PVP mayhem has finally arrived in The Crew 2. Hardcore Gamer was fortunate enough to get some hands-on time with some of the new features and also sit down with Claire Garin, Ivory Tower studio communications manager, to discuss some of the specific changes that went into this newest update after playing the game for a couple hours.

[Hardcore Gamer] Can you tell us a bit about what being a communications manager entails?

[Claire Garin] I work on how we present the game to public and players, which means I have to know everything by heart. I work close to the creative time and help determine how we get players into the game and what the philosophy is behind the game.

Basically you have to know everything about the game to let everyone else know everything about the game.

Yes, to the best of my abilities. As you can imagine I to ask the creative team about the more technical stuff regularly to stay up to date.

What all new content is coming with this update?

The featured Demolition Derby will be included in the next free update. As you might as might have guess it includes new disciplines and PVP for a new mode. There are a bunch of cool new vehicles, fourteen to be exact, and more than twenty new activities and disciplines. A lot of new content will be available.

Sounds like the focus is on multiplayer, getting online with a bunch of friends and just destroying everything and each other.

Exactly. (laughs)

What can you tell us about the new disciplines that are coming in this new update?

The Demolition Derby includes two new spots and a bunch of a new gameplay that comes with them. One is the arena which is set in the flatlands, you've had a bunch of gameplay here and the goal is to crush each other and make as much damage and mayhem as possible. There are different set ups. There's water and traps and deadly stuff happening over there. The other one is a circuit, it's eight shaped so at some point you are going to crash into each other. Destruction is always at the core of the game but we try to make some twists and turns to make it a different experience.

We all learned quickly how deadly the water is on that one course. There were several times when one of us had a respectable lead but after a few dunks into the water that came to an end very quickly.

(laughs) That's actually one of the specifics of this discipline, it's never over until it's over. We like that it's very easy to pick up. You might suck at every other discipline but be the best at Demolition Derby, there are no rules, the game play is completely different. It's all about chaos. There still some kind of strategic touch to it since you have bonuses appearing and you have to know when to actually look for crash and when to avoid it so there are some subtleties to it.

The main thing we remembered is that our cars cannot swim. That one we were doing, the figure eight racetrack that was just pure chaos. We kept crashing into each other all the time there. At one point I was in the lead and I'm terrible at racing games but that didn't last too long since there was the inevitable five car pile up at one of the turns. So the circuit demolition course, the one without the water, what's the story with that arena?

We're trying to have to widest scope possible of design so that is more like letting the chaos be up to the players. You know going in you're going to be crashing but we had no idea it would be so chaotic when we first designed it. It ended up being really crazy. Fun fact, the one with the water is one of the latest ones we came up with. Someone was like what if we just designed a pool around it and you would have to push your opponents in the water but as you saw you don't have to push anyone in the water, they'll end up there on their own. The one with less traps is more about pure collision between players.

The water can be dangerous. There were a few times when someone pushed someone into the water and followed them right in. 

It's also about control. We will have two different playlists, which you've seen some of that today. One of the playlists will be pretty permanent with street racing and hypercars, those are the players favorites and we know they'll want those around all the time. The second playlist is going to demolition derby for now because we want to highlight that with the new release but it will eventually turn over and include all the disciplines in the PVP set up. For now those modes are set up to be played with four players on a team against four AI bots but it's going to be eight player circuits, where it's one player against seven others so it's going to be way more personal.

What's one last aspect about the new update you'd like to discuss?

We do spend a lot of time talking about the new content and changes and everything the players are going to see but we never talk very much about the constant updating and maintenance to keep everything running smoothly. There are devs that never sleep that are here to do the permanent polishing and improvement on the game. This update had huge work done on the damage system to update it for the demolition derby but it also benefits all vehicles in all game modes. We have work that was done where when you crash against another car, even in your dream hypercar, you feel the impact in a way more realistic way so there has been a huge amount of work done for this December update.