A brand new official World Rally Championship game has been announced, with WRC Generations launching in October 2022 to showcase the new Rally1 hybrid ruleset.
The yearly WRC game is created by Kylotonn for publisher Nacon and up until this point has featured a numbered title – with the most recent being 2021’s WRC 10.
For the 2022 season, that nomenclature has been eschewed, instead favouring a title that represents a culmination of the French studio’s experience – producing seven WRC games. This will be the last they work on, as the licence moves to Electronic Arts for 2023.
2022 WRC season included
As is to be expected with an official WRC game, the majority of the main drivers, teams and rallies from the current real-world season are to be included.
That’s particularly important in 2022, as the championship has implemented a new hybrid Rally1 ruleset. That means a 100kW plug-in hybrid system and a tubular chassis. Three new cars have been built to these regulations so far.
- Toyota GR Yaris Rally1
- Hyundai i20 N Rally1
- Ford Puma Rally1
Fresh Swedish stages
This season’s WRC calendar is notable because it includes the return of Rally New Zealand for the first time since 2012. However, this was originally scheduled for inclusion in 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic jettisoned the plans.
As the result, the stages were already developed for the WRC 9 game, then carried over as part of a 50th Anniversary mode within WRC 10.
The same applies to Rally Japan, with its stages already present since WRC 9, despite it not making its real-world debut until later this season.
Rally Sweden was held for the first time in the Umeå region earlier this year, and as a result, the stages in this new game have been redesigned to match the narrow, high-speed, snowy tracks.
WRC Generations will also include nine other locations outside of the current WRC calendar – we suspect these will include existing stages developed by Kylotonn such as Chile, Wales Rally GB and Ypres, Belgium. This will total 165 stages.
In a similar vein, the previous WRC-specification vehicles will also be carried across, along with vehicles from the championship’s history for a total of 37 so-called legendary cars.
The career returns
The expansive career mode returns, once again offering the ability to create your own team – something first introduced in last year’s WRC 10. This is said to be ‘improved’ over previous iterations, but exact details as to how are yet to be discussed.
The livery editor will now allow you to share your creations and the car development skill tree is said to include hybrid-specific upgrades.
A league mode will also be included, although on paper it sounds very similar to WRC 10’s online teams offering where you competed with fellow virtual rally drivers across a variety of challenges.
PlayStation and Xbox only at launch
In a move that breaks with tradition, WRC Generations will be available for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S upon launch, but the PC version will follow later at a currently unspecified date.
There will also be a Nintendo Switch version, but with WRC 10 only launching on the diminutive portable console two months ago, we expect this to be in 2023.
WRC Generations release date
WRC Generations will launch on 13th October 2022 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S. PC and Nintendo Switch release dates are yet to be confirmed.
