Cut concepts of NFS Undercover

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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.

  • 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.
 
Just watched it. Gives me vibes of how Criterion went down as well with their concepts. I feel disappointed by EA with making mistakes of rushing development because it takes a lot of hard work just to produce the assets and testing of such things. I feel the same passion for Black Box and Criterion alike, and I wish EA would not pressure them as much, but nope. The more they do the likely were not going to get a good game.
 
And 2007- 2014 EA does it again.

So EA's hunger for cash didn't start by 2011/2012 but by 2007 they were already wanting more money by forcing devs like BB to finish their cash cow franchise quickly without testing or even giving the devs time to finish the game that they truly wanted to make.

And the more GrandTheftAero posts these types of videos the more I think of how I feel sorry for NFS devs. I'm just glad present EA is no longer the same by the time their old CEO resigned.
 
I guess I understand the dislike for Prostreet if people feel that its development robbed from resources that would have made Undercover better. But Prostreet is still my favorite NFS game to date.
 
The biggest shock for me from that video was that ProStreet was always meant to be a filler title. :(
 
I'm not sure about when EA started planning what would become Undercover, but in the Prima guide for Underground 2 (Nov 2004), in the guide's interview with Marc DeVellis, he mentions Underground 3. It's not clear when EA decided to make Most Wanted a daytime game and to revert back to high end cars instead of tuners. It seems unlikely that EA would make plans 3 or 4 games in advance.

The video missed out on the teaser website, whichroadtotake.com. Looking at web archive, the first backup was done on August 28, 2008, and the game Undercover had already been announced (by July 30, 2008 or sooner). The web site featured what appeared to be a video feed of a police interrogation interview, if you clicked on certain objects in the room, you'd get a cut-scene clip made by the actors used in the game. For example, during the interrogation the table gets knocked over, and there's a mic/bug taped underneath. If you clicked on that, you'd get a scene with Hector asking Rose what was going on, and she would reply the guy being interrogated wasn't giving anything away. During the interrogation, the characters scuffle, and the cop ends up in the chair, with the cop being interrogated. Someone cracks open the door and leaves some Chinese food, and the two guys inside scramble to the door trying to get there before the door closes, as apparently they are both locked inside the room. I haven't found any videos of that, and using the web archive, I'm unable to get the flash player to run, and/or the web archive may not have backed up the "video feed".

The premise of "which road to take", never became part of the game. There are no choices in the career path that would allow the player to choose to be good or bad, which is later used in the game's display while waiting for loads, "You're not good, you're not bad, ... ".

In addition to whichroadtotake.com, EA released a 6 part series on youtube called "Takedown". The series is still on youtube.

Although the trailer shown in the video above shows an Evo IX, EA apparently switched to the newly released 370Z, probably as a promotional deal with Nissan. The 370Z is not competitive in the game, but it is used in the game's prologue, and also used in the Takedown series. There's also a hidden video on the game disk (video below).

As far as the game itself goes, the main issue is the absurdly fast pace of the cars, especially since nitrous magically generates downforce, allowing the cars to take corners at even higher speeds. In Palm Harbor the pace was fast enough that the video in areas like Palm Harbor couldn't keep up and pause with a bluish tint on the screen, but this was fixed with the first patch 1.0.1.17. Following NFS history, High Stakes was fast pace, followed by more reasonably paced games until ProStreet, which set new level of fast pace, like a 46 second lap at Willow Springs, while real world race records (done with older Formula 1 type cars) is 20 seconds slower at 1:06. Following the tradition of ProStreet, Undercover increased the pace even more.

Patch 1.0.1.18 added a Challenge Series, where a player could win 3 customized tier 1 cars. If the Challenge Series was done first (after the career prologue), these tier 1 cars could be used for the start of career, against the slower tier 4 to tier 2 cars.

As for negative reaction by NFS fans, there were worse reactions in the past: Hot Pursuit 2 (2002) - first NFS without savable replays. ProStreet - no free roam as in the prior 3 games (U2, MW, Carbon). Sale were down for racing games in general. 2006 was probably the peak year for racing games, at least for PC versions. As consoles started separating the player base, online racing became less popular, and there had been a general downtrend in sales of PC racing games since Most Wanted (late 2005).

370Z video:

 
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I'm not sure about when EA started planning what would become Undercover, but in the Prima guide for Underground 2 (Nov 2004), in the guide's interview with Marc DeVellis, he mentions Underground 3. It's not clear when EA decided to make Most Wanted a daytime game and to revert back to high end cars instead of tuners.

Early 2004, if not sooner.

That would conflict with Marc's interview statement about an Underground 3 in the Prima guide that was published in Nov, 2004. There were also some posts from EA staff at a few old forums, but those forums are shutdown now, and the web archive didn't go deep enough into those web sites to backup the posts.
 
That would conflict with Marc's interview statement about an Underground 3 in the Prima guide that was published in Nov, 2004. There were also some posts from EA staff at a few old forums, but those forums are shutdown now, and the web archive didn't go deep enough into those web sites to backup the posts.
Marc mentions in that same interview that he's working on "the sequel for Hot Pursuit 2". I'm pretty sure the UG3 comment was a joke.

Besides that, there are a number of references and leftovers from MW's early development in the files of Underground 2 and it's demo. This includes some of the speech clips that were used in the Core X video.



This points to the basic concept/structure of the game being established sometime in early-mid 2004.
 
Marc mentions in that same interview that he's working on "the sequel for Hot Pursuit 2". I'm pretty sure the UG3 comment was a joke. Besides that, there are a number of references and leftovers from MW's early development in the files of Underground 2 and it's demo. This includes some of the speech clips that were used in the Core X video. This points to the basic concept/structure of the game being established sometime in early-mid 2004.
Yeah the U3 comment may have been a joke, or perhaps they were considering yet another night game for a future release (which might have evolved into Carbon). What I recall is the team wanted to go back to the "roots" of prior NFS games (not just Hot Pursuit 2, but also Hot Pursuit 1 and High Stakes), day time, high end sports cars, pursuits, ... , while including the newer features like free roam, and a mix of old and new with performance parts (Porsche Unleashed had a set of parts for each type of car, while U2 had common upgrades, and Most Wanted mostly followed U2's style for parts, but tuning is limited to 3 (or 4?) bars while in free roam. Speculation was that the title Most Wanted came from High Stakes, since you hear "congratulations, you're most wanted", after completing a pursuit series. Unlike High Stakes or Hot Pursuit 2, the player doesn't get to be a cop. I don't recall what the speculation was for the name Carbon.

Getting back to Undercover, this was EA biggest budget for a game, with all the cut-scenes, and the shear size of the map, although other than Palm Harbor, there aren't that many buildings. It's not clear how the storyline ended up being what it was, but other than Porsche Unleashed factory driver mode, the premise behind NFS storylines never make much sense. I don't know why they dropped the rain effect they had developed with Most Wanted and Carbon, although you do hear thunder in Undercover's ambient sounds. I thought the usually humorous police chatter was a nice touch.
 
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