The biggest feature of the F1 2021 game is arguable the all-new Braking Point narrative-led mode. Playing through a story that mixes cinematics, incidental details and gameplay challenges, you take on the role of the young upstart, Aiden Jackson, as he progresses from Formula 2 to a midfield Formula 1 team.
You get to select from one of five F1 teams to partner with and joining you as an experienced teammate is Casper ‘Cas’ Akkerman. It’s not just two characters though, as antagonist Devon Butler from F1 2019 makes a comeback, and there’s also Zoe Akkerman and team liaison Brian Doyle to deal with.
In this episode of the Traxion.GG Podcast, Tom and Rich discuss the highs, the lows, the good, the bad and whether overall, they would recommend playing this new story.
Here’s a very mild spoiler warning, but not key character or story elements are discussed, mainly mechanics and overall sentiment. You can also read our in-depth F1 2021 review and keep up to date with all of our other F1 2021 news.
Hosted by Thomas Harrison-Lord and Rich Hutson.
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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
Below is the full transcript of this episode. It’s auto-generated, hence why it’s completely random…
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Hello, welcome to a brand new episode of the Traxion.gg podcast. Joining us today is Rich. How are you doing?
Rich Hutson:
I’m good thanks. How are you?
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Very good. Thanks. I’m your host for this one, Tom. And today we are going to be talking about, and you can probably guess this Formula 1 2021 and more specifically the Braking Point story mode. This today is when the reviews are live. So on the Traxion GG website right now is a full in-depth review and on the YouTube channel as well. But we’re just going to take this time in this podcast, to talk about the story mode. So slight warning at the start, there might be some mild spoilers, but if there’s something big, we will flag it.
Rich Hutson:
Yeah.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
So without further ado, this is a brand new feature for this year’s game, and it’s quite a big thing. A lot of the PR and hype has been about Braking Point. So Rich, would you be able to briefly explain what it is?
Rich Hutson:
Of course. So Braking Point is a narrative story. It’s not like the career mode where you just join a team and do a season, or do My Team where you create your own. This is a narrative linear story where you play as Aiden Jackson, who is an up and coming F1 star, having just won the F2 championship, which is where the game actually, where this, this mode actually opens. And you see yourself paired up with a veteran of the sport, Cass Ackerman, and you work through two seasons of F1 together and also Devon Butler from F1 2019 comes back and does his usual thing of just making things difficult for everyone. So.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
He’s a right idiot, for want of a better expression.
Rich Hutson:
For a clean word, yeah.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah, but that’s kind of what he’s stick is.
Rich Hutson:
Yeah.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
And you kind of, you kind of need that, before we jump into, I guess, story specific, or how it plays and stuff. Yeah, expanding upon that. If you’ve ever played FIFA The Journey or Madden’s Long Shot, or even the NBA basketball games, these are like yearly sports franchises that have these sorts of story feature modes alongside the most managerial aspects. And so Formula 1 has sort of taken a leaf out of those books, I think. But interestingly, and just to be clear, you know, your regular driver career and the new for 2020, My Team mode still exists. So basically in my opinion, once you play through Braking Point, you then you dip into the, to the other things.
Rich Hutson:
Yeah.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
And, and for me, this is sort of the first thing I think you should play in the game. I don’t know if you agree with that Rich.
Rich Hutson:
Absolutely. Because it gives you little bite-size chunks, especially if you’re new to playing an F1 game specifically, or you’ve just been away from racing for a long time. There are lots of people I know, got into F1, over lockdown by watching Drive to Survive on Netflix. So this might be their first title to pick up and Braking Point’s a great point to start because not thrown into the deep end from the word go, you are easily led into how things work, over the course. And you get, you do get given you get thrown each and every thing that could happen to you during a race over the course of the campaign. So it is a good place to start, definitely.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah, I would, I would agree with that. It’s a really sort of accessible way of getting into the game, epecially if you’re never played the F1 games before, for me, because I’ve played every single one, ever I think. I’ve reviewed most of them, I’m really into the nuances of each game, but I understand that this effort is such a big franchise. And especially now with EA’s marketing clout, because this is the first game by Codemasters under EA’s stewardship, that there might be new players, getting into the Formula one game who’ve never played them before and is quite overwhelming, but this is a nice, like, oh, here we go. I’m going to hook you in for the story. And as you say that, if you’ve watched Netflix, then think of those, that sort of dramatism in a video game.
