Behind The Wheel Of Mad Max's Vehicular Combat

You're road kill if you don't have a vehicle in the
cut-throat, wide-open Wasteland.

You're road kill if you don't have a vehicle in the
cut-throat, wide-open Wasteland. Fans of George Miller's Mad Max films know this,
and we learned the importance of being behind the wheel firsthand in Avalanche
Studio's game when we visited its studio in Stockholm, Sweden for our March
cover story. We got hours of hands-on time driving Mad Max's
decked-out car, and came away with a firm understanding of what vehicular
combat means in this post-apocalyptic world.

Max has a big, open world of dusty rock and faded road to
explore, filled with strongholds to overthrow and raiders who want
him dead. Punching and stabbing the scabs of the Wasteland on foot is a
significant part of the experience, and the Arkham-style combat works well. However, the most intense combat happens behind
the wheel of Max's customizable vehicle, the Magnum Opus.

"At the very high level, we wanted everything to have a very
physical sense to it," says game director Frank Rooke. "There's weight to these
vehicles. Not pretend weight, but you can actually feel the metal of this car
and the impact and sound of the grinding and ripping of steel."

The Magnum Opus is a great way for Max to get from point A
to point B in the Wasteland, but things get more exciting when he comes across
a wayward raider. During my hands-on time with the game, I came to appreciate
automotive throw downs not as high-speed chases, but slugfests on four wheels.

A pair of enemy vehicles waiting to be torn apart or hauled in for scrap

The most obvious way to dismantle enemies early on is good
old-fashioned head-on collisions. If you see Wasteland bandits parked off in
the distance, they're just begging for you to aim your reinforced
grill in their direction, hit the nitro boost, and barrel into them. The sense
of the boost's white-knuckle speed is complemented beautifully by the inertia
of slamming into a foe's jalopy and watching as metal and burning gasoline
flies everywhere.

"Then there's the fragility of human flesh, because that's
the two sides," Rooke says. "There is no in between. There's the rusty metal of
the car, and then there's this fleshy person inside. Those are the two elements
of these battles. We wanted that feeling of those two things playing together
which do not belong together when things are crashing and smashing into each
other."

As the game progresses, car battles become increasingly more
complicated and interesting. Depending on how much time and how many resources
players have pumped into the Magnum Opus' suite of destructive tools, players
have a variety of options for grinding, dismantling, immolating, and blasting
enemy vehicles into collectable scrap. Tire-mounted spikes allow Max to sidle
up next to an enemy, grinding into the armor and tires of his opponent's car,
like a nitrous-injected Ben Hur scene. A side-ramming upgrade allows you to slam into enemies laterally,
delivering a huge hit to their vehicle's health. Further down the line,
side-mounted flamethrowers belch out fire that quickly reduces nearby threats
to burning wrecks.

An enemy marauder prepares to board the Magnum Opus

Fire and spinning jagged metal are barbarically satisfying
means for tearing apart cars, but Max has a few more refined options at his
disposal. His trusty shotgun is great for blasting off armor, igniting gas tanks,
and popping off drivers. But be careful with how you use it, because shells are
scarce in the Wasteland. The harpoon is a more strategically satisfying tool.
Max's deformed mechanic buddy, Chumbucket, aims at a vehicle's sweet spot like
armor plating or tires, fires a tethered lance into it, then yanks that piece off. Time slows down, allowing players to dial in deliberate harpoon shots.
Shuck off enough metal, and you can eventually harpoon the enemies behind the
wheel and drag their bodies behind the Magnum Opus. It's also great for reining
in a fleeing vehicle, especially when coupled with the nitro boost to close the
gap and throttle into the rear bumper.

"There's a cool progression there with the harpoon I think
we've discovered," Rooke says. "The car is like an onion that you can start
peeling pieces off of, and it becomes more and more vulnerable as you do that."

In addition to firing a harpoon from the car-mounted cannon,
Chumbucket can also load explosive spears. Dubbed "Thunderpoons", these rare and deadly projectiles can devastate other cars similar to a blast from a missile. And
yes, Avalanche is aware of how ridiculous the name sounds.

"We spent a year trying to come up with a name, but it's the
harpoon and we have these other things in the game called Thundersticks, which are
sticks with [an explosive] cap on it," Rooke says. "It's begging to be called
what it is. It's the Thunderstick-harpoon. The Thunderpoon."

Next up: Commandeering enemy vehicles and we got a great big convoy...