Frostbite confirmed. There is that static rain drop effect from the last game already. So much for it being a "reboot" then :)
I wonder in this game when it looks like the driest day ever will the raindrops still sit on the car too?
They really need to make a game engine from the ground up suited to the genre to compete with the other racers out there ESPECIALLY with the game on new gen only this time.

Frostbite is probably fine for a Need for Speed game, at this point I think engineering talent and assets matter more than what engine you use.

how about making need for speed hot pursuit 3?? That would be cool

Nothing to see here.

If it's not Underground it's not NFS. I don't need no HotPursuit, gimme a new Underground already.

The return of nitrous, underground racing and car body customizations would be really great. I miss the need for speed underground series.

lol

It definitely looks like a new underground

I believe this is the spiritual sucessor of the Underground series.

Frankly, I would prefer more if it wasn't open world, like U1, which I completely finished dozens of times.

I never liked a NFS open world game like U2, which bored me to death - though I finished it once. Most Wanted on the other hand, I started it and reached 30-40% about 3 times, but never finished it.

I really want that extremely tight and focused aspect of U1 back, streamlined customization with no hassle and going from race to race without any open world roaming BS.

Still, I will keep an eye on this game, maybe it will be a great Need for Speed in its own right.

Yup, i'd say chances are indeed pretty good that it's exactly that. Liked both of them Undergrounds, U2 even a bit more than the 1st because tracks in U1 got a bit too repetitive the further you progressed in the game. And everything that came after Underground... don't get me started. Ok, NFS Hot Pursuit was a pretty solid entry too, but the rest... ? Meh.

If it was, I'm sure the biggest thing they would have discussed with the reveal and on the EG interview post would be the fact that there is heavy boy racer modding in it. They didn't, so it more than likely won't have much.
Also to appeal to the boy racer/market of the early noughties games, they would need to put cars in it like Toyota Starlets or Mitsubishi Mirages lol. None these Zondas or anything like that :)
I know for a fact this is why the games were massive with every teenage male in Ireland back then.

Personally outside of the pretty modding the Underground games were atrocious, absolutely god awful physics and handling and watching people who were massive fans of it failing at every corner was even funnier.

I really enjoyed the first NFS: Underground game. Don't really remember much about it now though. It's pretty much the only NFS I've played.

can look like what ever it wants, but unless it has MAJOR customization i do not care or will ever pick it up and play it

They mentioned "deep customization, authentic urban car culture, a nocturnal open world, and an immersive narrative that pulls you through the game.", all elements present in both NFS:Underground games - except for open world for NFS:U1.

And you're wrong, the press release clearly states "deep customization" twice, so there will be a... how to put this... "deep customization" system in the game.

As for "heavy boy racer modding", first time I've seen this expression and the one site that returned a result on what it means, it's completely different from what the Underground games were.

I just read EuroGamer's interview with Ghost Games, and as much as they say they are going away from Underground, they sure as hell are going down in the same road that the Underground games went.

So believe what they say, but not what they do.
Or believe what they do, but not what they say.
Your choice.

I will wait till I see more before I can say for certain if it's just like what an Underground 3 would be like. Though, everything the press release states makes it sound like an Underground series spiritual successor.

And they can make an Underground style game with modern and old car models, they even said they are using "authentic urban car culture", which implies both types - new and old, not just modern cars.

Plus, if you check the site of SpeedHunters (link below), with whom they are working closely - as they themselves mentioned in EG's interview - you will see that they deal with all kinds of cars: Modern, Old, Retro (Vintage), Racing, and etc. (Just click under "MORE..." to see a comprehensive list).

Source: http://www.speedhunters.com/

So to assume they would need to put cars like the Toyota Starlet or the Mitsubishi Mirage, and not the Pagani Zonda is foolish, at best. As is to assume that only those cars would appeal to the car modding community, which the SpeedHunters site can more than attest to the contrary.

The Underground games are Arcade style racing games, not Simulation or Arcade-Sim type of racing games, so they didn't need to have the most realistic physics system like a Gran Turismo or Forza Motorsport needs.

Still, they did have a very good physics system for Arcade style racing games at the time - no idea how that aged though. And their handling was superb, if you had skill, you won with style and grace, if not, stayed eating dust, while hitting walls, cars and etc.

Personally, I had no problem taking those curves, without hitting the walls on the side of the road, moving cars and other objects, while still winning all races at the highest difficulty setting. And I'm no great racing games fan/gamer, so maybe those people were casual or just plain sucked at the games.

Yup. I feel the same about all open world racers. A crafted and refined track will always be better then racing through a city randomly. Its why i didn't like burnout paradise and is largely the reason i think driveclub is the best racer so far.

For me....one of the most important part of the racing game are the sounds. Since I'm driving only from cockpit, I don't give a damn if the raindrops are static or not. I need badass sound and nice environment to race in. DriveClub is still winning in these aspects. Love that game.

