Early vison of wipeout fusion

[JABBERJAW]

Does anyone remember this? It doesn't really look like wipeout too much, but it looks kinda cool (wish they had made it)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jbf9ilkQWs

[Medusa]

That does look cool! That is a track section that was used, right? I can't remember the track names from Fusion because I didn't play it enough...
The atmosphere in that is great!

[MrSmadSmartAlex]

Wow, looks great! Looks very F-Zero in a way (not a bad way).

[JABBERJAW]

That is kinda what I thought, like fzero, not in a bad way :) This is a very bizzarre video to say the least. Was this actual gameplay? ONly one spot looked like maybe a brake was touched, and the camera was very far away. I'd like to hear the story on this video. One thing someone from dev team once told me was that there were floaty physics in the very early version of fusion, when it was on the PC at the time. Too bad that didn't go through.

[Sausehuhn]

It seems to be the only animation ever made with first concepts of the ships. Actually, WipEout Fusion is a bit of a mistery when it comes to the concept arts. There really is a break between the first renderings and what the game looks like in the end. One concept rendering also shows a very Wip3out-like Feisar. Later renderings look very different to that.

[ben10]

I do seem to remember seeing an early video on the web of a more 'floaty' Feisar ship flying through Florion Heights! I'm pretty sure it was from an early E3 demo version about a year before Fusion was released. Does anybody out there have a link to *that* piece of video?! I would love to see again.

I still cannot get over how bad Fusion was - seriously. It was a total dissapointment beyond belief.

It does have an awesome soundtrack though - playing it now!

[Sausehuhn]

I may be totally wrong as I haven’t played WOF for too long now, but in that early trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdfpiidlUT4) (weapon pads, starting grid, light trails and starting sequence looking different) it really seems to me that the ships are indeed more sliding around the corners and that there is some sense of bouncing off the track (especially at that first scene on in the looping). Sadly we see no jump to prove the bouncing.

But in the end that was the problem with WOF’s Wip3out-like handling in the development, as far as I know: The bouncing did not work really well with the track designs. With all those turns the ships had to stick to the track to not crash into it. It was a problem to combine that minimum of sticking to the track and deliver bounciness at the same time, which – obviously – couldn’t be done in the end.

MagStrips could have fixed the problem. But in the end they simply should have got rid of the loopings in favor for a more classic handling.

The game could have been really so much better which another handling and an better looking menu and HUD.

[blackwiggle]

That track looks vaguely familiar, like one of what became the extra prototype tracks in WO3 and WO3SE.

[infoxicated]

From what I remember, that was a version of WipEout Fusion made on PC hardware before the PS2 development kits had been distributed. Apparently Studio Liverpool had been last in line when it came to getting development hardware - with even EA in Warrington getting PS2 dev kits before the 1st party studio.

So the team at Studio Liverpool did what it could and built the game on high spec PC's, with the assumption made that the emotion engine would handle it. Unfortunately it was a totally different architecture and the early version of the game had to be scrapped.

It didn't help that EA in Warrington were hitting their stride at that point and poached a good number of the WipEout Fusion team. Hence the development hell and the game being very late, and not up to scratch by the high standards normally associated with Studio Liverpool.

[Medusa]

I want to print that post out and keep it in my Fusion case.

[Sausehuhn]

Just stumbled upon five screenshots of that early version of the game on my HDD. They seem to be thumbnails from gaming-age.com, which eventually should provide higher quality images. Sadly, the website does not host anything pre-PS3 related anymore. Anyway: Pick your magnifying glass and enjoy.