PWNED visited Criterion Games at the E3 and talked about Need for Speed Most Wanted. In this 15 minute video you can see several interviews and some new gameplay scenes of the game:
Need for Speed Most Wanted left quite an impression at the E3 a few weeks ago and now gets honoured with a Game Critics Award - just like Criterion's NFS Hot Pursuit vom 2010.
The Game Critics Awards an independent group of 35 leading North American media outlets, who judge the games shown at the E3 each year.
Need for Speed Most Wanted won in the category Best Racing Game and could beat among other Forza Horizon and F1 2012. Most Wanted was also nominated in the category Best Online Multiplayer Game, but this award went to Halo 4.
In an Interview with GameInformer, Criterion's Vice President Alex Ward announced, that Criterion Games will take full control over the Need for Speed Franchise! EA's original plan to let different studios develop different NFS each year, he said: ""Maybe it's been that way in the past, but that's changed this year with what we're doing… Our stamp's going to be in everything you see in Need for Speed and Burnout going forward in the future. It's not going to be spread anymore across different companies. Different studios have had a crack at it - it's definitely a Criterion gig now."
The studio wouldn't clarify, whether Crition will develop every Need for Speed title, or just oversee the series, but Ward was clear that Criterion will have control over which Need for Speed titles will come out in the future. ""I'm personally involved in how the cars drive, how the game will play out, how connected they are, and what the features are."
As of now the NFS franchise covers different areas with Shift, Most Wanted, Underground and Hot Pursuit, but although there's no definite road map, Ward expressed interest in one all-encompassing NFS title. "I think it would be amazing in the future if there was one big game that had all of these in it. That would be amazing."
This means interesting times for the NFS series, maybe even depending on Most Wanted's success - but after what we heard from the E3, this should be a topseller like Hot Pursuit in 2010...
The Criterion Sound Crew was recently at the Bruntingthorpe Airfield in the North of England to record some sounds of a few choice cars for Need for Speed Most Wanted:
We strapped microphones to the exhaust pipes, engine bays and cooling ducts of some of the world's fastest cars to try and capture every decibel of authenticity.
Then we persuaded a couple of guys from the team to stand still while we ripped past them at 150mph+ in high-end sports cars. These guys risked life and limb to bring you the very best car sounds, and survived the day intact. We do NOT recommend you try this home!
We know Need for Speed fans love cars, but we wonder if you can guess which car was involved in this high-speed drive-by. If you scrutinize the video, there are some big clues.
The eagle-eyed among you will recognize the distinctive colors of this car's famous livery despite our best attempts to mask them.
EA presented Need for Speed Most Wanted at the E3 press conference! Developed by Criterion (NFS Hot Pursuit) the will feature an open world, thrilling pursuits and challenging rivals. With Autolog v2you can challenge your friends and collect Speed Points with every action in the game, defining your rank in the Most Wanted list.
Read here the official description:
Designed for a new, more connected generation of racing fans, Need for Speed Most Wanted offers players an expansive open world packed with exhilarating action where they can choose their own path to become the Most Wanted. Players will have the freedom to drive anywhere, discover hidden gameplay, takedown rivals, challenge friends or just hang out and toy with the cops. Everything they do counts towards the end goal of becoming #1 on their personal Most Wanted List. Need for Speed Most Wanted will give players the freedom to race their own way when the game ships October 30, 2012. A special limited edition pack featuring double speed points, custom liveries, pre-customized rollouts and two vehicles: the Maserati GranTurismo MC Stradale and Porsche 911 Carrera S will also ship on October 30, 2012.
“Criterion is shaking up the franchise with Need for Speed Most Wanted,” said Matt Webster, Executive Producer at Criterion Games. “This is Most Wanted for a new generation of players. We've brought everything we know about racing, chasing and exploration and smashed them together in a highly connected open world automotive experience. Whether driving solo or racing with friends in our amazing new multiplayer experience, Autolog fires up competition out of everything as players compete to be most wanted amongst their friends.”
The only rule in Need for Speed Most Wanted is to race without rules. There’s a start and a finish to every race – but how the player races, where and when they choose to compete, and the skills they choose to compete with – are all up to the player. It isn’t enough to be the Most Wanted amongst rivals and cops. Now players will fight for ultimate bragging rights amongst their friends thanks to Autolog. As the original inventors of the ground-breaking, friend-connecting Autolog technology, Criterion establishes once again a new standard in social competition by recommending gameplay challenges across a players’ social network within both single player and multiplayer game play. In Need for Speed Most Wanted, everything players do will earn Speed Points that will take them up the Most Wanted list – from competing for best race times and battling cops in pursuits for the highest scores, to catching the most air off a huge ramp and more. Autolog 2 keeps intense competition at the heart of the experience – if there’s something to do, there’s someone to beat. And for the first time, Autolog recommendations extend to enhance the multiplayer experience within Need for Speed Most Wanted. With no lobbies or wait times, gamers will seamlessly enter an online world and immediately receive a rapid-fire delivery of Speed and Skill Tests. Autolog 2 will make recommendations to players to help finesse their racing prowess, further fuelling endless competition and hours of entertainment.
Need for Speed Most Wanted will be released on October 30th in North America and on November 1st in Europe onXbox 360, Playstation 3, PS Vita, PC, iOS and Android.
For more information you can head over to the official Need for Speed website, which just had its relaunch:
Need for Speed's Facebook page just brought some exiciting news for us: Need for Speed Most Wanted is officially announced! Here is the first screenshot of Criterion Games' take on one of the most popular titles of the Need for Speed franchise:
More information will be released during Electronic Arts' Press Conference at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles on June 4th.
