Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Interview

28 Jul 2010 at 13:52:31 by Elly Davis

Producer Hamish Young gives the low-down on the new racer from EA.

Can you tell us a little bit about this latest Need for Speed?

When  Criterion first got the opportunity to make a Need for Speed game we thought which part of the franchise do we really want to take on and we really loved the original 3DO version of the game with the really exotic fast cars and the beautiful location being chased by the cops and we thought what better concept to reboot from our angle.

It's Criterion’s take on Need for Speed, high speed, high action being chased by the cops but this time, for the first time, we also allow you to have a cop progression.  You can play as a cop and as a racer both online and offline.

One of the things I remember from the first Need for Speed game was Maclaren F1 in Australia. Can we expect to see some old school cars as well?

We've got some of the most amazing exotic cars in the world both from more recent games and slightly older ones like the F1.  Basically, the category was are they cool, are they fast, are they exotic desirable cars and we handpicked those cars for the game.

How do they handle? Presumably each car is going to be different, they are licensed vehicles. One of the problems is getting the handling right especially after the success of Need for Speed: Shift.  How's that been implemented?

We havevery much an arcade style handling rather than simulation as Need for Speed: Shift had. You know it would be pretty hard for players to run away from the cops while trying to change gears and wanted to focus on the action rather than just the driving of the car, so we have a really accessible driving model which kind of harks back to the original Need for Speed.  It's fast, easy to drive, all the cars do feel different but it's not a simulation racer, it's very much an arcade racer.

What have you done to make sure the cop cars can catch up to you and cut you off?

The thing is not only have we put exotics in the game but the manufacturers allowed us to make cop versions of all the cars.  At E3 we showed the Lambergini Remington in the cop livery and behind closed doors we showed the Bugatti Veyron as a cop car so the cops have as good a car as the racers so that keeps the parity there.

In terms of the cop AI, obviously you can play the game offline but you can also play online so you can play as a racer against real people playing as the cops and that brings a whole new dynamic to that system.  Obvioulsy we do have AI for offline as well and, having worked on the Burnout franchise for a long time, that style of aggressive driving you've seen before, the cops are going to be pretty aggressive in this game, they are going to try and run you off the road, there's no doubt about that.

What do Criterion have planned for DLC?

We are not announcing our DLC plans right now, we only just announced the game.  We're holding that back and will talk about it in due course but sure we will be supporting the game.

Will it be supported as well as previous games?

We're definitley going to try and please as many people as we can with this game, in terms of what we've done with Paradise, that was a great response that we had and we learnt a lot from that doing that and you will see that in the future.

What's your favourite thing about Hot Pursuit?

I'm quite excited about putting real cars in the game.  In Burnout, we didn't have licensed cars but we have some amazing licenced cars in this game. We got a Porsche exclusive licence.  When Porsche announced at the Geneva Convention earlier in the year that they were bringing out the Porsche 918 Spyder, the hyrbid supercar we managed to get in the game the week after.   It's an absolultely gorgeous car and goes so fast. So that's an exclusive for our game, you can't play that car anywhere else.  If you're a really big car fan we have some amazing stuff to drive.

So Hamish, give us something you haven't told anyone else yet?

Aston Martin 177, which is Aston Martin's take on the Bugatti Veyron.  So as a cop or a racer, Bugatti vs. Aston Martin it's going to be a pretty epic battle. It's Aston Martin's first hypercar basically.  You've got supercars and there kind of normal then you get hypercars and we're really stoked about having that car in the game.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit is due for release in November 2010.

Comment