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Grid 2’s courses can change as you drive with new LiveRoutes system, Codemasters reveal

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Codemasters revealed an intriguing new system for Grid 2 called LiveRoutes at the Eurogamer Expo today. LiveRoutes dynamically changes the track layout as your race, so you might approach a familiar corner only to find a different one waiting for you, or even a straight.

I can’t make up my mind whether this is genius or a travesty. On the one hand, this seems like it could make it even trickier to find your way around a track, leading to more shunts and collisions with tyre barriers. On the other hand, it could take the focus off track memorization, which is one of racing’s more tedious and frustrating rituals.

I’m also wondering whether LiveRoutes will simply switch between various circuit configurations that already exist, the way tracks like Silverstone have multiple layouts for different racing series. Will it workso that on one go-round you might be on the current GP configuration, but the next you might drive the old one? That seems to be the easiest way to handle it, but I wonder if LiveRoutes has even greater capacity to change a track on the fly.

It’s an interesting notion, and I have no idea whether it will translate to a good racing experience or an exasperating one. But it’s good to see Codemasters trying to add new twists to a genre that can sometimes be a bit too staid for its own good.