This month's IGN First is a bit different than usual. Rather than highlighting a single game -- we'll get back to that next month -- we're highlighting the Japanese game industry as a whole. We visited some of the biggest studios in Japan to focus on their games and creative processes. Check back all month for interviews, gameplay reveals, and more!

Find a list of everything we've published so far in our IGN First: Games of Japan hub

Remember the smell of a freshly-opened instruction book?

“ Every GT we’ve always made two versions of Gran Turismo; one Gran Turismo to be played and one Gran Turismo to be read.

Loading

There are many influential books on motor racing. There’s ‘The Technique of Motor Racing’ by driver and industrial engineer Piero Taruffi, a 1959 book that remains recognised by many as the gold standard of racing texts. There’s 1963’s ‘Sports Car and Competition Driving’ by Le Mans winner and auto journalist Paul Frère; an influential classic also still held in very high regard. There’s successful race engineer Carroll Smith’s ‘Tune to Win’ and ‘Drive to Win’, both of which have been mentioned to me by multiple professional drivers as essential reading for prospective racers. Generations of contenders have had the fundamentals of going fast reinforced to them by books such as these.I haven’t actually read any of them. I found my racing bible somewhere else; the instruction manual for the original Gran Turismo. It’s actually one of my fondest gaming memories, despite the fact it’s a book, not a game.You see, there’s more in there than just a quick description of what the buttons do and the local phone numbers and call charges for PowerLine in case you get stuck. Halfway through it turns into the Gran Turismo ‘Racing Strategy Guide’, which is actually crammed with pages and pages of driving tips, explanations of crucial cornering and braking techniques, and much more. Back in 1998 I remember poring over every page multiple times. I watched a lot of racing growing up just a few minutes from one of Australia’s most-distinctive race tracks, and I’d spent most of the rest of that decade noodling around with a host of racing games on PC. I’d picked up a lot, sure, but Gran Turismo’s mini ‘Racing Strategy Guide’ put it all on paper for me.Flicking through it today it’s clear that a lot of the information is really quite basic. As a teen back in the late ’90s, though – before YouTube and Wikipedia – this was super stuff. My dad taught me how to drive, but I was convinced the original Gran Turismo booklet was going to teach me to drive faster.20 years later I’m in Tokyo, sinking into a dark couch in the office of Polyphony Digital CEO and Gran Turismo creator and director Kazunori Yamauchi. It’s a surprisingly big space in the country that invented capsule hotels. There’s a desk with a workstation on it over by the far wall, and a different desk in the centre of the room covered in more camera lenses than I can count. Beside that there’s another table with a huge 4K TV perched on top and a racing wheel strapped to it. Inside it smells vaguely like every pub I ever visited before smoking indoors was banned in Australia.“The actual printing will be a lot cleaner than this,” says Yamauchi, smiling. He’s referring to a couple of subtle fingerprints that his advance copy has accumulated on the front cover. I didn’t actually notice them until he pointed them out.Yamauchi enthusiastically leafs through the book in front of him, which must be several hundred pages. One side of each spread is a picture from Gran Turismo Sport’s photo mode (or ‘Scapes’, as it’s been dubbed by Polyphony). The other side is packed with auto industry history, driving and set-up tips, information on cameras, and more. He’s obviously pretty happy with the result.“Every GT we’ve always made two versions of Gran Turismo; one Gran Turismo to be played and one Gran Turismo to be read,” says Yamauchi. “So this is the latest version of Gran Turismo to be read… and it gets bigger and bigger every time!”

Loading

“ I think it’s been quite a while since I’ve been this involved in the fine tuning for the sound.