Rich Hutson:
Yeah, absolutely.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah. And, so let’s just break it down sort of how it, how it works on a basic level. So I think there, there are some cut scenes and some gameplay elements, but there are other things within the mode that, that join it together. Is that fair?
Rich Hutson:
Yeah.
Rich Hutson:
Yeah. So you have your gameplay as it expects. It’s a video game. You have your cut scenes that introduce all the characters and link up all your events, of this, events of the seasons you play through. But it also has a lot of contextualizing in the form of being in your room, in the paddock, where you have access to your social media, you have access to your emails, you get phone calls coming in. So you are plunged right into the middle of that, like living world of F1, because the only actual gameplay you see is on the track and you’re just driving in circles basically. But this Braking Point gives you so much more context and so much more scope than what you might expect. And it took me a back when it first gave me my phone and said, here you go, have a scroll through Twitter.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah. That was a real moment for me. So you’re sort of in this room, I guess it’s like, a sort of trailer or something, I’m not sure there’s a TV on there and it has like relevant, news headlines to what’s happening in the current story at the time. And then there’s your phone, with a fake Twitter feed, but if you’re an F1 fan, there’s some really cool details in there. So there’s like, obviously everything’s fictional, but there’s F1 journalists, F1 commentators. So you’ve got Jonathan Nobles in there. I think there’s David Croft, David Coulthard, Natalie Pinkman. There’s, also some of the Codemaster’s characters in there. So the interviewer, character she’s on the feed. And so is, and this is first mile spoiler, but it’s not really so stick with us. Lukas Weber from F1 2019, Devon Butler’s returned, but he’s also returned in the form of some tweets, which is kind of cool. So he was a driver in F1 2019 and he’s there in some tweets, he’s doing some stuff, which is quite interesting. And then obviously there are emails as well, and you get those from different characters in the story. So, do you wanna touch upon some of the other characters? I think there’s Zoe and Brian for example.
Rich Hutson:
Yes. So, in the space of what we could show in the YouTube video that came out last week, our preview, you only really introduced to Aiden Jackson, who is your player, character Cass Ackerman, who is his teammate and also Devon Butler, who’s, you know, being a poopster, which is what he does. But you’re also introduced, after that point, you’re introduced to Brian Doyle, who is a liaison in the team. He’s basically your person you go to because you don’t actually interact with the principal of the team you choose, you interact with this fictional character, but you also have, Zoe Ackerman, Cass’s wife, who, again, contextualizes Cass’s character as being this, this colder more, at times brooding character. But there is that humanity that’s pushed across by Zoe. So that they’re a bit more relevant later on in the storyline, but you do get some really well fleshed out and very well performed characters.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah and speaking of that, obviously, it’s a video game. You are aware of that, I wouldn’t expect it going in there, saying this is Oscar worthy performances, but they are, relatable.
Rich Hutson:
Yeah.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
And you do get hooked in there. Part of that is the contextualizing those, you mentioned of the sideshow, which really everything, even though small feeds into that particular storyline, which is amazing attention to detail, but yeah, the characters are relatable and you either, you hate different Butler, but that’s good. At least it provokes an emotion, which is more than what can be said for something like Fast and Furious 9. This game has a much better plot than that film, in my opinion. And so it really doesn’t have to be that good. It would have been nice to play along, oh there’s a little story brilliant, but actually I think there’s an extra level.
