LEGO 2K Drive is out in just a few weeks, bringing us an open world driving simulator in which the possibilities stretch just as far as the player's imagination. I recently had the privilege to sit down with the game's Design Director David Msika and Senior Software Engineer Jacob Longazo, to talk about the spectrum of vehicle customization options that will be available to players via the upcoming game's Garage.
"It was created by real fans of LEGOs," Msika says, first and foremost. "That was instrumental for us." The development team wanted to make sure their product is "something that will give players and ourselves an incredible amount of freedom," and a lot of work went into putting that freedom into the hands of LEGO 2K Drive's players.
The start of any LEGO build begins with the base, and in the case of LEGO 2K Drive's garage, that base is the chassis. From there you'll add in individual bricks one-by-one until your ride is complete. "We give you a handful to start with, [and] about 350 parts to place on any vehicle, so you can just go to town on it," Longazo explains, adding that additional brick packs will become available to you as you play through the game's story.
One of the ways the team hopes to immerse the LEGO community is the game is by utilizing the actual LEGO bricks used in the real world. As Mskia put it, the game is an "incredibly deep vehicle builder that emulates what people would do in real life." There's no official number yet on the sets that will be included, although LEGO City, LEGO Friends, LEGO Creator, and LEGO Speed Champions will all be represented, and Mskia informed me that we may want to expect even more in the future.
"We're very conscious and cognizant of the fact that the garage is a big selling point of the game," he adds.
Putting things into perspective, Msika explains the team's unique vision for the customizable cars, boats, and more. The vehicles themselves are the players' own creations, and in order to really show those vehicles the love and individuality that they deserve, the development team has been treating them less like objects and more like actual game characters, just with four wheels instead of two legs. "It's a character that can walk, sprint, run; it can do anything that a biped can do, but it can do it at 150 miles per hour," he tells me.
In addition to the standard bricks, you'll also be able to trick out your customized rides with Flair, specialized pieces that you can use to really make your vehicles stand out from the crowd. Asked for specifics on the range of Flair available, Msika lists off a few general concepts like adding stickers and sounds, but he also gets into some weird and fun-sounding specifics, like a rotating, bubbling flower pot and a spoiler that leaves a rainbow stream in its wake. They'll also be programmable as to the conditions that will make them do what they do. "You can assign when a Flair triggers. You can really make it your own," he says.
But with so many options available, some players may feel a little intimidated. That acessibility issue is something the developers have taken into account too, and that's why the team has included some building options that don't exist in real life, but that can help the player in putting everything together. For example, Longazo points out, they've included shortcuts for players, like building one side of a vehicle manually and then using a simple mirror-imaging tool to create the other side in perfect symmetry. "LEGO is for everyone, and the garage should be for everyone," Msika adds.
Of course, if you're inclined to building something under more structured rules, LEGO 2K Drive has you covered there as well. Longazo explains that every vehicle in the game will come with instructions — a blueprint or tutorial on how to build it — and "I'm in love with it because I love LEGOs."
As far as performance of the vehicles goes, no individual bricks or instructions are going to give you an edge, and that's all been built into the design since the beginning. As Msika explains, "Early on, we wanted to avoid having anything that dictates how you should build your vehicle, because it kills creativity in favor of a min/max build."
Instead, groups of vehicle stats are availlable on different templates, and once you've unlocked a new set of stats, you can assign them to any vehicle you want, meaning there's no single best or worst vehicle in the game. The stat templates come in four ascending tiers — Neat, Cool, Awesome, and Super Awesome. I asked if those last two were references to the incredibly catchy Tegan and Sara earworm "Everything Is Awesome" from The Lego Movie series, but Msika just smirked and wouldn't say.
And if you've already got a favorite ride, but you've just unlocked a set of stats that you think would make it even better, that's no problem, as Longazo points out that you can just make a copy of that vehicle using the new stats. Even with the four different tiers, one set of stats isn't a lock for being the best, and again, that's a design choice to encourage experimentation and freedom among the players. "We don't want the stats to be anything that guarantees victory," Msika tells me. "Stats are a choice. There's always going to be a curse and a boon."
I made a point to bring up another recent hit between 2K and Visual Concepts, WWE 2K23, which I personally reviewed and loved. It's a very different game from LEGO 2K Drive, but one of the things that has kept its appeal going, a least for me, is the community's ability to share custom creations, from the superstars themselves to customizable arenas and championships. Hearing that, Msika confirmed that Visual Concepts is "definitely interested" in making it possible to share your creations with the LEGO 2K Drive community, although a community sharing feature won't be ready right at launch time. Because LEGO has a widespread appeal among gamers of all ages, a lot of kids and younger players are expected to be in that pool, so the development team is committed to "do everything we can to make it as safe a place as possible."
Even without having tha feature right away, this is a game that will give the player nearly limitless control over their creations, and the team behind it has included a lot of fun an interesting options and tools to help you along. While assembling the massive customization cataloge and the unique world which your vehicles will be exploring has been a challenging task, Msika can't wait for players to experience the "open-world, arcadey driving, and I'm really proud that the team — it's a small team — has been able to pull that off ... We hope that many, many people get to play it and realize, man, this is a really great game." From porting real-life LEGO builds into a game world to tricking ot your ride with personal Flair, "It's going to be a builder's dream."
LEGO 2K Drive will be available May 19 for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.