Need for Speed: Reboot

[Alex Franchini]

EA and Ghost Games have announced Need for Speed, a full reboot of the popular racing series. The title will be out in the fall on PC, PS4 and Xbox One.

According to the press release, Need for Speed will feature "deep customization, authentic urban car culture, a nocturnal open world, and an immersive narrative".

The teaser trailer shows a brief snippet of a Porsche along with what looks like a Mustang being chased on the streets of a city at night. It all looks a bit like NFS Underground, except maybe for the cops.

Click here to watch the teaser trailer!

I'll be the grumpy kid and say that I'm a tad skeptical about the emphasis on the immersive narrative. Quite frankly, I'm not a fan of storylines in driving games - the only successful example that springs to my mind is Driver: San Francisco, which was brilliantly bonkers.

Anyway, the footage shown is "representative for all platforms", which is quite impressive. Need for Speed is being developed by Ghost Games, who are already responsible for NFS Rivals.

Here's hoping for the return of cockpit cams and manual gears from the first handful of Need for Speed games - that's what reboots are for, after all, right?

 

[Radu Oros]

In game footage?

However will look at release, the game should be fine if they follow most of what was good in the previous nfs undeground series.

 

[Steve Adams]

Sad to see Porsche only available in crap games like this.

 

[Grega Zorc]

Urban car culture? As in (c)rap music, ho's and bling bling?

 

[Alex Franchini]

Urban car culture? As in (c)rap music, ho's and bling bling?

Yeah. But it's got an emotional storyline!

 

[betterstranger]

Hate cars looking like a christmas tree...

 

[Matt]

Run out of ideas on what to call the game maybe?

 

[H34d5h07]

Wait, what? A reboot of NFS?

I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

 

[theravenousbeast]

Clever title, prolly took them a 5 week brainstorming session to get to it

 

[Sun Levi]

Loved the underground series + Most wanted 2005, if this is anything like those then I'll be happy

 

[ENDR]

Wait, what? A reboot of NFS?
I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

"Rebooting" a game series, in which every game is pretty much a separate entity... Yeah, that makes sense. No, wait... No, not really
Nowadays every game that changes SOMETHING from the previous one is automatically called a "reboot". A couple of years ago it would've been called simply "a new game".

Hey, Square! Here's a revolutionary idea for you! Make a new Final Fantasy game with new story, characters and fighting mechanics and call it a REBOOT! Cause that will be COMPLETELY different from what you've been doing for the last 20 years...

 

[Stanislav Minakov]

I really don't know how to apply that. I love Underground 2, i'm still playing it sometimes. I love the storyline from NFSU2. But this "reboot"... I think, true "urban car culture" nowadays is not a blink-blink-lowride-pneuma-big-21-inch-wheels-cars. If we will see cars like cars from Matt Farah videos, like close to stock, but powerfull cars, or cars look like some kind of track-days, but tuned for everyday using, it will be awesome. Maybe, new NFS will be NFS The Run+free roaming map. All kinds of cars, from oldschool Nissan GT-R, for example, to modern cars like Audi A6, with a little influence of exlusive supercars, Porsche 918 Hybrid for example. And many more cars for everydays use and with a lot of parts to replace. Like Street Legal Racing, but more easy to come.

 

[Pamela USA]

I love NFS game. I played lot's of games but nothing came close to NFS and F1 games for me. My favorite games are NFS Rivals and F1. This upcoming game gonna be awesome and i can't wait to play.

 

[Deleted member 161052]

I'll call it Need for Speed: Next Generation as it's a release only for PS4, PC and XONE. Or Need for Speed 2015.

 

[seanvdburg]

I enjoyed the original Most wanted and Carbon a lot as a kid on the PS2, however from Pro Street onwards it just became worse, and EA seemed to start making games to make money, rather than making money to build great games.. Still i'll follow this with interest. They might be able to revive the series just as Codies did with Dirt Rally. And there's more than just simracing .

 

[Leonardo Chaves]

How exactly you reboot something that features titles completely disconnected from one another?

 

[Andy_J]

Is this a new game by WMD/SMS? Is it Pcars 2? Joke fellas...............a joke.

 

[xnorb]

I don't trust EA anymore. Too much damage done, not falling any hype (not that i'm a big NFS fan anyways, played the original ones back in the days, that's pretty much it).

Most likely running on Frostbite engine with it's known issues, 30FPS lock and so on...

But i'd be very pleased to be proven wrong.

 

[Pamela USA]

I don't trust EA anymore. Too much damage done, not falling any hype (not that i'm a big NFS fan anyways, played the original ones back in the days, that's pretty much it).

Most likely running on Frostbite engine with it's known issues, 30FPS lock and so on...

But i'd be very pleased to be proven wrong.

Nothing is wrong with Frostbite engine...Yes game run on Frostbite 3 engine same as Battlefront but that is one of best graphic engine today gamers have. Only Crytek have engine same as frostbite no one else comes close. I'm sure this game gonna look unbelievable great once its released but for game play we need to wait and then judge game play.

 

[xnorb]

Every modern engine (CryEngine, Unreal Engine, Unity...) is capable of producing those graphics.
Frostbite is nothing special in any department, yes, it's competent, but nothing of great.
Don't mess up art style / limited resources with the abilities of an engine.

Driving physics (or physics in general) aren't particularely the strength of Frostbite.