Rich Hutson:
Yeah. I think within the world of annual release games with story modes, you never really think much of them. You think they might be a bit slapdash and yeah, I’ll play through it. And I won’t really think much about it, but Braking Point is as someone who’s been playing Call of Duty for many years, and I don’t expect much of their campaigns, especially now, this one genuinely took me by surprise as to not that it’s going to be like, as you say, like an Oscar worthy, like we’re going to have all of the actors getting nominated for game awards later this year for the performances. But it was a lot, I wouldn’t say necessarily better, but it was a lot more to it than I was initially expecting. And that’s one of the reasons why Braking Point is so worth your time.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah. I couldn’t agree more, which is slightly dull for a podcast. Really. We need an argument don’t we? That what supposed to be doing? Yeah. So let’s just switch it up from sort of setting out how, how it kind of works to some of the on-track escapades, so to speak. I really enjoyed some of the setups. So a lot of the time you’re not playing a full race, although there are some of those, but it’s like, here’s a scenario, have at it, you need to hit this certain objective. Were there any that stick in your mind
Rich Hutson:
For me? And this won’t, I’m not going to spoil anything like narratively, but in terms of the, the things that can potentially happen to you cause in the early game, it’s just like, go and catch up to your teammates or just finish the race or do some finishing the points. For example, later on, it starts throwing curve balls at you. So at one point, for example, you start mid race with a flat tire and you need to go straight into the pits and you’ve fallen back and you need to claw your way back up through the field. And another time, your, it turns out your seventh gears gone and you end up being on the track and having to deal with not only your objective of, I think it might’ve just been finish the race. It didn’t throw too much at you, but you did have to change up how you actually thought about playing.
Rich Hutson:
Especially if you play with manual gears, if you’re playing with automatic, it doesn’t really matter to you. I don’t know whether that objective might change or something. If you’re playing with automatic gearing, but you lose a gear and you have to change your, what you do to accommodate for that. And I think that specific instance of losing a gear was when I thought, oh, okay, this is going to be really interesting. Cause I was playing a lot of 2020. I’d never had anything like that happen. So having that curve ball gets thrown my way was really cool.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah. Actually those are two interesting examples. I’m just trying to remember what happened to me when I was playing them. I think when I lost the gear, I was using manual ERS. I was saving it all for when that gear change goes and you lose a bit of speed because it shifts up an extra cog. I was like trying to bridge that gap with some electricity.
Rich Hutson:
Yeah.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
I don’t know if that was a good, a bad thing to do. And then the other thing was with the puncture, did you get a speeding penalty? In the pit lane, because it was really difficult to slow down for me and I was straightaway just went, oh, flying straight past.
Rich Hutson:
I’m still sort of weening my way off the assists and the pit limiter is one I should really turn off. I don’t know why I have it switched on an F1 because I don’t have any switched on anything else, but I do in F1. So
Tom Harrison-Lord:
It turns out, when do you slow it down with a puncture on the front right. You don’t really slow down. So the normal Braking marker. Oops. So, I did have to restart that particular thing because then, on that one, I think I have to finish in the top 10 still after that. And so to be clear, if you, if you do fail, you can still use rewinds or flashbacks sorry. You can restart the scenario without having to rewatch the cut scenes and stuff, although you can rewatch cut scenes from a menu in your home area, if you’re that way.
Rich Hutson:
If you so wish. Yeah.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah. Which I didn’t do, to be honest.
Rich Hutson:
I dug through those menus. There’s at one point Brian rang me and I managed to hit square instead of triangle and just declined his call. And I’m like, oh, I hit triangle instead of square, oh god Brian, I’m so sorry. And I thought he might ring back and the phone started ringing again. It was somebody else. And I was like, no, no, no, I want to speak to Brian. I’ve just pie’d him off. And I feel really bad, but he didn’t come back. Thankfully he didn’t tell me off later on for ignoring his calls.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah. You’ve missed a crucial part of the story there with the phone call, that you’ll never get back.
Rich Hutson:
But again, like those sections in that home area, they go, they’re not necessarily little things that you miss and things won’t make sense. They are all just extra bits of world-building basically. So even the phone calls, they can give you a bit of a idea as to how somebody is feeling. If you know, something happens on the track and you get a phone call or whoever saying, what was that? Or that was really good or something, it gives you a bit of a emotional context, but in the grand scheme of the narrative, they’re not all that important. It’s kind of like going and digging through the computers in the Fallout games for more lore. It’s kind of that same sort of thing.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
I was gonna say finding a comic in the Last of Us.
Rich Hutson:
Yeah.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah, you’re right. It’s optional, but I would recommend it. And I did every little bit of it.
