The next Need for Speed will lean heavily towards an anime aesthetic when the screens go off a foreign product list are any hint.
On Wednesday, Discovered members of the Need for Speed subreddit the leaked listing for Need for Speed Unbound via Japanese retailer Neowing. The listing states that the new game will be released in December. Electronic Arts has an announcement next Thursday at 11 a.m. EDT when more is revealed about the next game.
The Neowing site contained five watermarked screenshots NFS unbound, which features a variety of tuned vehicles rendered realistically but with anime-style cel-shaded drivers and other NPCs in the frame. On a screen, a street racer throws hand-drawn star-shaped sparks and his tires leave a two-dimensional plume of smoke as he corners.
According to a machine-translated product description by Need for Speed UnboundThe game will feature music (and an in-game appearance) by rapper A$AP Rocky, with a soundtrack produced by Brodinski, a French composer and DJ.
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“Bringing graffiti to life in a whole new visual style, fusing the latest street art with the most realistic cars in Need for Speed history,” reads the description, which explains the unorthodox visual style.
“Go to meetings and show your style with many items, including limited edition gear, from the latest fashions in the world,” the listing adds. “Then add the finishing touches to the style of your car by remodeling it to match your iconic custom car with unique wraps and cut-out items, and take the lead in races and raise your winning pose from the competition away.”
Neowing’s site only lists PlayStation 5 Need for Speed Unbound, suggesting the game might just be a new-gen launch. Every main Need For Speed game dating back to the series’ inception in 1994 was also released on Windows PCs. Polygon reached out to an Electronic Arts representative on Tuesday for more details on the next Need for Speed, but the publisher declined to comment beyond mentioning the countdown to Thursday’s reveal.
The leaked screens confirm that the game was developed by Criterion Games (which owns Codemasters Cheshire, which EA acquired in 2021). Criterion’s latest Need for Speed was initially aimed for a 2021 launch, until EA commissioned Criterion to support EA DICE with last November Battlefield 2042.
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Still, EA made no announcement about the next Need for Speed title until Tuesday’s teaser tweet, other than telling investors that one would be coming by the end of 2022.
The Need for Speed franchise was sent back to Criterion Games after 2019 Need for Speed: Heat, the last of three titles developed by the now-defunct Ghost Games. None of the three generated the kind of critical or commercial reception that Criterion did Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (in 2010) or 2012 Need for Speed: Most Wanted delivered.
For the past 10 years, Criterion Games has been mostly known for supporting DICE on battlefield 5, battlefield 2042 and Star Wars Battlefront 2. His most recent racing titles were the 2018 remaster of the open-world classic burnout paradise, and a 2020 remaster of hot pursuit.
