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Is the Map in The Crew/Crew 2 one of the biggest unsung achievements in gaming history?

Stuart360

Member
Ever since playing the first Crew way back when, i was blown away by the size, detail, and variety in the map of The Crew. Basically a 1/15th scale United States, complete with mnay major cities, towns and landmarks. The cities all have correct building styles, and landmarks, very little copy pasting. The states all have their own look and flavour. Day night cycle, weather effects.
Its just an incredible achievement imo and seems to get very little recognition. The amount of time and effort put into the map puts most games to shame.

the_crew_map.jpg












This video gives you a good look at the major cities, and how accurate they can be -




And of course the 90min full loop of the US -




If i were Ubisoft i'd license out parts of the maps for other games, even the whole map. Can you imagine a 10,000 player BR on the full map?, it would take hours to complete but boy would it be something. Or what about coast to coast Cannonball Run style MP races?.
Just so much wasted potential with this map imo.

Anyway like i said, i honestly believe this map is one of the biggest achievements in modern gaming, and for whatever reason it never seems to get the recognition it deserves for me.
 
Test Drive Unlimited was better, my most played game of all time, had it on 360, pc psp and ps2, finished it multiple times on all platforms.

The Crew are a bunch of old Eden/TDU guys as i understand, The Crew is a really fun game, shame that there is not more games like these, its my favorite genere, mmo car racing open world, its a different beast than forza all together cant compare them
 
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xrnzaaas

Gold Member
It's definitely cool to spend an hour (or more) going from one end of the map to the other. It's a shame that the studio didn't have a good idea (or a good budget) for Crew 2 and featured the same country again.
 

ACESHIGH

Banned
I haven't played the crew 2 yet but the crew is SO underrated. O think is one of the arcade racing games of the generation. Going from coast to coast is so immersive. And drag racing was great.

Enjoyed it way more than FH4. The horizon series peaked with 3.
 
What is the actual purpose and fun in this game.

My understanding is that it’s supposed to be an open world mmo racer. I feel like they just kinda latched into the mmo craze and said ‘racer’ and this came out.
 

Aion002

Member
I think that it might be... I really enjoyed exploring it. It's a shame that almost everything else in the games is boring and uninspired.
 
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bender

What time is it?
Test Drive Unlimited was better, my most played game of all time, had it on 360, pc psp and ps2, finished it multiple times on all platforms.

The Crew are a bunch of old Eden/TDU guys as i understand, The Crew is a really fun game, shame that there is not more games like these, its my favorite genere, mmo car racing open world, its a different beast than forza all together cant compare them

I burned through so many podcasts in that long race around the island.
 

Denton

Member
Crew 1 was kind of amazing. Made me buy a wheel and when that wasn't enough, get a license. The physics was not great, but the feeling of exploration, amazing ambient radio, good graphics..and even the story was pretty decent for a game like that.

Crew 2 was a huge letdown though. Everything was worse and not only did they reuse the map, they butchered it as well.

I truly hope Crew 3 will be completely different from 2. Give us new map (Europe!) , unbutchered and enhanced US, better physics, no dumb fuck boats and planes and shit.

Some of my pics from Crew 1, back in the day..

thecrew2016-2-2-10-56xmajv.jpg


thecrew2016-2-2-15-8-8kl0c.jpg


thecrew2016-2-2-19-28n3y58.jpg


thecrew2016-2-2-18-7-j6zeb.jpg


thecrew2016-2-2-19-41walf3.jpg


thecrew2016-2-2-20-8-c0xt4.jpg
 

skit_data

Member
I liked the game, even got the season pass for it, and the map was massive. Sadly the loading times and overall clunkiness in menus did it no favors. Anyone know if these aspects are improved on next gen consoles?
 
S

Sidney Prescott

Unconfirmed Member
The Crew is definitely flawed, but the map is one of the best parts of it. Aside from Forza, there is no other games where you can take great road trips. Just the feeling of driving to a whole new city and having hours long drives is so amazing.
 

Cravis

Member
I love the first Crew. I dug the stupid undercover to avenge his brother story. Really missed that in the sequel. Actually never even bothered finishing the second one and I seriously think that had a lot do with it
 

UnNamed

Banned
The Crew map makes it an adventure game instead of a racing game. It's a big part of it's appeal.
Forza is undoubtedly better as a simulation, but it is also very empty and lifeless so you feel you race in movie sets instead or real cities.

Now just give me my TheCrew Europe!
 

Warablo

Member
Couldn't really get into it. Seemed grindy just typical Ubisoft game.

Only racing games I liked are Forza Horizon's, Midnight Club: LA, and NFS: Underground 2. Burnout had its moments but only liked the crash mode honestly.
 

TheRobot

Member
Crew 2 suffered in matchmaking, expensive vehicles, loading, grinding, the first game was way more engaging!
 

Certinty

Member
One of my favourite games of last-gen. The map and variety of vehicles alone made me love it. Not sure why it got so much hate, huge upgrade in every way over the first game.
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
The general level of detail seems rather low (haven't played the game), but yeah, the amount of locations recreated is pretty nuts. Ubisoft is an asset factory.
 
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Guilty_AI

Member
yep, its great, and it'll all go down the drain once ubisoft pulls the plug on the game's servers.