Rich Hutson:
Yeah same.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
It felt more impactful when other stuff happens and when you know what’s going on. And speaking of, yeah, going away from the game play, I guess, again of these little details, in the driver career and in the, in the F1 games for awhile, they have been post raceign session interviews and you’ve had like multiple options to answer them. And that affects the morale of certain parts departments and or your statute within the F1 circus. Right?
Rich Hutson:
Yeah.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Now in Braking Point, they’re there, but your driver actually speaks out a response.
Rich Hutson:
That did surprise me when I first did it. Cause I was so used to just pressing a direction and then it skips to the next question. When they talk, It was it’s quite cool. But on the flip side of that, it doesn’t change anything.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah. Right. Exactly what I was going to say. So it’s like the first few times I did it, I was like, oh, this is so much better. Yeah. Richer experience. And then I’m like, oh yeah, but I’m not upgrading any parts and I’m not trying to buy in a different driver. So I don’t have to worry about what I’m saying so much.
Rich Hutson:
I could be here and be really, really rude to people. But I still didn’t even later on when I knew that it didn’t affect anything, I was still being really nice. So.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
That’s exactly what I did.
Rich Hutson:
Maybe that’s just me.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Well, I think part of it is I’ve been programmed to do that for the last few years with different games. Oh, I want to keep all the part departments happy. I’ll just be sort of in the middle.
Rich Hutson:
I don’t want to be a mirror of Devon, like please.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah. But I suppose that also shows that you care for the characters at that point.
Rich Hutson:
You do. Yeah. The amount, as we said, like the amount of time you get with those characters, the amounts of time, they are fully acted. You don’t get a huge amount in the scheme of things, but you do care for these characters in the same way that, you could have a one episode of Drive to Survive with one specific driver by the end of it, you know, their life story and you care about them. They’ve managed to do the same thing here.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah. And another example, that’s come to mind of this extra depth, which I cared about was, I’m not, I’m never the hugest biggest fan of, Jeff, your end game, race engineer. Yeah. I remember back in the, when they first introduced him, I feel like there was an F1 game, someone correct me if I’m wrong way could only activate him with your voice. And then it was the next year do like on the, on the menu, within the sub menu while you’re racing And he’s always been a bit robotic, but in this mode, first of all, he’s got surname. Now he’s called Jeff Nelson, which blew me away. And second of all, when he does the pre-race thing or mid-race updates via the team radio, it’s completely different to previous things I’ve heard from him, it’s about the actual challenge that you’re doing and the driver can sometimes talk back to him.
Rich Hutson:
Yeah. There are points when you hear almost like emotion from Jeff, he’s not, he’s not necessarily robotic. He’s always got this sort of, this upbeat charm about him that he’s always had, but there are just moments when you just, you can hear like elation or defeat in his voice and it’s so different.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah. So we can confirm Jeff is a human being, for the first time, which is surprising. And also for the first time, apart from when they first introduced him, I actually watched the post race, David Croft, Ant Davidson, podium bit, or after that, when the team managers on the pit wall doing something. Normally after a while, skip through those. But now when they talk it’s about your character.
Rich Hutson:
Yeah, yeah. There’s a here’s the podium, that’s just Mercedes and Red Bull. I mean, it’s like, let’s talk about, you know, whichever team you picked. Right. Cause that seems to be the most interesting thing going on here. Not the fact that, Lewis, Hamilton is another grand Prix. Let’s talk about AlphaTauri or which, which team did you pick for your play for?
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah. So I went with, so typically I think you can choose from five teams and they’re all sort of in the midfield. Right. So there’s no like Mercedes or Ferrari, which I think is rather convenient for a future followup. But I chose, I keep wanting to call them Force India. Racing Point. Yeah. And I chose that because it was, you get to see the change of team. So the career is across the three years in effect. Sorry, the Braking Point is across three years and obviously Racing Point changed to Aston Martin. How about you?
Rich Hutson:
I was AlphaTauri.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Okay. Yeah. Nice. So you get to change your livery, which is cool.
Rich Hutson:
Yep. And they got the white wheel wheel rims, which is why I picked them. It’s also the old Honda engine. So.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Now the Honda engine does sound really good.