Loading

Of course, it’s the former version – the one we play – that keeps the lights on at Polyphony. When I first played GT Sport back at E3 2016 I was underwhelmed. The game had been stripped down and rebuilt from scratch for its overdue PS4 debut, but it felt surprisingly sterile and unready last June. It was due out last November but Sony let it stay on the hoist instead. It seems like the right call now.A year on, GT Sport today feels more assured and less plain. In the battle of the bullet points – like car counts, career classes, and changing conditions – it’s still not quite in the contest. The competition is looking very strong. But, as disappointing as GT Sport’s delay was, it already seems a better game for it. 12 months (and one rescheduled release date) later there have been some very positive changes.The big one is sound, and Polyphony Digital has prepared several video reels to highlight the extensive work that’s been done in this department.It’s an immediately noticeable improvement as I watch the Crowne Plaza BMW Z4 GT3 tackle the Nürburgring Nordschleife in both Gran Turismo 6 and GT Sport. In GT Sport the clunk and whine of the transmission is brought to the fore, tyre and wind noise build to a low roar as the Beemer tickles its top speed, and the exhaust coughs and crackles off-throttle. The buzz of clipping a ripple strip is vastly superior, as is the chirp of tyres being pushed to the brink. It still lacks a bit of the richness and kick of stuff like Project CARS or Sector3’s RaceRoom Racing Experience but it’s a big step forward for the series, nonetheless. GT6 sounds frankly feeble in comparison.“The actual recording process itself hasn’t changed much between GT6 to GT Sport. The major difference between GT6 and GT Sport is that for GT6, at the time, we were pretty much putting out things as is – as it was recorded. What the difference is with the sound in GT Sport now is we’ve gone through and made sure that the sounds that a person sitting in the car wants to listen to and pick up are actively reproduced and put in the forefront.”Yamauchi explains that something the team found was that there was always a discrepancy between the sound of the real cars they record and how those recordings sounded back in a studio environment.“How the human ear works and how a microphone works is actually very different,” he says. “So instead of just working with compressors or enhancers and using an equaliser to balance the sound, we actually went through and picked up on the elements of the sound that human ears are tuning into when they’re listening, and made sure to boost those elements.”Polyphony has also taken a few liberties with what players should be hearing based on their chosen view, in order to keep everyone happy.“Of course, GT has a bunch of different camera views,” begins Yamauchi. “Chase view, roof view, cockpit view; we also have the view where we remove the cockpit altogether – the Gran Turismo view.”“Depending on the position the sound automatically changes to adjust; whether or not there’s a bodyshell around you, and the position of the viewpoint in relation to the position of the engine and exhaust. So the relative positions will automatically change the sound but whether that actual sound at that position you’re viewing it from is optimised just by the position is a different subject altogether.“You really end up having to make adjustments for every position that you’re providing. Players only play at a certain position that [they] like. So say you have the best sound in the cockpit position and when you switch to roof view, if you don’t do anything there of course you won’t hear transmission noises anymore, and it’s going to be mostly wind noise. The exhaust sound isn’t very audible from that position, either. But if you leave it as is and have the players who play from the roof view only hear wind noise most of the time, that doesn’t quite work. So we change the balance a little bit.“We have the audio that’s produced from the physical position of the player – and the sound that’s created from that – but then we have added a bit of a human touch to it too, to adjust each one.”“And it’s a lot of work,” grins Yamauchi, nodding.The current generation offers plenty of headroom when it comes to really drilling down on improving the sound quality, according to the GT boss.“The things you can do for sound are limitless,” says Yamauchi. “I mean, there’s no end to the amount of work that it can take. And there are still more things that we want to make better, but having made a number of different discoveries in doing our development – and having been able to implement that now – is actually very satisfying.”“In terms of graphics, even with the PS4 and PS4 Pro generation, we could always use more power. But in terms of audio, there is actually a higher degree of freedom with what we can do now. In terms of just audio I think the environment that’s available to us now is very rich, relatively speaking, compared to graphics.”

This is not real life.

“ This level of data will probably carry us for the next 10 years or so, I think, because the level of precision of these models is unmatched anywhere in the world right now.

GT Sport was handsome enough a year ago but Polyphony has since hit new heights. Yamauchi touches on all the buzzwords: HDR, wide colour, you name it. The Polyphony team has spent about four years providing support for the bleeding edge of display technology.All that really matters is that it looks good. Good on track, and absurdly good elsewhere (like the game’s eerily realistic photo mode – Scapes). I don’t know what dark sorcery powers Scapes but I remain genuinely amazed at just how convincing the end results are. Photorealistic is an overused word but it very much applies here. Even if you’re not interested in photography, the Scapes tech powers a fair chunk of GT Sport’s presentation anyway; whenever you head to the showroom (or Brand Central, as Polyphony has dubbed it) cars you’re considering buying will be shown slowly cruising through some of the game’s 1000+ Scapes locations (and you can even change the colour in real time).Those car models are really something too.“This level of data will probably carry us for the next 10 years or so, I think, because the level of precision of these models is unmatched anywhere in the world right now. The only models that are higher in quality to what we have here would be the CAD models coming straight from the manufacturers, which cannot be rendered in real-time, obviously.“For models that can be rendered in real-time, this really is the best data that you’ll find anywhere in the world.”One of the best pieces of news following the GT Sport announcement was that the cars can be decked out with custom liveries, and Yamauchi demonstrates the system in his office. It’s far, far more in-depth than I’d actually expected. It’s a fully-featured editor – you can choose from pre-made decals and shapes, or you can make and share your own, from scratch. GT fans who’ve been lusting for a livery editor capable of keeping up with the one available in the Forza Motorsport series for many years (and, more recently, the wrap editor in Need for Speed) are about to have their patience rewarded.“Just this section is complex enough to be a whole app of its own,” declares Yamauchi. “Same thing with the Scapes feature; it’s almost like a future Photoshop.”

Loading

“ We’ve been working on this steering wheel... for about three years now.