Though i suppose i liked Oahu from TDU better. Even if it wasn't as detailed or varied, i thought it had more personality.
 
The map is really cool but it's not 1/15th scale, it's closer to 1/2000th scale. Total area in The Crew and The Crew 2 is 1900 square miles. The United States is 3,794,083 square miles in area.

I prefer a smaller, more well-planned map personally. Horizon 2 or 3's main maps are fantastic maps that I'm still not sick of racing on. Horizon 4's main map isn't as good (Fortune Island was great, but was unfortunately a DLC map that was never used again after the initial events) but I do still prefer driving on it to the big map in The Crew.

It's the biggest game map that isn't procedurally generated or Microsoft Flight Sim 2020 though which is pretty impressive.
 

Stuart360

Member
The map is really cool but it's not 1/15th scale, it's closer to 1/2000th scale. Total area in The Crew and The Crew 2 is 1900 square miles. The United States is 3,794,083 square miles in area.
Ah my fault. I had it in my head that a route from NY to LA was about 1500km, and its actually about 4500km -

data=EJh_-DZYKKlp9sU7aVt-81j7cn0AuhG2dos-wsL92fB2HewOFkjvCrPoQV5RZdbeg60_RwXH6MRWOURd9tfyDvg3oV9cMqqxG52XX5rt1qTCHCgrBi3_vNQaXJrr26ksNU8oLASrX4i7JlNuskWy0AVD6o9MidtIVS_6m0uLZZWBARNTMMExJWcvlVWs,MlJInj713FftvJYwni4DxrNiypJc5sy9bNe_ewHnG5sQQWNSqFTz-pG4JZgFiM41vIm5H8gYRnVgsG6sMtHJXM6vXjirnUNEfSDZrjA6WMLjAVZmn41mcUNU5BIwJrBLqxzTrlsBcvD0a9TjN0TIKVRFt3jbHe-rmRLDEkNagC5XO4nUxbD7R2sVYFefEMDMneY_iBidEpsMrMuiaiLm6FoZasFcrF31WYloDBraTg4Offs_LUIKAD5ro0ISBezDvn5Bc0MGAGzFHLl3GXJRxvyxQVuLtsGsoe6Uu5tgFM2-2nUdC-WfXZ3ELycmzsI7fNWHz2o1pzZhV7I5H8x1fylHR7QCyhiMEh20Umqg3LsyzoCYC61mv6CjLf0iD_f3nreZ1rzcnutzuWrFomjBT3X4CnM0qyaBmyOqxzGe

40 hr (4,489.8 km) via I-80 W

A very similar route in the game takes about 100km. So the map is more like 1/45 in scale?
 
Ah my fault. I had it in my head that a route from NY to LA was about 1500km, and its actually about 4500km -

data=EJh_-DZYKKlp9sU7aVt-81j7cn0AuhG2dos-wsL92fB2HewOFkjvCrPoQV5RZdbeg60_RwXH6MRWOURd9tfyDvg3oV9cMqqxG52XX5rt1qTCHCgrBi3_vNQaXJrr26ksNU8oLASrX4i7JlNuskWy0AVD6o9MidtIVS_6m0uLZZWBARNTMMExJWcvlVWs,MlJInj713FftvJYwni4DxrNiypJc5sy9bNe_ewHnG5sQQWNSqFTz-pG4JZgFiM41vIm5H8gYRnVgsG6sMtHJXM6vXjirnUNEfSDZrjA6WMLjAVZmn41mcUNU5BIwJrBLqxzTrlsBcvD0a9TjN0TIKVRFt3jbHe-rmRLDEkNagC5XO4nUxbD7R2sVYFefEMDMneY_iBidEpsMrMuiaiLm6FoZasFcrF31WYloDBraTg4Offs_LUIKAD5ro0ISBezDvn5Bc0MGAGzFHLl3GXJRxvyxQVuLtsGsoe6Uu5tgFM2-2nUdC-WfXZ3ELycmzsI7fNWHz2o1pzZhV7I5H8x1fylHR7QCyhiMEh20Umqg3LsyzoCYC61mv6CjLf0iD_f3nreZ1rzcnutzuWrFomjBT3X4CnM0qyaBmyOqxzGe

40 hr (4,489.8 km) via I-80 W

A very similar route in the game takes about 100km. So the map is more like 1/45 in scale?

My original 1/2000 was incorrect as Alaska isn't included in the game. It's closer to 1/1550 in scale

To get the total scale you need to go by in-game total area size. Travel speed indicated in most arcade racing games is mostly arbitrary and so travel time can't really be used to guage actual size of a game map or distance traveled. Using measurements of known objects in-game with measurable dimensions the community found The Crew 2 map is around 1900-2000 square miles in area, massive for a game map that wasn't procedurally generated, but only about the size of the state of Delaware (1954 square miles). Let's go with the higher estimate of 2000 square miles for the map in The Crew.

So the map is roughly 2000 square miles, but the real US is 3.8 million. Now consider Alaska isn't included in The Crew and so you have to remove 663,267 square miles from the US total area giving you roughly 3.1 million square miles.

2000/3,100,000 = 1/1550
 
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