“I remember I went to a local video game store or computer store and me and my friends saw it on the 3DO and we were like 'What is this?' and we all jumped on it and you feel terrible, ” said current “Need for Speed” producer Patrick Honorati. “Being able to drive it and be chased by the police, there wasn't really an experience like that at the time.”
Since the release of Need for Speed or Road & Track in 1994, the racing genre has evolved to a point that no one could really predict. At that time. Especially me, as I write this, considering I won’t be born for another five years or so.
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But “Need for Speed” has endured, and next month it celebrates the milestone of its 30th birthday. Those 30 years have changed and evolved in different ways, some of which are inevitably more popular with players than others, something that wasn't lost on current and former NFS developers who spoke at a recent 30th anniversary roundtable attended by iGamesNews mood.
“The trajectory has actually been bumpy in some cases,” Honorati admits, “but what happened, I think more than anything, is that if you think about the initial inception of Need for Speed, it's really It’s easy to understand, really simple.”
He went on to say that in his estimation, Need for Speed ”really tries to stay true to the formula established by the original.” “It's still accessible today, and a lot of racing games aren't that accessible, so people still have the option to jump into a Need for Speed game.” Another important factor in the developers' eyes is staying relevant to the changing trends in car culture, Honnoraty said :”This is [vehicle artists like] Brin [Alban] and frankie [Yip]My job has always been to look at what's going on and what's coming and try to incorporate it back into the game.
“I would say in [Need For Speed’s] “Looking at its trajectory, it was probably at its worst when those things were actually removed,” he said, adding, “When customization wasn't even in the priorities that we set, it was Removed from the priorities we set. The game, I think when we get into situations like this, the game suffers. “
But here's the thing, the series has grown and changed over time – from the earliest joyride games to the street racing romp of Dungeon and Most Wanted in the '90s, and then to the street racing romp of Dungeon and Most Wanted in the 1990s. Try something different with games like Prostreet, The Run, and The Shifts. Entering the latest era, development has moved from Criterion to Ghost Games and back again – and Criterion has become many things in the eyes of many players. So what will happen in November 2024?
“I think the biggest challenge we face today is really the age of the franchise and its past,” Honorati said. “It touches on a lot of different things and attracts a lot of different people and we've even seen arguments between players. [as to] This is the best game and why it is the best game.
“I'll give you an example. When we did Need for Speed Revengeance at EA Play and there were people in the booth, people would jump up [in] They will play highway robbery game. They'll come out of the booth and I'll be like “How was that?” and they'll be like “Oh my god, this reminds me of Most Wanted, that's awesome,” and then [other] People would come up and say “Oh my gosh, this reminds me of Dungeon, it's so cool.” I was like 'How's that? What? They are completely different!
“So, I think it's just the feeling that people take with them when they play these games. Some of them skip some and then come back for others. I think that's the hardest thing today, honestly coordinating the best You have already seen what “Speed Car” means to players – when we move in one direction [and] It wasn't very effective, it wasn't attractive to certain types of players, and we went in another direction. This is a real problem that we must solve day in and day out. John [Stanley, Criterion senior creative director] I’ve been working on it,” Honorati concluded jokingly: “We think we’re close to cracking it. “
“This means a lot to a lot of different people, and everyone has a different idea of what makes a great Need for Speed,” added Vehicle Art Director Bryn Alban. “So it's very difficult to try to appease everyone all the time, even down to the specific details of how we customize the car. It's an extremely controversial topic for our players and it's almost impossible for us to be 100 percent right all the time. ”
While listening to the voices and passionate views and opinions of fans is obviously important to the series' developers, long-time NFS developer Justin Wiebe (currently the studio design director at Battlefield studio Ripple Effect) says it's not just about is a case of trying blindly to make something that will please every potential player. Especially for a series that for a while was released annually or close to it.
“I think one of the biggest learnings and challenges for me is that if you try to make something for everyone, what you end up doing is watering it down and making something for no one,” he said. You really have to be ruthless with your vision and say “We're going to take this component that's part of what people love about Need for Speed and we're going to take it to the next level.”
“Then [it’s about] What that means, we're looking for, and we know other people are going to miss X, Y, and Z because that's what Need for Speed means to them. So, are we okay with that? How should we massage? How do we manage this particular Need for Speed themed information? I'm going to go over my experience with Prostreet, and as we said, this is talking about adventure – let's take Need for Speed off the streets, the open world, let's get it recognized on the circuits of professional sports events , and said “This is your Need for Speed”.
“People will ask 'What about the story, what about the police, how about this?' It's like 'Yeah, we know these don't exist, but we made a decision, we want to go big, we want to bring car culture to the That's the vision for Need for Speed this year. The hardest thing is making those decisions that we know will polarize players, but we believe are the best for that particular product at that moment.”
Of course, this is something that the latest entries in the series – and the ones that will inevitably follow them as games accelerate into the next 30 years – continue to grapple with the ability to continually evolve the Need for Speed games.
“Even in my more recent era,” Honorati said, “we did a version of Hot Pursuit [with] Rivals, and then we changed, we kind of went back to reimagining what Underworld is today, brought back customization, and we even started focusing on a more action-oriented game [with Payback].
“Then [we] Putting some of those things together to create something like “Heat” and bringing in the idea of risk from “Heat” [vs] And double reward Unbound for creating a calendar system. So it's always reinventing, always trying to pick out ideas that make what you do with these vehicles interesting. There are things that are a little bit beyond racing, but racing is always at the heart of them.
“I think that's what we do, for better or worse, because of these things [being] Risk, they don't always work and they don't always resonate with players, but you can guarantee we're always going to do something different. “
