By Just about every MMO (massively multiplayer online) game - think World of Warcraft and Elder Scrolls Online - offers a range of classes with different playstyles to choose from. Ubisoft's upcoming online-only driving game The Crew - which is being pitched as a similarly connected game - is no different.
Classes, or as they're known in the game, Specs, essentially break up the various racing disciplines that are available in the world, one that offers an impressive - albeit compressed - open-world rendition of the United States.
The 'Street' Spec has you race against a clock in packed urban environments, while the 'Perf' type takes you out of the city and into long, high-speed countryside stretches of road, where as much as nudging a barrier will see you crash out dramatically.
'Dirt' and 'Road', meanwhile, bring you off the tarmac, placing players in swamp-side tracks and mountain-flanked canyons. Then there's the 'Circuit' Spec, which places you in real-world tracks such as Laguna Seca, tightening up the handling and taking the speed up a few notches.
Having racing disciplines in a racing game is nothing new, but allowing players to easily choose between different car types and corresponding activities makes exploring the vast world that much easier, especially when it comes to the great outdoors.
While visually we wouldn't say The Crew particularly shines on next-gen hardware, impressive draw distances give you a sense that every course you're racing is part of a larger world.
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It's also in the small-scale details, with deer and bears scattering into nearby bushes as you skid round corners and hard hat workers cutting down trees.
A tour of different events took us across the span of the United States, from snowy valleys to racing up a mountain path carved through massive redwood trees. Each location has its own distinct atmosphere and sense of place - and thanks to the Specs available, a pace to match.
Handling in The Crew has been a topic of discussion in hands-on reports and the recent PC beta, and we'd add that it takes some getting used to. Perhaps best described as being a bit stubborn, each car has a weight that makes you feel you need to turn sooner than you'd think, and has a degree of oversteer in some disciplines.
But ultimately it feels different and fits each of the various disciplines, and while the first few corners require some adjustment if you're hopping from event-to-event - we regularly saw ourselves crashing early and, amusingly, flipping into the air thanks to floaty physics - by the end of it, you become accustomed and can tackle corners with ease.
Thankfully, The Crew has some welcome ways to counteract these quirks. Holding a button will see you quickly and easily reset back on track (and already in motion), which is perfect for those moments when you just overshoot a turn.
And while pesky solid structures such as people's homes and hundred-year-old trees are rooted firmly in the ground, it's pretty forgiving when it comes to mowing through fences and poles on the road's edge, allowing you to take advantage of its open-world nature and undercut corners whenever you like.
In fact, across the board The Crew feels very user friendly when it comes to accessing its features. Fast-travel works with ease, taking you to a dramatically different location surprisingly quickly thanks to speedy loading, and since most cars support all the various Specs, swapping between disciplines at any time was a breeze.
Meanwhile, once you've assembled a crew of four players in a party, the leader can take the pack to a new mission with only three button presses, hopefully making the multiplayer side of things pretty speedy.
The entirety of the United States will be open to explore as soon as you're done with the opening 10-minute tutorial, allowing players to roam the world - perhaps the game's selling point - from pretty much the start, which is a welcome move.
Creative director Julian Gerighty claims that The Crew will feature the best story ever created in a racing game - and while he might be right (simply down to the lack of competition), we glazed over at the rather forgettable cast of streetwise competitors and stunt racers.
Some of the best content we played from our hands-on session stemmed from the campaign - it's structured to take you around the most unique parts of the country. However, it also has its share of tedious objectives, including the classic ramming a fleeing vehicle until it explodes - not to mention an imposing 20-25 hour completion time.
For those that want to side-step the story, even for a moment, it'll be interesting to see how well The Crew's vast and impressive world is populated with other content. It will apparently be readily populated with events, with more unlocking based on your level.
Between finding landmarks and collectables, participating in quick-fire slalom skill challenges between cities, unlocking rare loot drops to upgrade your cars once you hit the level cap through to coast-to-coast trips, and faction missions that can take up to four hours to complete, on paper it sounds like it could deliver. It's just a question of how meaty and meaningful it will all be, and how effectively it can gel its world and its content together - like all the best MMOs can.
The Crew will be available on PS4, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC from November 14 in Europe and November 11 in North America.
