Am I the only one who thinks Driver: San Franciscos story is kinda cool?

Hi guys.

I bought the new driver game a few days ago and have just finished chapter 5 (of 8 or 9 I think) and a good chunk of the "sidequests" if you will.

So ive been reading a few reviews now and theyre all pretty positive mostly ranging from 7.5 to 8.5 which I think is pretty fair. But pretty much every reviewer is **** about how the story is stupid or all over the place or ridicoulous, you name it.

For those who dont know (maybe a little spoiler warning here, but if you follow videogames you propably already know) the premise is that your character Tanner has an accident right at the beginning of the game, and most of the gameplay takes place inside his head in a coma dream. As everything is just a dream, this gives him the ability to "shift" between all cars at will, also letting him focus to make the car hes driving go a little faster (similiar to a boost mechanic).

What is so strange about this setting is, I guess, that the pretty realistic driving gameplay in a real city collides with something thats almost sci-fi, or supernatural which definitely seams strange at first. It seams like the team had this idea for the undeniably cool shift-feature, but they needed to come up with a justification to have it in the game.

So far so good, but those who pay attention and follow the story closely will find that the whole coma idea is woven into the plot pretty deeply. I dont want to spoil anything here, those who play the game will propably know, but what baffles me so much is that I cant really find a review that goes into a little more detail concerning the story, or a reviewer who seems to really understand whats going on, or even better, sees the MASSIVE risk that lies withing such a story, and how wellt is is realised.

Everybodys always annoyed by how all the big publishers play it safe and release sequel after sequel with very little innovation. But when a team takes a risk, and I really think theyve realised the shift feature and the story very well, everybody seems to point it out as a negative point.

So what are you guys thinking? Did/do you like the story of Driver?

Do you think it doesnt get the praise it deserves as something really brave?

I'm really interested in your oppinion!

I'm not very far in the game yet so I won't comment on how good the story gets later. But at the point I'm at, the story is fine. I love my sci fi, and I'm definitely curious as to how things are going to play out with this coma plot. It's fine. How Tanner doesn't realise it isn't real is beyond me though. At the start there's a sign that tells him to wake up for crying out loud! And how he doesn't realise it after seeing all the other signs everywhere giving him messages personally is beyond me. Maybe he's just stupid. Then again when we dream we don't know it's a dream no matter how weird things are. But yeah the story is fine. It's going in to sci fi territory but that's fine by me. At the end of the day they had to explain the shift feature with a story somehow. There's no way that could have explained away a gameplay feature like this without it going in to sci fi territory.

As for the innovation thing you said, I couldn't agree more. I find it utterly ridiculous that in a time when people complain about a lack of innovation in gaming today, when a game comes along that actually does something new and does it really well it just gets criticised for it. Countless people were putting down the shift feature from day one just because it was something different. It's just pure ignorance. The shift feature is the reason I payed attention to this game in the first place. When the first trailer came out I sat up and payed attention because of the innovation and how the game was trying something new. If the game didn't have shift I'd have just brushed it off as another game in a series I haven't been interested in since Driver 2. Without shift the game wouldn't have been on my radar at all. Even with all the positive reception, I still see people who don't actually know what they're talking about saying they don't like the look of the game because "lol swapping bodies stupid baaaawww"

The civilian in-car dialogue has made me laugh so hard on some occasions, I've lost control of my vehicle and crashed.foxhound_fox

Yeah thats something i i thought too. I think Tanner is - while not the deepest character - instantly likeable.

The civilian in car dialogue is just what gives the game its personality, especially the way Tanner responds to them. The car is about driving obviously, and youll be jumping crashing and drifting a alot, and part of the fun is how self aware the game is of it. Tanner is a bad ass driver and he knows it. One time i managed to to do a huuuge drift, more than 200m long, and while drifting tanner said: "look dude, no hands!", and the passenger responded "thats amazing!". Its moments like these that make the game stand out.

It helps of course, that the driving physics are great fun.