Gamescom 2015: Everything you need to know about the need for speed reboot

Even though Need for Speed has been around for over 20 years, it’s hard to really say what the series is about. Some entries differ so much it’s hard to latch onto common elements – sometimes street racing has been at the fore, other times there’s been an emphasis on storytelling, evading the cops or even catching criminals. It’s been a lot of different things, and that's the motivation behind this year's installment.



The lack of a subtitle is actually a statement: Need for Speed is a resetting of the clock, an opportunity to look at what has worked in the past and say these are the foundations going forward. So what lies at the base of the new game?

1. Story-Driven Experience

Most racing games put story to one side, or it’s the flimsiest of pretences for why you’re competing in race after race. Need for Speed has flirted with story more frequently than its peers – 2011’s The Run really tried to push the idea of a narrative-driven racer – and the new Need for Speed wants this to be a cornerstone of the franchise. The set-up is you’re a young racer entering the nighttime world of illicit street racing. It's simple but rich in possibilities.



There are supporting characters, who communicate with you face-to-face and via social media pop-ups when you’re racing around the city. But the most striking aspect is the execution: Need for Speed is using live-action footage to tell its story. It’s a bold choice, and the decision was taken in light of a technological innovation made by the developer which allows game assets to be composited in real-time with live-action footage. So if you mod your car – add an outlandish body kit or respray it – the moment you enter the direction and a cut-scene ensues, your car suddenly becomes a seamless part of that real-world environment, with the actors performing alongside it.

The technology is great – cars are one of those assets which can entirely bypass the uncanny valley problem and can approach levels of true photorealism, and Need for Speed’s are among the closest I’ve seen, with the car looking a part of the scene. The decision to use live-action just because this technology exists is harder to judge without playing more of the game. Taken out of context, and without knowing how much live-action there is in the game, I'm unsure of how integral these supporting characters really are and how attached I'll become to them. It's a neat piece of tech, but I hope it's being used for greater reasons.

2. Authentic Piece of Car Culture

Need for Speed really wants to flaunt its credibility as a racer going forward. It’s leaning heavily into its relationship with Speed Hunters, a car culture blog incidentally owned by EA, to represent current trends and feel like a contemporary, credible racing experience. At Gamescom, it also revealed that five of the world’s biggest racing icons will form a major part of the narrative. The icons – Magnus Walker, Ken Block, Nakai, Risky Devil (a drift crew), and Morohoshi – are individually associated with a different tenet of gameplay: speed, style, build, crew, and outlaw, respectively.



Each one represents a different type of experience the player can have. You can choose to favour one above the others or invest time equally across disciplines. I'm still not sure how different these challenges will really be, but I'm definitely interested in the idea of character classes being incorporated into an open-world racer.

3. Photorealistic Visuals

Need for Speed wants to set the benchmark in a genre where the standard is always being raised. Frostbite is allowing EA Ghost to do some truly innovative stuff when it comes to blending in-game assets and live-action, but it's being used to great effect in the game where it really matters. I only played Need for Speed for a short amount of time during Gamescom but I was definitely impressed by its cars and the small amount of the map I was able to explore.

4. Open World

Recent entries have embraced the open-world setting, and through innovations like Autolog, cities were transformed into automotive playgrounds. Those elements have been retained in Need for Speed, with Ventura Bay forming the backdrop this time around. Events take place across a single-night, but it’s unclear of just how varied the city will be at this stage.



We've seen some footage of winding hills high up above the city, but when I played I was limited to a stretch of rather unremarkable city, where back alleys and car parks blended together. There were very few jumps, for instance, in the area I explore, so I’m still unsure of how realistic or how wild the setting of Ventura Bay will really be.

5. Customisation

Some racing games take customisation very seriously indeed. Need for Speed has recently been less interested in this type of experience. In recent entries I've hardly dabbled in customisation beyond the most superficial tweaks. Need for Speed rectifies, but it’s there only if you want to get involved. Almost every part of the car can be tweaked cosmetically: body kits, window tinting, spoilers, rims, everything you’d expect. Current trends in customisation are represented, like colouring front and rear alloys differently – again, the ambition is to make this feel like a contemporary experience. But this customisation depth also extends to handling, where I counted 24 different variables to tweak from tire traction to spring stiffness, downforce and brake bias. There’s a lot of micro-adjusting if you want to get sucked in, but if you don’t, it can largely be ignored, with a general slider allowing you to make it play more like a sim or an arcade racer.