Racing through the streets of Paradise City in Burnout Paradise for the Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, and PC is plenty of fun, but the experience was supposed to be much grander. Developer Criterion Games has taken the dusty sheet off of the scrapped plans for game-extending downloadable content that includes traveling through the city by air, venturing deep into the Paradise underground, blasting off in a rocket from Big Surf Island to the moon, and even opening portals to go back in time. Who says that developers don't think big?
We did have ambitious plans for a series of Islands. One was going to be purely off-road based. Hence we created the 'Dust Storm' dune buggy in anticipation for that. Our original dreams for Paradise were to create a series of Islands, all connected to Paradise City and each would focus on a different style of racing game. One Island was going to be completely circuit based - and be all marked up like a modern Formula One circuit!
During this period, Criterion evolved from being a traditional game developer that released a game disc every couple of years to being a live network enabled developer. Not only were were connecting to our players, we were actively responding to and adding to the game in ways that had never been tried before. As we were breaking new ground, it made sense to explore this as much as possible.
It's a shame to hear that this material will never come to fruition. Criterion is seemingly off on their next non-Paradise project, so it would seem that new construction in the city is over. The next time you take a look at the Paradise City map, take note of the empty areas that are just screaming out for the downloadable content that will never come.
