It’s A Shame We Never Got A Blur Sequel

If you were around the Australian LAN scene at any point, chances are you would have seen one of two games being fired up when it got into the late hours: FlatOut 2, and the excellent Blur. The latter was hugely entertaining, but launching around the same time as Split/Second and ModNation Racers hurt the game’s commercial viability. Activision shut down Blur developers Bizarre Creations in 2011, but before their doors closed, the studio put together a prototype for a sequel.

Footage was uploaded to YouTube over the weekend from a build of Blur 2 featuring nine tracks. It’s part of a deeper investigation from German YouTubers AltF4Games into the history of Blur and the cancelled Blur 2. You can watch that deep dive into Blur 2 here, although it’s entirely in German with no English subtitles, so you might struggle a little.

What everyone can enjoy, however, are some of the ideas Bizarre Creations had in mind for the sequel. One of the levels, Dubai, would have featured loop-the-loop sections, driving on the side of buildings, and plenty of tight passageways through construction areas and the Dubai cityscape. Other levels would have visited Hong Kong, Miami, North Africa, Odessa, a place just called “Ski Resort”, Detroit, and two segments in Los Angeles.

The prototype footage doesn’t showcase any new powers or cars. The main difference is in a lot of the track design: there’s more narrow segments, more shortcuts, and a greater sense of speed from the constant changes of elevation. The original Blur had a lot of wide, flat tracks, whereas the sequel’s tracks would have been more dynamic and more technically challenging.

It’s not the first time we’ve seen a snippet of a Blur sequel. Back in 2013, we reported on one of Blur‘s former art developers showing off footage of a Blur prototype sequel on their Tumblr. Chris Davie, a former art director on the game, showed some videos of the Dubai level, as well as new visual and environmental effects the studio was playing around with.

Those videos have since been taken offline, although there is still some footage online of the Dubai level with more of an asset pass. It looked good, although given where the gaming world was at the time, I can understand why Activision – fresh off the heels of Call of Duty 4 and Black Ops‘ enormous success, would have had little faith in a sequel.

You can’t buy Blur today. The game was pulled from digital release, likely because of problems around licensing for the music in the game. You can listen to most of those songs, however, through the Spotify playlist below.


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