New Need For Speed Can Be Whatever Type Of Racer You Want

The Need For Speed series has jumped around various interpretations of the racing genre. Some versions of the game have been arcade-like, emphasizing fast-paced thrills and impossible stunts. Other versions have been strictly sim, with precise physics and tight controls.

This time, developer Ghost Games is trying something new: both at once. Or rather, you decide which type you like. The game’s driving physics will be customizable to the point where you can turn the game into a simulation driver OR an arcade drift racer — it can be either one.

“We’re going deeper into customization than we ever have before,” says Marcus Nilsson, Ghost Games’ general manager. “If you want to be grippy, make it grippy. If you want to have it drifty, make it drifty. You can even set up your different cars with different handling styles.”

The way you adjust the cars to suit your tastes is pretty simple — just slide a bar and flip a few switches — but making it all possible required a lot of work for the team. “It might sound easy to people, but physics systems are complicated,” said Nilsson. “Even if it’s an action racer like Need for Speed, there’s still a really sophisticated racing engine underneath it. The game needs to be tickled a certain way to be an action racer and tickled a certain way to be grippy. We now have a layer where we can kind of define that.”

Nilsson hopes the new customization system makes Need For Speed enough of a hit that he can employ it in future NFS games. “My guess would be yes, we will want to bring back this handling choice system. We can already see that it works. I’d say that everything’s indicating that we’d like to keep this going forward. Ultimately, it will be the reactions to it that decides that.”

The new Need For Speed comes out November 3, 2015 for Playstation 4, XBox One and PC.