The UK Retailer GAME slipped some confidential news on Twitter, about a new Need for Speed game in 2012:
"EA presentation was great, had mentions of a new Medal of Honour and Need for Speed 13! EA have an exciting year ahead"
The tweet isn't online anymore, but since GAME tweeted about a presentation at EA, the story sounds real.
Last year EA Black Box finshed the latest NFS with Need for Speed The Run, which means we might can expect Criterion Games wokring on a new NFS title. We will see...
Criterion Games working on the next Need for Speed?
Friday, 18.11.2011
Need for Speed The Run was just released and while EA Black Box was still working on the game, it seems like Criterion Games might be developing the next Need for Speed title.
Gamerzines found a suspicious job advertisement, where Criterion is looking for a "temporary Cinematic Artist". Apparently the job offer is described as working on the "world’s number one, multi award winning, arcade racing franchise"...sounds quite like Need for Speed.
We will see, how much can be interpreted in this job listing, but as it seems it might not be so far fetched, that Criterion Games is developing a successor of last year's successful Need for Speed Hot Pursuit.
Gameszines did an interesting interview with Steve Anthony and Jason DeLong, both producers of Need for Speed: The Run. They talk about the Out-Of-Car sequences, Quick-Time-Events (QTE) and also go into detail regarding the history of EA Black Box, their passion and the decision to use the Frostbite 2 engine.
Excerpt: GZ: Black Box’s last Need For Speed game, NFS: Undercover, didn’t perform well with critics. What have you done since to ensure this year’s game doesn’t suffer the same fate?
SA: No one’s proud of Undercover, it was not a good game. It sold well, so at the same time I’ll say you don’t sell 13m units for nothing. But you know, this year the team is driven to quality. I think our challenge is an internal challenge. We’ve got Undercover obviously which we want to say isn’t the type of game we make, and we have a talented team. They don’t ship games less than 90; we’re shooting for a 90-plus game. We don’t really care whether or not the critics give it to us because of the baggage at Black Box. If we think we’ve delivered a 90 that’s all that matters. Consumers will tell us one way or the other. We want to win racing game of the show, that’s what we’re out for. We want to win game of the show. I mean whether that will happen I don’t know, but that’s what we’re going to push for. Since we started working on the concept for E3 in January that’s been our drive. That software is going to blow you away and I know the team can deliver the rest of the game at that quality bar too.
JD: You can’t question the passion that the team has to make a great game. When a game comes out and it’s poorly rated it kills everybody. The company had been put into a situation where we needed to put a Need For Speed game out every year, and when you look at the resources which the company had to do that Black Box was the studio which was put towards it. I think that the biggest thing we’ve learned as a company really is to allow time for quality. It’s one of the things that John Riccitiello said when he came on board, that we need to worry about quality. EA had so many titles, our SKU was over 70 in any given year, so our average Metacritic was probably okay, but we had some titles that didn’t do very well. So it was important to him that we do fewer titles and each one of those titles has to be super high quality. The way that our structure had been set up wasn’t conducive to that. By splitting off development and saying the next one is on Criterion’s shoulders, we had the time to invest in the technology and concept. I mean quality comes from iteration, being able to try something, throw it out and try something better. Having had the time to do that was a luxury for this team; we haven’t had that in the past. Now we’ve had two and a half years to focus on making this the biggest and best quality experience it can be. We’re not going to be happy if this comes out and is anything less than a 90.
[...]
GZ: How scalable has Frostbite 2 been on console?
JD: Frostbite 2 is scalable for consoles, no question. The decision that we made to go there was a business decision. The more that we streamline the technology that we use as a company the more we can help each other out. We don’t need to rewrite code year after year because we’re using a different engine, or (re-use assets), so the fact that we can streamline production allows us to iterate more quickly. And if we have a problem with something there’s a knowledge base within the company to help us solve our problems. We did a full investigation, we knew we had the luxury of time and we knew we were going to be able to reinvest in our technology however we wanted to do it. We looked at external and internal, what we’d done in the past, do we take a traditional Need For Speed engine, do we take Criterion’s engine, do we take Frostbite? And there was a huge audit of that done. But in the end, Frostbite provided us with a lot of the tools that we needed and wanted to tell the type of story and type of game that we wanted to do, from the destruction and the audio. The ability to iterate so much more quickly to provide an experience that is epic in scale, you know, we can’t do a story about a cross-country race and then have five tracks; it has to be huge. That tool allows us to do that.
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A new Insider Walkthrough video from Criterion shows Need for Speed Most Wanted and racing scenes in Fairhaven City:
In an Interview with GameInformer, Criterion's Vice President Alex Ward announced, that Criterion Games will take full control over the Need for Speed Franchise! EA's original plan to let different studios develop different NFS each year, he said: ""Maybe it's been that way in the past, but that's changed this year with what we're doing… Our stamp's going to be in everything you see in Need for Speed and Burnout going forward in the future. It's not going to be spread anymore across different companies. Different studios have had a crack at it - it's definitely a Criterion gig now."
Gameszines did an interesting interview with Steve Anthony and Jason DeLong, both producers of Need for Speed: The Run. They talk about the Out-Of-Car sequences, Quick-Time-Events (QTE) and also go into detail regarding the history of EA Black Box, their passion and the decision to use the Frostbite 2 engine.