Strap in folks, it looks like the new Need For Speed game due to release this November is going to be a bit different.
According to VentureBeat’s Jeff Grubb, speaking on the Giant Bomb show Grubbsnax (thanks to VGC for the transcription): “It’s going to be photo-realistic, but it’s going to have on top of that, anime elements”.
Principally, this seems to mean that the game will adopt a new art style, with Grubb adding: “You know when you see a car commercial or something like that and the car’s driving around, but then cartoons flames and stuff are flying off it? That’s the kind of the aesthetic that they seem to be going for."
New Need for Speed to Go Anime
Naturally, Criterion has chosen a typically anime setting for this new game, with the infamously Japanese city of Chicago, Illinois serving as the impression for the fictional Lake Shore City.
According to Grubb: “Criterion wants to make it feel like a real city, even though it’s a fictionalised version of a city”.
Though not everything in the game will be new and different, with several features from previous Need For Speed games making a triumphant return.
“Autolog is back for multiplayer, you can customise all the pieces of your car, that’s back,” said Grubb.
Autolog is a social network first introduced in 2010’s Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, another Criterion game, designed to facilitate competitive play and rankings both online and offline.
It last appeared in 2020’s remastered version of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, but before that game hadn’t been featured in a Need For Speed game since 2012’s Need for Speed: Most Wanted.
The Need For Speed franchise has been moving back and forth between two studios, Criterion and Ghost Games, for the majority of the past decade, with Criterion most recently being handed back control in February 2020 to allow for a restructuring at Ghost.
The new Need For Speed game currently looks set to hit PC as well as PS5 and Xbox One consoles in November, with rumours suggesting no PS4 and Xbox One versions will be released.
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