More important than the sound, graphics, or indeed any of these complementary modes, however, is the feel. Those who’ve been playing the closed beta can likely attest to the improved driving dynamics. The road cars feel particularly good, and full of character. The track cars are a bit staid by comparison, but they’re stiff and grippy and quite easy to push hard in. Yamauchi echoes the sentiment Slightly Mad Studios stressed during its big reveal of Project CARS 2 earlier this year: driving fast isn’t supposed to be unforgivingly hard, because race cars are built to drive fast.It’s worth noting that Polyphony HQ is unsurprisingly equipped with Thrustmaster’s upcoming T-GT wheel, a new wheel the peripheral maker and Polyphony have been working on for some time. As a result, my impressions today are based on playing it under the best (and most expensive) possible circumstances.“We’ve been working on this steering wheel, on the development of it, for about three years now,” says Yamauchi. “One of the main points of focus when we did the development for this is the precision of the torque.”“The other point of focus of this controller is that there’s a transducer device mounted on the back here. And this transducer device, what it does is, it’s able to reproduce a frequency range that’s somewhere between vibration and sound. In terms of the frequency it’s below 80htz or so. And by doing that you’re able to feel the condition of the front tyres or the road surface under the car through the steering wheel.”Not only is the new wheel able to deliver more refined force feedback effects and improved stall force – it’s able to deliver more effects simultaneously than previous wheels. The short story is it makes GT Sport feel terrific, but it’s going to be pant-soilingly expensive. We’re looking at USD$800 and ￡700 in the UK. The Australian price hasn’t been confirmed yet. You’ll know when it does (just listen for the screams of wallets all across the country as they throw themselves in front of traffic in despair).

“ Gran Turismo is still very much like a family business in the way that it’s developed.

Loading

Besides Everybody’s Golf, Gran Turismo is the only other first-party Sony series born on PlayStation 1 that’s still in active development today. After making Gran Turismo games for well over two decades Yamauchi still has a soft spot for the old times, where a dozen-or-so people could produce a game that would go on to sell around 10 million copies worldwide.“Those days were really fun,” he says regarding the lead-up to the release of the genre-defining original Gran Turismo. “In those days, if you were really motivated, in a single day you could have huge advancements in what you were doing.”“In those days, in a single night the level of perfection in your game could go up 20 or 30 per cent. Nowadays that’s not quite possible anymore.”“We now have around 200 people in Polyphony, but it’s still sort of run like a family,” he says. “Gran Turismo is still very much like a family business in the way that it’s developed.”“In a modern game development environment, all the staff are sort of part of a system, and they’re all replaceable. If somebody drops out along the production plan they can be replaced with somebody else and that wouldn’t be a problem. But for Gran Turismo, each member of the 200 staff that we have has work that only they’re able to do, so they’re basically irreplaceable.”Polyphony Digital has shifted locations since the last time I visited, almost 10 years ago. Since the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake the team is now split across two locations, with an office in Tokyo and an office further south, in Fukuoka. What’s more interesting, though, is the make-up of the studio these days.“Of course the original members that were involved in the development of the first Gran Turismo are still with us,” says Yamauchi. “But, at the same time, we have about half the staff that are people who had been playing Gran Turismo as kids. People who are fans, who are now joined with us in the company.”“And those guys? They actually, in one respect, know more about Gran Turismo than myself. They are just fanatical fans of Gran Turismo. And I want to keep doing new things… but then the staff who are fans of Gran Turismo give me advice: ‘Don’t stray too far ahead; we need to maintain certain things that are very Gran Turismo.’ So we have checks and balances within Polyphony Digital.”

Loading

“ I want it to be something that, by playing it every day, enriches your life in some way.

It’s almost funny that, in 2017, Polyphony Digital is still seeking to complement its latest game with a big slab of glossy paper. In many ways, GT Sport has sought more inspiration from other racing games than any other GT game to date but, in other ways, it’s still very much marching to the beat of its own drum.GT Sport probably didn’t need a several-hundred page book produced alongside it, but it’s getting one anyway. But with the GT series facing more competition today than it ever has, maybe it’s okay that it’s held onto a few of its more peculiar eccentricities.But while parts of GT are still very much stuck in its elevator jazz ways, GT Sport’s lower-cost iRacing-on-console experiment is, at the very least, something new for Polyphony. It’s not Gran Turismo 6.5.I ask Yamauchi whether the end goal is to bring esports racers to Gran Turismo or turn the very many existing GT fans into esports racing fans, or both?“I think the latter is true,” says Yamauchi. “And there’s one more aspect of that and it’s an important point; it’s the definition of sport itself.”“Sport in GT Sports has two meanings. One of those is, of course, what you would imagine when you first hear ‘esport’. When you have a big stadium full of people, tens of thousands of spectators, with millions in prizes for the winners. And that will probably happen for GT Sport as well.“I don’t want this to be something that only the best of the best can enjoy. I want it to be something that, by playing it every day, enriches your life in some way. And I think that’s a really important point.”

Luke is Games Editor at IGN's Sydney office and he likes to go fast. You can find him on Twitter