7 Interesting Things We Know About Need For Speed

Need For Speed’s release is fast approaching, with the 5 November release just a couple of months away. EA has been drip feeding information, making it quite difficult to keep track of exactly what’s been announced. We’ve decided to take a look back and collate everything we know so far, including location, cars, game modes, and more:

EA says that the new Need For Speed is supposed to encompass the whole car scene, and one of the ways it achieves this is by having a long and varied selection of cars. The list above gives a good outline of what’s been officially revealed so far, but since that tweet we’ve spotted more unconfirmed rides such as the C6 Chevrolet Corvette and Dodge Challenger.

From what we’ve seen so far, there’ll be modern and classic variants of cars from the JDM, supercar, muscle and Euro scenes.

James Mouat, lead designer of Need For Speed, has revealed that you’ll be able to have a maximum of five cars in your garage at any one time. That means you can’t go car collecting like you might in Gran Turismo or Forza, but it will likely mean you care more about the cars you do own. The idea is probably that you build a different car for each of the five ways to play (more on this below), but you could stick to one or two cars if you so please.

3. Cruising the streets of Ventura Bay (it's like LA)

Need For Speed is based in a sort of recreation of Los Angeles, which is called Ventura Bay in the game. While it looks a lot like LA - with some areas LA residents will recognise - it’s not a faithful recreation. The game world is about twice the size of the one in Rivals, and features a mix of traffic-heavy downtown areas, industrialised zones, and sweeping curves out in the hills.

One of the most interesting things about these zones is that they have differing police presences. If you just want to chill with your mates and check out each others’ rides, or fancy a bit of drifting without worrying about cops breaking up your fun, you can head into the hills where their presence is minimal. If you’re up for some intense rubbing and racing with Ventura Bay’s finest, head downtown where there’ll be cops on every corner, just waiting to bust you.

4. Police wanted level

On the subject of the police: if you look to the left of this shot, just above the ‘fine’ value, there are four flames. Given the fact this only appears during a police chase, it’s pretty safe to assume that there are differing wanted levels. Taking the assumption further, it’s likely this will affect how aggressively the cops pursue you, how many cars are in pursuit, and the tactics they employ to stop you.

Another feature of NFS’s ‘something for everyone’ mentality is the Five Ways To Play storyline feature. There are five story strands that fall under the headings Speed, Style, Build, Crew and Outlaw, and everything you do will contribute reputation points to each game mode; win sprint races and race clean to earn Speed points; drift in a train with your friends to earn Crew points; and escape the cops to become an Outlaw.

Each game mode has a motoring ‘icon’ attached to it, and as you gain more points in each section, these icons will begin to notice you, unlocking challenges and races in the story.

6. Drift or grip handling slider

This is a game feature that’s been concerning me ever since it was first mentioned during my visit to Ghost Games earlier this year. You have the ability to tweak and tune your car, which gives knowledgeable petrolheads the ability to set their car up in a way that makes it inherently grippy or primed for drift action.

The drift/grip slider overwrites that, with a simple option that adjusts all the settings depending on how you want the car to handle. It looks like it’s been integrated nicely, and looks fairly unobtrusive, but I still feel like it makes the multitude of tuning tweaks you can make largely redundant.

7. Real world tuning companies

NFS’s list of potential modifications for each car promises to be extensive, and with this comes the need to produce realistic upgraded parts. This being EA, what with its huge financial might, licensing parts from real-world aftermarket companies was never going to be a problem, which is why the likes of RWB and Liberty Walk all feature in the game to add authenticity.

Have you noticed any snippets of information we’ve missed here? let us know in the comments!