When I first heard that Ubisoft was bringing back the Driver franchise, and placing it square in San Francisco, I thought that they must be crazy. Have they driven in San Francisco? It’s about one of the least driver friendly cities on the west coast! Of course, the city has a pedigree for silly insane chase scenes in movies and TV shows, so I suspect the decision to return here is thanks to that.
Anyway, now that I’ve seen the above single-player walktrough, I have a better understanding of what’s going on. There’s over 100 licensed cars, and the SHIFT mechanic means stupid walking sections won’t waste our time. An idealized version of SF, we’ve got the sparsely congested versions of Embarcadero, Market St and other major boroughs of the city. We also have the promise of visiting my home town up in North Bay, as well as driving across the Bay Bridge to Oakland and the east bay. Whistle tips not confirmed. My SF Smug-meter is disdainful of the rather mushy interpretation of the Bay Area, but hey, hopefully it’ll make for a good game, you know? I hella hope that Driver: San Francisco lives up.
