If you want a hyper-realistic driving game, you sit down and fire up Forza Motorsport or Gran Turismo. If you want something slightly more colorful and with an actual campaign, then you need to look elsewhere. Electronic Arts’ newest installment of the Need For Speed franchise, Need For Speed Payback, won’t merely be the crash-y arcade game of versions past. This version will include a bunch of features that even car enthusiasts can get behind.
On a grossly muggy and gray October day, we went to visit EA at its New York City offices in Times Square. There, we met with Marcus Nilsson, Ghost Games founder and executive producer of Need For Speed, and Riley Cooper, the game’s lead designer.
While Cooper wouldn’t reveal exactly what kinds of mods would be in the game, he assured us that there would be increased customization options, so everybody won’t be running around with the same build.
As a self-proclaimed car enthusiast, Nilsson (who keeps a 997-generation Porsche 911 at home on Gothenburg, Sweden) said that the studio did extensive research on the tactile feel of each new environment, such as the feedback from off-roading, in an effort to make things more realistic.
Despairingly, none of my Forza driving skills transferred smoothly over to the PlayStation or Need For Speed Payback setup that EA had for us. They generously let me sample some of the customization aspects of the game, however. I proceeded to build the most heinous Miata I could with the free in-game credits they gave me.
You can check it out in our video.