Dev interview: How Pacific Drive tunes up the survival genre with a station wagon

blog.playstation.com:

We’ve all wondered why no one gets in a car and drives away from the terror in scary movies and games. Pacific Drive by Ironwood Studios lets us live out that scenario. This upcoming first-person survival adventure drives a customizable station wagon into the genre.

Ahead of the February 22 launch date, we spoke with the game’s director, Alexander Dracott, about the inspiration behind this genre-twisting game and its development journey.

PlayStation Blog: What was the inspiration behind Pacific Drive?

Alexander Dracott: The initial idea goes back to some of my hobbies and growing up driving station wagons to go camping and out into the woods of the Pacific Northwest. The seed came from the things I saw driving alone in the woods, fog, and rain, seeing things like mining towns that haven’t seen the light of day. The game started as simple test car in the woods, and as we started inserting more mechanics, we decided you should be able to turn the car off and on. It should have gas like you should have to refuel your car. It became apparent that there’s this overlap between the maintenance of a car you would expect and the item juggling you want from a survival game. What we ended up doing is taking the pressure that is always on the player in a lot of survival games and pushed it onto the car, and it clicked. You’re forming this relationship with this car that becomes your protector.

Where did the idea of the Olympic Exclusion Zone come from, and how does it contribute to the game’s mechanics?

I’ve always been a big fan of zoned stories and players being isolated, but in a space filled with interesting mechanics. For example, a lot of the enemy anomalies aren’t zombies that you just shoot. They’re more interesting and unique, and discovering what they are is part of the experience. The idea behind the Exclusion Zone, something that the government has walled off, instantly clicked because it gave us the freedom to both tell an interesting story and build this world