Ghost Games Confirms No Need for Speed at E3, But Gamescom Likely

YES! I wrote a long thing one Facebook recently about how NFS has gotten super stale because EA just WON'T let go of Underground. Like the same 5 cars can be found in just about EVERY NFS since then: the 240ZG, 240SX, RX-8, R34 Skyline, Golf R32. And the open world/customization hasn't really changed. It still feels the same. The Run was terrible, but at least it tried something new. So, hopefully, Ghost is breaking that tradition. Maybe those cars WON'T be in the next NFS. Well...the R34 Skyline maybe, but the others...Let's change it up.
 
Ghost games seem to be lost for this entire generation. It is super obvious they keep an eye on Forza Horizon but also try to appeal to old NFS fans and also the suits at EA. The end result is always a mixed bag, there were some nice ideas in 2015 and Payback, but they were clearly struggling between a crappy engine in frostbite and the demands of EA to have microtransactions and grinding. They really could use a 3 year dev cycle as well, their last 3 games have clearly been rushed to the market. All in all I don't know whose decision it was to disband Criterion after Most Wanted, but that was the dumbest decision in a while, they made good games on a good racing oriented inhouse engine and were on a good track, and then just nothing. An entire generation has passed and not a single great NFS. They really should take this year off, celebrate 25 year anniversary of NFS by having a collection of the best games remastered, do whatever it takes to relicense all the original car lists and song lists. But that's probably a pipedream.
 
I don’t mind the game getting delayed further if it means we get a much better game. The delayed announcement just feels weird.

YES! I wrote a long thing one Facebook recently about how NFS has gotten super stale because EA just WON'T let go of Underground. Like the same 5 cars can be found in just about EVERY NFS since then: the 240ZG, 240SX, RX-8, R34 Skyline, Golf R32. And the open world/customization hasn't really changed. It still feels the same. The Run was terrible, but at least it tried something new. So, hopefully, Ghost is breaking that tradition. Maybe those cars WON'T be in the next NFS. Well...the R34 Skyline maybe, but the others...Let's change it up.

They kinda did let go the whole Underground theme from 2010 until 2015, so far there is only 2 games that did the whole underground-ish style and car customisation.

Also the 2 out of 5 cars you mention sure didn’t appear in every NFS since they return to the underground style games, RX8 and R32 Golf probably last appear in SHIFT 2. I don’t get the point to get rid of the cars, continue to expand the car list for the sequel makes more sense.

The issue with Ghost is they lack focus on what they wanted to do, Rivals was pretty much an attempt to remake HP2010 while NFS2015 and Payback was them trying to remake the Underground and Most Wanted 2005 feel.
 
I see no reason why they can't remake NFS:UG2 or similar, and make it a "period set" racing game, in the late 90's/early 00s. Would that really be so bad? We get dozens of "period" games in other genres. Fallout, Elder scrolls, Dishonoured, Assassins Creed to name but a few. All of these form wildly varying timelines and settings. So why can't this be done with a racing game? We got GT Legends nearly 15 years ago and that was a perfect example of "Period" based racing, set in around cars of the 60s and 70s. So why not a NFS game set in around the 90s and 00s? The car list could be insane even if you disregarded licensing issues with Toyota/Lexus etc. What made those games so fun as well was sound design, boy do I miss good engine sound design. NFS:U2 and most wanted probably had some of the best car engine sounds for its times, i could always remember back then knowing that if a new NFS game came it, it damn sure sounded the part, NFS Carbon was also very good sounding.

Just my two cents, but maybe not feeling the need to focus on "current" car trends, fast and furious films and appealing to a too wider range of gamers and instead focusing on a set point in time, would go a long way for me in cementing what the then resulting game should feel, look and sound like. Doing up a mundane city car or light sports car into a monster and everything in-between.
 
I honestly don't mind if B2D stays but they need to fix the physics. They've been all sorts of messed up since 2015 and Ghost haven't made any attempt to fix them since then.
 
I honestly don't mind if B2D stays but they need to fix the physics. They've been all sorts of messed up since 2015 and Ghost haven't made any attempt to fix them since then.
Wait, you're telling me that's not how cars drive in real life!?
 
Like the same 5 cars can be found in just about EVERY NFS since then: the 240ZG, 240SX, RX-8, R34 Skyline, Golf R32

I honestly don't see whats wrong with keeping cars some people clearly like... As long as they keep adding new cars, I'm fine with that...

. And the open world/customization hasn't really changed. It still feels the same.

I personally feel like those are far from the franchise's main issues... Plus there's much they can do about customization since most of it is based in real life stuff...

So why not a NFS game set in around the 90s and 00s? The car list could be insane.
I honestly don't see the point in this as games set in modern times can still include cars from the 90s, but games set in the 90s can't include modern cars which some of us enjoy more...

I don't know whose decision it was to disband Criterion after Most Wanted, but that was the dumbest decision in a while, they made good games on a good racing oriented inhouse engine and were on a good track
By the time the franchise was on Criterion's hands, I believe they had lost the essence of NFS IMO..
 
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@EinsTheOne In the future, use the multi-quote feature (click on the "+Quote" button for each post you wish to reply to), or use the edit button to do so after the fact. That way you won't end up with multiple posts all replying to the one or multiple people. 👍
 
By the time the franchise was on Criterion''s hands, I believe they had lost the essence of NFS IMO..
I dunno, obviously up to that point it was a yearly franchise and EA Black Box studio only had like 8 months to build a game, which resulted in stale games culminating into the horrible Undercover. Criterion really refreshed the NFS name and introduced some cool new features like Autolog which really pushed you to improve to beat your friends on the wall of fame, it was fun, straightforward, very good looking (still looks great actually, despite being almost 10 years old now), good controls, good multiplayer, etc. It was really carried by word of mouth shortly after release. Any franchise that's been running for decades needs a refresh now and then. The essence originally was outrunning the cops in beautiful locations in exotic cars, but it seems most people associate NFS with tuner culture of the early 2000, but that was fresh at the time, now the tuner culture isn't nearly as popular.
 
One of my issues with various longer-running IPs is that sometimes, it feels like they'll introduce new mechanics while scrapping some of the old ones, when the old ones could still have potential to evolve and expand, and not all the new ideas end up being well-received. My ideal NFS game is mostly a patchwork of various game mechanics, UI/UX elements, online elements, etc. that we've already seen in prior games in the series. That, and new elements that are simply evolutions of older features that can't simply be ported forward, and/or were features that we poorly-received but still had a sliver of potential. Maybe it's just me, though, and not something that many people think about for these series. (See also: Final Fantasy, Battlefield, etc.)

For example, I honestly loved the stealth-based gameplay of the pursuits in MW2005 and Carbon, as well as Carbon's territory map. I could definitely see the latter thing being made into a multiplayer element that allows for remarkable developments of emergent gameplay. You could have three (or four, idk) major groups, each with a major specialty, and then with minor sub-groups within each of them that have a more specific specialty. So let's say we have a group analogous to Bushido, wherein JDM cars are the main staple, and you could have a sub-group that specifically focuses on JDM rotary-engined cars, or cars that had their bodywork designed by a coachbuilder such as Giugiaro. Taking a solid look at Tokyo Xtreme Racer may not hurt, either.
 
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