Silver Arrows
(Banned)
- 4,715
- Brandon, MB
- Silver-Arrows21
GrandTheftAero has released another video of cut concepts and theorizing for NFS games, this time focusing on what is known (and definitely is, no question about it) as the worst game in the series: Undercover.
Like the last thread on MW2012, I am going to break down the video via bullet points of what I think is the juiciest stuff to make into the video.
Like the last thread on MW2012, I am going to break down the video via bullet points of what I think is the juiciest stuff to make into the video.
- Not much is known on when Undercover started in development, but the video theorized that the absolute earliest year it existed was 2003 via two pieces of concept art which can't really be tied to any of the games in development around this time period. Though it's also presented in this video that it is more and likely the game left the conceptulization stage about three months after Carbon's release.
- This game was theorized as a sequel to Most Wanted, and the internal files present within the game support this. However, unlike MW 2012 which was designed as a MW 2005 sequel right from the jump, this was short lived, as there exists no leaked concept art of this iteration of Undercover.
- Devs were searching for a more serious tone in the game then past NFS titles. Alongside races, you were going to on what eventually became jobs in the final game. There was also an emphasis on amping up the amount of live action cut-scenes then what was present in MW 2005 and Carbon combined.
- By late 2006, EA Black Box realized that they would need more time to get Undercover off the ground. As a result, Black Box got their reprieve and their 2007 release in Prostreet. The video theorizes that this resulted in a massive stretching of resources for the Vancouver company, considering that at this time, they were also working on their new non-racing IP, which would soon become Skate. Considering the amount of work that was put into the Flick-It system for Skate alone (Of which you can look up on Youtube, there's a fair amount of prototype footage for how Skate worked) it is surmised this is the reason why Black Box was split into two: one team would work on Prostreet, the other on Undercover, with some overlap in between.
- Early development has Undercover known as The Chase in mid-2007. This is also where the majority of the live action cutscenes were shot.
- Through the past two games, Black Box had been given a very hard development time, this was lifted and the team was given a reprieve of sorts. But it would not last for long...in the summer of 2007, the vast majority of the core Black Box staff, including Martin Sykes, the co-founder, and would move from the Black Box studios in Burnaby to Yaletown to form United Front Games, most known for Modnation Racers and Sleeping Dogs. However, Martin Sykes would soon pass away in his sleep on Christmas Eve, 2007.
- Middling reviews for Prostreet did not temper expectations from EA themselves that Undercover would be a success coming after a relatively lackluster title in Prostreet.
- Announced in June of 2008, the game hit a snag when a Marketing team member leaked a development build for the 360 for release of forums and torrent sites. While EA did try to take action and shut down the downloads, it eventually was a lost cause. Nor did the person who leaked it face any sort of legal action.
- After release, as you know, the game was aboslutely ravaged for it's middling and drab gameplay, insane amounts of bugs, glitches, and shoddy programming, crappy visuals and handling model, the entire works. This is reflected in overall sales, as the game only sold 1.14 million copies in the US for all systems (presumably). To put this in perspective, this is nearly 2 million less then Carbon's release two years earlier, and a million less then Prostreet a year before.
- To add onto this, Undercover as a whole sold 5 million copies world wide...now consider the following: this game was RELEASED ON 12 SYSTEMS OVERALL. This game spanned two console generations, and only managed to hit 5 million. Even worse, this game only sold less then a quarter of Most Wanted 2005's figure, which is surmised to be nearly 50 million copies.
- The video then ends with the narrator surmising that if Black Box was chained to the development of Prostreet alongside Undercover and to a much smaller extent Skate, then Undercover would have been able to reach it's full potential.