Isn't every iteration of Need for speed a reboot? and comes out like 2 years after the last? maybe they should just try perfecting on formula with it and offer something decent.

i think that's kinda what they're going for. but for that to happen they need a core worth building on. each one is so different in terms of approach. prostreet point to point races, most wanteds open world, undergrounds mod culture and night racing, hot persuits cop chases. it sounds like they're taking the best parts of what they've done previously to create a foundation for the series to build on from this point on. and for that they need to start again.

It has to do with how bad the Need for Speed franchise got. In EuroGamer's interview with Ghost Games, they say:

"Wesley Yin-Poole: Why did you decide to do a reboot rather than another Underground or Most Wanted?

Marcus Nilsson: If you think about Need for Speed in the last couple of years it's been bouncing back and forth between studios and different creative teams. And it's seldom built upon what has been before.

So, you could say Need for Speed has lost its way... what the brand stood for. As we talked to our fans and the players, it emerged they wanted also what we wanted to build: to go back to what we call the roots of Need for Speed. They are the roots of what we think the experience needs to be. It's the Need for Speed experience that resonates the most with most people."

And:

"Marcus Nilsson: For many years we have not delivered on the love of cars, I think, or really gone deep into what are the right vehicles people want to have. If you look at Rivals, we had high-end cars - absolutely fantastic and cool high-end cars - but with that you leave some of the grassroot authentic car culture cars out. And this is an area we're looking into much more.

So the reason we go back and we call this a reboot is, imagine we went back into a room with a whiteboard and we said, 'okay, with all the Need for Speed games being a little bit all over the place during the last few years, what is the game we need to make going forward? And what do we want Need for Speed to stand for going forward?' This means we will get a creative direction starting with this game that we will probably follow for the next couple of years."

Source: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-05-21-the-n...

It at least gives me hope that they are doing something better than the last games, since they acknowledge that the franchise had lost its way. A lot of franchises suffer because studios refuse to acknowledge that - it's like "half of the solution is admitting you have a problem" mentality. Which they did.

Now we just need for Ubisoft and Activision to reach the same conclusion with Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty, respectively. Though, unlike Need for Speed games, those AC and CoD games still sell millions. So let's not hold our breaths.

But they have lost their ways as well. If you remember the first Call of Duty games, they were about different soldiers from different countries/teams around the world fighting for a common cause, that was their "call of duty". Not all this "America centric drama" we have today. I even miss those quotes from real soldiers during loading screens in the first games which were truly inspiring.

As for AC, there's no more Desmond and that team, no more modern time storyline (last was Black Flag), no more Ancient civilization plot development, and no more significant progress in the Assassins vs Templars milleniums old conflict.

It's just the Animus (setting, era and characters) experience now, which was never only what AC was about. I also miss those incredibly brilliant history info/lessons and puzzles we had in the first games. Those kind of details are what made me fall in love with the franchise in the first place, and now it's all gone.

i'm not sure that's necissarily true. i think it was more how inconsistent they got. one game would be knocking it out of the park (see most wanted/hot persuit/rivals) and then other games within the same franchise would be crap (carbon/prostreet) i mean, it's not like their last game was a flop critically or commercially, it's just another random installment of what is a very random series. starting from scratch should be good for it.

Imagine the hay-day EA is going to have with the microtransactions. They'll be charging people for additional paint colors, neon colors, rims--the whole shebang.

What they need to do, is start with a simulation feel, and tweak it for a more arcade style flow. That way the racing can be fun at entry level, but has a nice learning curve to it.

PGR series perfected the sim/arcade mix, and im deeply sad that it will never return, or return in the same form ever again. We can thank forza for that.

I agree with Korn, Driveclub is the better racing out there: jaw-dropping details, incredible weather effects, sounds that put DICE to shame, driving model. NFS won't top it and probably should not. I like NFS as well, as an arcade high-budget spectacle with sci-fi elements but it's so out of Driveclub league.
Before bursting into dumb laughter you could, you know, check it out first.

Agree, my biggest gripe with NFS open world is its lifelessness. Driving in a dead 'city' is not convincing & fun at all. Where the heck did everyone go? Nobody knows. Also this annoying as duck 'locations' you are supposed to drive to for the most mundane tasks like setting up a race or upgrading a car. This is not fun, this is just irritating and a waste of time.

Agree 100% with this, it bored me to death to drive from one location, generally 5-10 minutes away from my position at the end of a previous race, to another location to start a new race, and then drive yet another 5-10 minutes in that race, rinse and repeat.
(And people say AC games are boring, guess they never played a NFS open world game.)

Also, if you wanted to change just 1 part, like upgrade your car's suspension for the next race, you needed to go to a place on the map, go through dozens of menus till you reached the part you wanted. After doing all that, do the above again to reach the next race. "Every single time" you wanted to upgrade your car.
Too much hassle.

I know there's the teleport option, but to me that's just adding more menu barriers to reach where you want to go. I really hope the new NFS has a streamlined customization system, without any clutter or hassle, but deep as they mentioned.

I love you guys! Open-world racers suck. I don't want to drive around looking for a race when I have 30 mins of free time to play.