Lego 2K Drive was released on May 16th, 2023 to mixed reception with Kotaku describing the title as a “fun but flawed open-world racer.” However, it’s safe to say that Visual Concept and 2K’s partnership with the Lego company has garnered a lot of interest from fans of racers and Lego games alike. Racing fans will likely remember Forza Horizon‘s collaboration with Lego for their Lego-themed DLC a while back. In a recent interview with VGC creative director on Lego 2K Drive Brian Silva and Visual Concepts general manager Steve Ranck spoke on their reaction to the release of that DLC during Lego 2K Drive‘s development.
We were actually well into development before we even saw that, we didn’t even know that that was coming out. It was just announced. So we tried it and it’s obviously very well implemented. That approach is more of a skin of the existing game whereas we are going in a different direction in terms of our game being from the ground up to be a Lego experience from start to finish.
Steve Ranck – Visual Concepts General Manager
Silva continued by noting that he didn’t think the release of the Forza Horizon DLC hurt Lego 2K Drive in any way and instead “whet the appetite of gamers out there for more Lego-driving content.”
No, I mean, we were surprised obviously, but it didn’t affect us in any way. As far as our development cycle was concerned, we just kept carrying on and I thought it was very well done. I don’t think it hurt us in any way. In fact, it sort of whet the appetite of gamers out there for more Lego-driving content.
Brian Silva – Creative Director on Lego 2K Drive
Speaking on arguably one of the game’s biggest draws, the vehicle transform mechanic, Ranck said that switching that from a button press to automatic transformation was “fantastic.”
We actually had the vehicle transform attached to a button, then somebody on the team came to us and said, ‘We should make that automatic transform’. And my first thought was like, ‘That’s impossible. I don’t see how that’s going to work, there’s going to be false positives, and we’re not going to catch every case’. But they proved me wrong, so now auto-transform is the default of the game and it’s fantastic.
Steve Ranck – Visual Concepts General Manager
Lego 2K Drive is currently available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, and PC.
