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The Inside Track - #1
"Welcome to Bayview"
By Justin Wiebe - Associate Producer
For my first Inside Track segment I thought it would be a good idea to give you a quick look into the brand new city we're building for Need for Speed™ Underground 2. This year Underground 2 will feature a completely open world environment. The open world will allow players the freedom to drive anywhere they want, when they want and quite honestly lose themselves in the world that's been created. The Underground 2 city, officially known as Bayview, is absolutely immense, spanning over 200km (124.27 miles) of track through many unique regions. To put this into some perspective, the city in the first Underground game measured around 40 km (24.85 miles) of drivable road.
The first question I'm sure most people would ask is "Why go away from the traditional Need for Speed closed course circuit racing?" When it comes right down to it we are in fact not abandoning the traditional circuits at all, we're actually expanding on them. The entire city was constructed with racing in mind, meaning, we build the best drives that we can, connect them all together, and populate a city around those roads. The end result is we can now pick and choose a nearly unlimited number of race routes throughout the city, and every single one of them is a fun and rewarding drive. The second reason for building an open world is to implement one of the most requested features from Underground players: freedom of choice. In our conversations with gamers we quickly noticed similar trends. People wanted more tracks, the freedom to choose their race experience and to be able to drive anywhere they wanted.
The career mode is built around freedom of choice; players can drive around the world and enter any event they choose. If you really love circuit racing you are free to enter any circuit race you find, whenever you want, or, if you prefer drag racing you can jump straight into that too. Using the open world technology, races will be populated all over the city, players will be free to drive around and select any race they want to participate in. Along the way, players will be able to discover hidden events that will offer higher rewards than the standard races, which is just one of the ways we are making the open world concept meaningful to the game. The world is massive, and we are using it to its fullest potential by blowing out the exploration concept and providing all kinds of hidden goodies for players to find. I'm sure people will be going on the Internet as soon as the game is released to start sharing information on where all the secrets they've discovered are located. The exploration mode is designed to work with the career and the economy, which means a lot of thought and time has gone into making them feel really special and rewarding.
Driving around the world in Underground 2 is actually very similar to when you are moving to a new city. When you are new to a city, or just visiting, you only know a few places to go, but, once you start to learn the city you discover all kinds of things that a tourist would miss - an entirely new city that is full of activities and opportunities for people "in the know". This also lends into knowledge of the drive, as you become more familiar with the tracks you learn to adapt your driving style based on the region your in. Each region has been designed with a specific set of driving challenges; some areas contain short winding roads and are filled with intersections requiring split second reactions, while others areas are faster paced with occasional hairpin turns and elevation changes to reduce visibility, thus providing a higher speed challenge. The more players drive around the world, the better they become. That's what the open world does for Underground 2 and is ultimately what makes the experience new and fresh.
Trust me when I tell you, this game throws you right in the middle of the tuner racing world!
- Justin
Bron: NeedForSpeed.com