Need for Speed Undercover Interview

At the Games Convention Asia 2008 held in Singapore last week we not only got to try out the latest Need for Speed game (impressions soon), we even got a chance to sit down with the game’s producer, John Doyle, who gave us the skinny on life as an undercover agent in the Need for Speed universe.

So what’s the basic difference between Undercover and Most Wanted?
You have a pretty deep story in UC that’s played out through live-action cut scenes, for which we’ve used Hollywood talent like Maggie Q [smiles like a schoolboy for a minute]. We’ve also taken advantage of the new tech at our disposal. In UC you’ll get to see better damage that adds more realism to the game. The physics underneath is also a lot more impressive than previous games, but at the end of the day we’ve still managed to make it feel like an arcade racer.

Can you give us the lowdown on some of the game’s modes?
In UC you’re gonna see recurring modes like Sprint, Circuit, and Tollbooth, in addition to a brand new mode called Highway Battle. A Highway Battle involves you and one other car racing man against man on big stretches of highway while trying to avoid all kinds of traffic. Your goal is to get 1,000 feet ahead of the other car in a time limit.

There are two ways to win a Highway Battle – you can race really clean and go really fast to get ahead of the other guy, or you can get ahead of your opponent and then bump some cars around causing some serious mayhem behind you.

Speaking of mayhem, is the damage in this game superficial or will it affect performance?
This year what we wanted to do was make the damage look really cool, like a Hollywood movie, but at the same time we didn’t want to punish the driver. So no, damage will not affect performance.

How will the game control? Are we looking at something a bit more realistic like a PGR or something totally arcady like a Burnout?
I don’t think it’s anything like we’ve shipped before. It’s probably the closest to Most Wanted; only this time you can do some real cool stuff with your car – something you’ve never been able to do with a NFS game before, such as hit the e-brake and do a 360.

Will UC be fully free-roaming like Paradise or will it be like MW where you can free-roam to your heart’s content but when it’s race time you’re guided by barriers?
We’re going to be doing it the same way we did NFS MW because we find that the most effective.
(And I couldn’t agree more on that!)