We get it, you hate deserts. Calling that region a wasteland is pretty ignorant considering it has gorgeous vistas, and I for one, think horse thief mile is pretty breathtaking!
Uh, wasteland is technically pretty accurate. The land is uncultivated and barren. Being a wasteland doesn't mean that you can't enjoy looking at it, but it does mean that it generally doesn't have any real features of note. Perhaps you could stop calling me ignorant and alleviate your own linguistic ignorance first instead of just getting mad.
However, I haven't said anything about whether I like or dislike deserts in general. I'm not even saying anything about your passion for them. The point I'm making is that your "gorgeous vistas" are basically limited to two, a hill in one direction and a flat expanse of
wastelandbarren land with scrub in all the others. OK, that's fine, but if it's one of a very limited number of tracks that you're spending upwards of two years to model for your game, do you really think that this is the best that they could do? Especially for a game with such a strong focus on visual quality to the expense of basically everything else?
This is a commercial game, which is supposed to be designed to appeal to a wide market (unless Polyphony is really going down the iRacing route of also being super niche and selling less than 100,000 copies). That means making sure that your content (what little of it there is) is as engaging as possible to a wide audience. I feel like if you want a track that's a good drive and also looks great then you can do a lot better than Willow. And you can probably do better in terms of relevance to the motorsport theme as well.
Now that's not a terrible looking place. It has a certain wide open charm to it, but at the same time it's hard to deny that there really isn't much going on there. The palette is limited, and the track surroundings are very limited both in general and in the sense of supporting a motorsports event with things like grandstands. Motorsports being the central pillar that GTS is built around, if you'll recall.
Now, to a certain extent you could just have palette swapped brown for green and gotten this. But that would be to ignore that there's significantly more going on trackside and nearby, that the track goes through both open
wastelandmown lawns and forest, and that it's clearly set up to host major motorsports events. It's got grandstands and barriers and runoff and catch fences and sand traps. In terms of supporting the concept of GTS as a motorsports simulator, Watkins Glen is head and shoulders above Willow.
Do you start to see now that it's not so much about whether your piece of land is green or brown or sandy, it's about what's going on around it in a motorsport or racing sense? Gran Turismo Sport is a racing game, one that is heavily focused on motorsports and competition. Why have a track that is in the middle of a barren nowhere instead of one of the multitude of fully kitted out tracks available? I mean, I can't even find Willow on the list of FIA licensed circuits, despite Polyphony and Sony marketing the FIA collaboration as a big part of the game.
https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/tableaulicencescircuit.pdf
Hell, if you still want a track in the middle of a
wastelandbeautiful yet somewhat desolate area, perhaps look at something like the Circuit of the Americas?
