Need For Speed Unbound Will Have A New Physics System

EA isn’t planning to drip-feed us with information for developer Criterion’s return to the Need For Speed series with Need For Speed Unbound, they’re opening the floodgates. We now have even more intriguing information about the upcoming racing game that’s not on the press release materials.

Earlier today, the game revealed officially with a trailer, and also showed off the open world map and a full car list.

In an interview with IGN, Criterion Games revealed that the game will have a new physics system.

The physics system will be running at a higher frame-rate, exact numbers are not specified, but the result should in turn give more nuance to the car handling of the hundreds of available cars to race in.

“I think players are really going to feel the difference and be able to- across a broad range of vehicle types- feeling the difference between a nimble, small European car or a big American muscle car or a hyper car… And then when they get into more specifics of adjusting how that car handles by modifying it to suit their preferences. That shows you the level of breadth and depth that we’re able to uncover with that tech,” said Matt Webster, GM at Criterion.

Creative director Keiran Crimmins claims that Need For Speed Unbound has the “deepest driving system and the best handling” system from a Criterion racing game.

When it comes Need For Speed, car handling has been a very much talked about issue since 2015. The long-running racing game series hit a low with that year’s release, simply titled Need For Speed, when it attempted to let players tune a car’s handling to be drifty or grippy but both handling options turn out to be horrible and not fun to drive. There are dedicated mods for the PC version of Need For Speed (2015) just to tweak the physics to be something more palatable.

The problems continued with the follow-up Need For Speed Payback. And in the lead up to the release of Need For Speed Heat, a dedicated blog post was made just to address the concerns of the handling model.

NFS Heat, the latest NFS game until Unbound releases later this year, thankfully delivered on their promise, the handling model is good, and makes for a really fun game as a result.

So this claim, that NFS Unbound having the best handling from a Criterion game, is bold one to make given this checkered history- just as bold as the new art style.

What’s being said about the change in physics sound interesting should they indeed work as intended. Hopefully the blunder of NFS 2015’s shoddy handling won’t ever be repeated.

Need For Speed Unbound will be out on December 2 this year for the PS5, PC (Steam, Epic Games Store, Origin) and Xbox Series X|S.

Source: IGN