What Should We Expect From DiRT 5?

So, it’s happened. After a period of speculation about what would be the next instalment in the DiRT series after the divided opinions on DiRT 4 and resounding success of DiRT Rally 2.0 – Codemasters have announced the arrival of DiRT 5, arriving October 2020.

According to Codemasters, DiRT 5 respects the heritage of the original series whilst commencing on a brand new chapter of the series – claiming to be bolder and braver than ever before.

Interestingly, Codemasters seem to be returning to similar formats of DiRT 2 & 3 with it’s fun and replayable race formats. There is also a heavy emphasis on DiRT 5 being more than just a rallying game with callbacks to its predecessors with what seems to be the return of Landrush, rallyX and traditional stage rallying.

And yes, there’s a full career mode.

You get to choose your path in this new instalment. With the help of Troy baker & Nolan north on the voice line front, it seems we’re in for a pretty wild ride with DiRT 5 – Not to mention a heavy influence from our friends over at Donut Media, also playing a huge part in the career mode.

Did we mention, split-screen returns?

Yes, you read that correctly. Split-screen is coming to DiRT 5 with up to four players in offline modes meaning that DiRT 5 is finally making it’s come back to the ultimate, fun pick up and play experience.

From what information we have, it also appears that we’ll be getting a global playground with DiRT 2, kicking off heavy nostalgia for DiRT 2’s fantastic career mode.

This can be backed up by Codemasters description being: “Travel the world to conquer over 70 routes from locations spanning the entire globe, that turn real landmarks into racetracks – from the frozen East River in New York, to the marble mines of Italy, to the Favelas of Brazil. Defy dynamic weather conditions, intimidating terrain and unpredictable elements in eight different race types, covering gravel, snow, mud, ice and more surfaces in between.”

So already we can confirm three new locations. However, I’m personally inclined to suggest we’ll see much more than that – especially as many of the announcement screenshots have ‘china’ & ‘Norway’ in their title.

Naturally, there is a worry that DiRT 5 may make a return to the more arcadey style of handling of the earlier iterations of the Franchise. But if DiRT 4 was anything to go by, perhaps we’ll get the option to switch and choose ourselves.

Yes, there’s a livery editor

Finally! Thank you Codemasters, we’ve only been asking since DiRT 3. At least we’ll soon be able to make our own custom liveries in DiRT 4. Whether this will be to the extent of other competitors such as Forza is yet to be revealed.

They’ve also answered a personal request of mine in giving us a photo editor so we can all take pictures of our favourite smashes and crashes.

DiRT 5 is also confirmed to launch on the next generation of consoles as well as PC – so we can certainly expect an increase in graphical fidelity as some were disappointed in the visuals of previous recent titles.