Rich Hutson:
It does. Yeah. And I knew that come 2021’s season. It was like, right now, now this is pod racing. But also because based on which team you pick Devon gets put into a specifc team aswell.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah. You did pick up on this in your previous video.
Rich Hutson:
Yeah. So they pre-rendered all the. All the cut scenes pre-rendered, obviously based on which team you pick. There is a specific team that Devon will end up in because otherwise if they, if it was randomized, they’d have to, rerender all of those cut scenes, X amount of times to make up for all of the variables it could be. So for me, when I’m in an AlphaTauri, he was in a Haas and, not to put any, a big downer on that, their seasons so far, but it’s like if I wanted Devon Butler to be in any car this year it would be a Haas. So.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah.
Rich Hutson:
That felt pretty good
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Without spoiling things too much in the final year. That’s a bit.
Rich Hutson:
It’s a bit strange, isn’t it? When it gets to towards the end of the season, it’s like, it’s even weirder if he was in like a Williams or something, it’s just, there’s something, you can definitely tell that it almost that they distanced that 2020 and 2021 season to not feel like it’s the season we’re currently in.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah.
Rich Hutson:
And I think back there, you’ve got at least three different names on the grid. Like for example, when it came to the 2021 part of the campaign, Pierre Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda were eradicated off the face of the earth as was Mazepin because they were being replaced by fictional characters in this story mode. So it definitely differentiated it from the season where currently a mist in real life.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
I speak of differentiation then. And I suppose in distancing from the actual 2021 season, there’s a couple of, like, we really enjoyed it, I think. But.
Rich Hutson:
Yes.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
There’s a few sort of less than ideal elements, but it’s their first attempt. Yes. And for me it was, you get to the 2020 F1 season, it’s all the cars and drivers and one of the races is at China and, and I just felt like that was kind of a bit odd because that race didn’t happen.
Rich Hutson:
Yeah.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
And so then now I’m trying to relive a race. It didn’t happen a year ago. It was just like,
Rich Hutson:
Yeah.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
I might be a bit, a bit wrong there, but that was, that just felt slightly off, but it didn’t bother me cause the racing and the story was good.
Rich Hutson:
Yeah. I mean, yeah, it does make it feel like it’s a mirror universe that, none of the pandemic happened and everything’s going on as normal. Which would make sense for Braking Point being a fictionalized reality, but you are right. There is a part of me that kind of, I remember saying this, before we saw much of 2021 as to whether they will actually lean into the fact that we had no crowds and, the drivers, when they were in their cars, they were wearing masks and stuff. As much as I know that people won’t want to look back at this time and remember it in any sort of any way, shape or form, there’s a part of me that would want to have that reality of the season being contextualized in the game.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah. It’s also like, like when you get to 2021 and the first race is Australia and it’s like.
Rich Hutson:
Well, but it wasn’t. Yeah.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah, just outside of Braking Point, you’re still in the career. You can do a, like a custom calendar, but you can’t duplicate races, which is a bit weird still, but anyways.
Rich Hutson:
So you couldn’t do, you can’t double Austria.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Nope.
Rich Hutson:
Oh, that’s a shame.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah. So if you did the real season start, I believe they’re going to take into account points, that did happen on these double duplicate races. But if you’re just in your regular career, unfortunately not. But I digress. Another weird thing I thought was, when you first start playing the objectives, aren’t so clear and I think you had a similar complaint, but pick up on that.
Rich Hutson:
The way that it gives you a little title, when you move into a gameplay section it’s letterboxed visually to make it clear that you’re not the one in control, it may be visual gameplay and exactly how it looks when you start playing. But it makes it clear that you’re not in control yet. And it says like Australian Grand Prix, seven laps to go. So it straight away tells you what you’re doing or at least where you are. And then the objective comes up after you’ve been given control back. And you’re heading into your first corner with you in control. And then in the, on the side, it’s like, oh, this is what you need to do by the way. So the first time I played a Braking Point, I got to Australia and your meant to catch up with Ackerman.
