Prerelease:Burnout Legends (PlayStation Portable)
This page details prerelease information and/or media for Burnout Legends (PlayStation Portable).
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Burnout 3's PSP Port
Burnout Legends actually began life as a scrapped PSP prototype of Burnout 3: Takedown that never saw the light of day, outside of a handful of screenshots. These screenshots hit the Internet on May 6, 2005, the date Electronic Arts announced that Legends was in development, however the date the screens were actually taken is most likely mid/late 2004.
In stark contrast to later versions of Legends, this build was near-identical to Burnout 3's console versions graphics-wise. It used console-quality car and track models as well as textures, and the environment lighting was also far higher-quality than the final builds of Legends. Some bits and pieces were below console-quality, but for the most part, this build was very much on-par with its PlayStation 2 counterpart.
Interview Build
An early prototype of the game is featured in this interview video uploaded to IGN's website on May 10th, 2005. Despite the date the interview was recorded, the build presented here dates back far further than that (likely around April 2005), since the current version of the game by now would have been the E3 version (see below), which is completely different to this build.
- This build uses Burnout 3s garage for the car select screen.
- Plenty of Burnout 3's HUD elements are being used as placeholders.
- Burnout Revenge concept art can be seen in the loading screens.
- The build seems to have performance issues, namely the fact that its framerate is unstable and tanks during crashes. This could be the reason behind the game eventually getting severe graphical downgrades later on in its development cycle (lower-quality models and textures, far simpler lighting etc.); Legends' deadline would have been a few months away at this point and there simply wasn't enough time left for optimization.
- The placeholder background video being used for the menu is completely different to the final menu BGV. It's a short animation of a cut car from Burnout Revenge driving through what appears to be a very early version of Motor City, which is also a track from Revenge. This video is still present in the retail game's files, under the name "Titles30.pmf".
- The driving physics/handling model resembles Burnout 3 much more than the later versions.
E3 2005 Footage
By now the game has changed considerably from the "interview build" and is now very similar to its retail version, save for a few notable differences.
- The game is now using lower LODs (levels of detail) as the primary models for the cars and tracks. LODs are lower-poly, lower-detail (hence the name) models that games use for objects that are far away from the player, to keep framerates smooth. Legends most likely had to use these as its main models due to performance/framerate issues that arose from using the high-poly models.
- The HUD/UI no longer uses assets from Burnout 3.
- In-air crash physics (as well as crash physics in general) are slightly different; as seen in the Crash Mode gameplay, the player car seems to "float" a bit more and take longer to hit the ground.
- Crash cameras are completely different to the final version.
Burnout Legends' official trailers most likely also use footage from an E3-era build of the game.
