Another week, another drop of information for Need For Speed Unbound. The upcoming racing game releasing later this year, and the return of Criterion Games as a main developer for the series, bring in a bold new direction, in particular in its art.
These “anime effects” as early reports call them, the game calls the driving effect “tags”, which lets your car let out some sick street art effect when you hit the boost. From changing the tyre smoke into various cel-shaded tints to sprouting wings when you catch some air. From paint splashes and drops coming off from the exhaust tips to little icons floating on top of the car roof.
Interestingly, you can select from a list of various tags, each has a different colour and graphic style.
Or if you find these effects off-putting or cringe, as clarified on the Need For Speed Twitter, you can simply not equip any driving effects.
The tweet reads: “Yes, you can turn the effects off. In fact, you can choose to never put them on in the first place. Just like any other part of a car.”
The last sentence also revealed another thing, as outlined in the new blog post: Need For Speed Unbound is also letting you remove some car parts, “where you can expose the mechanical guts of your car”. It’s a new option for customisation not seen in previous titles.
The hero car for Need For Speed Unbound, the Mercedes-Benz 190E driven by A$AP Rocky, has its rear bumper completely removed.
The rest of the blog post is a good read, where the team at Criterion explains the wild new art direction as the embodiment of the subtitle: being unbound by conventions.
Need For Speed Unbound is set to release on December 2 for the PS5, PC (Steam, Epic Games Store, EA App) and Xbox Series X|S.
Source: Need For Speed