Rich Hutson:
Who’s like, three or four places ahead of you. And I didn’t even know that because I hadn’t spotted it, come up on the side of the screen because I was too busy focusing on the fact that you see the lights go out on your hood and then you’re in control. And after having a terrible time with the F2 car, which felt like the tyres were smothered in butter, I was like, right. I need to focus on making sure I don’t bin my AlphaTauri on the first turn I get. So I didn’t spot the objective. So I’d quite like that to have been present after they show you where you are right in the middle of the screen to say, this is what you need to do off you go. Because if you miss out on the sidebar, if you pause it, you can see your objective, which you might not realize in the first place. But I did not realize, so I failed. I got like four laps down and It was like, you didn’t do it. I was like, do do what, what was I supposed to do?
Tom Harrison-Lord:
I had the same thing with the first, it should be noted that the Braking Point is across three seasons, right? F2 2019.
Rich Hutson:
Two and a bit. Yeah.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
But as you say that the F2 thing is just one challenge. Like it’s over the flash. And I missed the objective beyond the screen. And I did the whole thing until right at the end. And it was like, oh, you failed. I think you’re supposed to win that race. And it does say in the pause and the little thing once, you know it’s there, it’s fine, but it’s like.
Rich Hutson:
It could have been more clear.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
And the other weird thing is like the lip-sync for me or the way the characters mouths move in the cutscenes.
Rich Hutson:
Yeah.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Not game breaking, but it’s slightly weird.
Rich Hutson:
They did, they have had mo-cap and you go through the credits. They did have motion capture involved in with the body, with the, the actual full body movement. It’s really good. There are some moments where the lip-syncing is great. I think Cass Ackerman’s like entire presentation is basically bang on same with Brian Doyle, but people like, Aiden Jackson and Zoe also the interviewer, the Scottish woman Claire? Is it Claire?
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Claire. Yes, correct.
Rich Hutson
Yeah. She, there’s one scene right at the beginning when she’s in one of the pre-rendered cutscenes and her facial features and stuff were just really, really wrong. As you say, it’s nothing game breaking, but we’ve seen so much better from games that are way older. I will always cite Half-Life 2 from 2004 for having lip-syncing, That is leaps and bounds ahead of some games even now. So that’s, it’s not, it’s not game Bbreaking the fact that it’s pre-rendered means it’s not exactly easy to fix, but something to keep in mind to come next year.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah. And maybe, I don’t know how it works. Really. Maybe it’s to do with, I noticed when you get to the end of Braking Point, there’s a big credits and just all these different languages. And are they trying to make the lips sort of read in different? I’m not sure, they probably would have to change those,
Rich Hutson:
But I mean, they might do. I’m not sure, but change the language and see if it changes everything in the game.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah. True. We’ll have to check that, but I’ll give them a benefit of the doubt for now. I suppose it is primarily a racing game.
Rich Hutson:
Yeah, exactly. But the fact that there is, there is a level of quality that is good, and they could absolutely improve on that and make it really good.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Absolutely. Oh, no, I agree. And one thing that was a bit weird for me was Casper Ackerman is supposed to be Dutch, but to me he sounds Danish and sometimes slightly Brummie.
Rich Hutson:
Yeah. He did. His accent was a bit strange. Like, I feel like I’m convinced that when I did at Traxion news where I mentioned the new characters. I swear that I might, this might be me remembering wrong. I feel like I said, he was Italian because I must have read something and thought he was Italian or something, but.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
He’s definitely not Italian. Neither does he sound Dutch? Which is what he.
Rich Hutson:
He just sounded. He just had a little, there was like an occasional twang and yeah, he did kind of sound a bit Brummie at times.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
It does. Especially at the start, but he’s still, a really, interesting character he’s playing the hard to get character.
Rich Hutson:
I think his performance is the best out of all of them.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
I would agree with that. I was going to ask if you’ve got a best character and, well, we agree on that as well, because to me, towards the end Aiden Jackson gets just a little bit too wet behind the years, a little bit too innocent. Whereas Casper’s like, nah, I’m cold as ice, but I’m also in the background, both characters have these sort of troubles that they’re dealing with. And it really dives into that, which is really part of the reason why it’s so engrossing, I think.
