GDN managed to carve some time out of the very busy schedule of Bizarre Creations’ Blur Lead Designer, Ged Talbot, and get some info on the game now that it’s ready for launch.
[GDN] What was the inspiration for the graphics style on Blur? It reminds me of the NASCAR commercials from 2008 I think it was.
That was indeed one of the many inspirations for the power-up effects in blur. light scribing in general was something we had been seeing more and more of, especially in the marketing and advertising industry and we were looking for a way of creating a real sense of the raw power of weapons like shunt and shock without attaching guns and cannons to the front of every car. This way we could mix the coolness of racing in real world vehicles with the more over the top visuals and gameplay effects that you get from bringing power-ups into the mix. We felt that we could achieve this without taking anything away from either the look of the vehicles are the power-ups
[GDN] Some of the power ups are rather unique (Barge and Shock) can we expect more unique power ups in the final version or will it remain at seven?
We feel that we have a good range of power-ups at the moment as each of them works best in different situations so there is very little crossover in 
how each one should be used. You should also keep in mind that many of the power-ups have an alt firing method which pushes up the number significantly. The other reason for limiting the number of power-ups is that it means that players can differentiate between them very quickly as they speed around the tracks. This was very important as we found that if players could not easily work out which power-ups lay in front of them then they lost the feeling that they were able to create strategies on the fly.
[GDN] In the beta we had two modes - standard racing (10, 20 players or Super Cars) and demolition derby. What other modes can we expect from the full game? Perhaps a hot lap mode?
- Team Racing
- Team Motormash
- Hardcore (no Powerups, mega damage)
- Driving School (easy tracks and car classes, for up to lvl 10 only)
- Community Events (the most popular settings in custom race end up here)
