t get it.”

Jaffe blames censorship of the last major title in the series, Twisted Metal Black, for the game’s poor reception outside the US.

“Our last really big Twisted Metal went out everywhere except America with all the storytelling, cut scenes, characters and things that gave it a conceptual definition ripped out for censorship reasons.”

Expressing a hope that better marketing would help Europeans see the “fighting game and the sporting spirit” of Twisted Metal, Jaffe said he’s “not going to beg” Europeans to like it, comparing the game’s reception outside the US to Wipeout’s limited success inside it.

“My layman’s sociological view of Europe is that you guys tend to respond to things that are sleeker, cleaner, more refined, a bit more humorous,” he said.

“I think Twisted Metal is rough around the edges, it’s raw, it’s like a garage band. It’s dented, it’s busted up, it’s oil and diesel fuel. And to us in America, at least to Twisted Metal fans, it wears that as a badge of honour. We like that spirit.

“In the same way Wipeout was never a mega hit over here and has always been appreciated by a smaller group than in Europe. There’s a similar dynamic going on. Your Wipeout is our Twisted Metal.”

Twisted Metal is due exclusively on PlayStation 3 in October.

Nobody can claim David Jaffe doesn't where his heart on his sleeve. In an interview with us during E3, Jaffe was very open about his motivations for getting involved in his current Twisted Metal PS3 project, stating he was "ashamed" of the way it started. Twisted Metal was "a business decision" that came out of "a place of fear," but he went on to say that he soon realized his "genuine love" for the series and now considers it "a passion project."

On the subject of why he got into Twisted Metal PS3, Jaffe said: "Calling All Cars comes out, it didn't tank but it wasn't a hit. I had come off God of War - which was a hit both financially and creatively - and Scott had come off Twisted Metal: Head On - not a Game of the Year, but was successful financially. We thought, 'Hey, we both like having hits... Fuck! This sucks not having a hit'. So we decided to do a Twisted Metal, because fans had been asking for it for a long, long time.

"I regret... I'm ashamed of the way we greenlit Twisted Metal. I'm ashamed that I didn't stick to my guns more and say, 'Yeah, we got knocked down [with Calling All Cars] and it wasn't a hit, but we still want to do something original like that. Let's wipe your bloody noses and get back in the fight'. I am ashamed that I didn't have the balls to continue and instead said, 'Well, we know we can have a hit with Twisted Metal, so let's make a great game with that'.

"We started Twisted Metal as a PSN game and it wasn't love as first sight. But what ended up happening, as we started developing it we realized after about a week that we still genuinely loved it. We think there's a lot more here that we had just forgotten about, because we were away from it for so long. The gaming gods were smiling on us and said. 'We know you didn't get into this with the purest of artistic intentions, but we're going to remind of how much you still love this universe and have to offer it'.

"So it actually worked out really well. Now I look of Twisted Metal as a passion project, but it did not start out that way. It started as a business decision that looking back I regret. I don't regret making Twisted Metal, I regret that it started out of a place of fear and not pure creative respect for the game process. Sometimes things work out, but I still always have that feeling of 'Jaffe man, you should've...' Well, that's you how you learn. I heard a great quote from Jay-Z, who said 'I don't know how you can learn from success, you can only learn from failure'. So I'll never down it again."

For more from David Jaffe head over to our full interview, covering his career, future projects, Twisted Metal on PS3, thoughts on the creative process, predications on the fate of Nintendo's Wii U, and so much more.

Drew Bradford producer for Twisted Metal told us flat out, “No install.” At this point was caught off guard and simply replied with a ‘huh?’. He went on to reiterate that Sony allowed them to pre-cache a lot of the data from the hard drive. We saw the game in action and the load times were fairly quick. So we are very impressed with what Twisted Metal is doing for the Playstation 3 and the franchise.

Twisted Metal will miss its originally planned October 4 release date. The game will now ship in early 2012, director David Jaffe has revealed.

“We’re gamers too and we know how annoying it is,” wrote Jaffe on the PlayStation Blog. “It’s disappointing and frustrating and it really takes the wind out of your sails if you’re a fan that has been looking forward to playing a title for a long time. Thing is, you gotta trust me when I tell you that – with this extra time for tuning and polish – the game is going to be so much better than it already is.

“With Twisted Metal we plan to ship a multiplayer classic. We plan to ship the best Twisted Metal ever made. We plan to convert a lot of folks who think vehicle combat is a relic best left to 90′s nostalgia. And we plan to explode the belief that the only relevant kind of shooter is a first person one.”