Rich Hutson:
Yeah.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
So overall, did you enjoy Braking Point?
Rich Hutson:
Absolutely. Like I said, it surprised me with how much I enjoyed it and I am, I’m absolutely dying to see where things go from here. And I really hope it’s next year.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
That’s kind of the thing. Cause once you’ve finished it, you’ve finished it. And you’re like, oh, 12 months eh?
Rich Hutson:
If you pick a different team, it just changes the context. And they obviously recorded various lines of dialogue with the characters and with Crofty and whatever, but it doesn’t really change anything. It’s one of the things that after I played it through that, I wish it had branching storylines.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah. So yes, to be clear it is a very linear path. It doesn’t have breaking storylines, which again is fine because it is good to start thinking like, Ooh. Yeah. But if I, if I made a different choice in an interview question, where would that lead my career or something, but the amount of work that needs to go into that would be.
Rich Hutson:
Yeah.
Rich Hutson:
Maybe that’s something that needs to see how well it’s received and how many people play it. Like they can look at say achievement statistics and see how many people played Braking Point. And it’s not a mode that’s going to tak tons of hours to beat. I can’t really think about how many hours I put into it because the game time is like on our copy is a bit all over the place. Cause there’s all sorts we’ve been doing the last couple of days.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah. Well, for me, I captured my, my play through, which was across a few days and the total time for the videos was five hours of 40 minutes.
Rich Hutson:
That was sounds about right. Yeah.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
I did read tweets and emails and stuff, but I certainly didn’t, spend a long time desperately reading every single tweet or rereading every email. And an element of that is obviously the game play. And there are a few races when I say full races, they’re like 18 laps.
Rich Hutson:
25% races. Yeah
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Yeah. With a pit stop and stuff. And in total there are 24 cinematics if you like numbers. So the cut scenes quote, unquote. Which are really well detailed and quite lengthy.
Rich Hutson:
Yeah, they are very well done. There’s obviously there is, there is room for improvement, but the initial offering they’ve had for something like this has been, I would say spectacular, honestly.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
And when I was speaking to Lee Mather, the game director, he was saying how that it sounded like they essentially started work in 2019 because that game had a little, very little bit of F2 story, which lasted half an hour max. And then that was it. The story didn’t go any further. So they almost based on the feedback, people wanted more. So they split the team, and had a team working on this for ineffective, I think, 18 months to 24 months.
Rich Hutson:
Wow.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
So then I’m thinking, Ooh, can they do another one for next year? Like this I’m not, I’m not sure. But then part of me made me, made me think part of it made me think, well, I’ve got China and Australia in the calendar. So maybe the bulk of the story and stuff was written a while ago and that team could be already working on the next one.
Rich Hutson:
Yeah, exactly. And I mean, if, if they’ve got the, the basic framework in of, you know, what Braking Point is and how it works and there means of doing mo-cap and cut scenes and stuff, then they can just, I mean, I’m not developing myself, but they have that basic framework there so shouldn’t take as long for the next time. And I really hope they do continue it.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Me too. Me too. I can’t wait. So, in summary, F1 2021 is out tomorrow. If you’ve paid extra money and are buying it digitally, and it’s out on the 16th for regular punters and physical additions, and we both really recommend if you buy the game, play Braking Point first.
Rich Hutson:
Yes.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
Soak it in and finish that entire mode. Then jump into multiplayer, or the driver career or your pre-order icons that you may or may not have, which are all interesting and really good. And also on the Traxion.gg website and Traxion YouTube channel. There’s a lot on F1 2021 about the other stuff as well.
Rich Hutson:
Yes, there’s a lot coming.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
There’s a huge amount on the way as well. So this might be when the review goes live, or this podcast goes live, but we’ve got a huge amount of content coming up as well. So how to compare and things, all sorts of stuff. So if your new to the game, or, you’ve played the previous ones. Everything you need to know is on Traxion.GG on the website, TraxionGG on social media, or TraxionGG on YouTube. I think that’s just about it. Rich. Thank you very much for joining me.
Rich Hutson:
Thank you.
Tom Harrison-Lord:
It’s been a pleasure. Thank you for listening. Join us next time.
