Need For Speed Unbound’s Prologue Is Brilliant

Need For Speed Unbound is out now. The first new Need For Speed game where Criterion Games is heading the development since Need For Speed Most Wanted (2012) the longest-running racing game series has gone through various ups and downs.

The jury’s still up for Unbound (we have a review coming soon).

If you have started the opening hours, the prologue, of the single-player campaign, you’ll see something brilliant that the game set up to get you pumped in going through the weekly qualifiers and competing in The Grand.

Like any of the recent Need For Speed games since the 2015 one, you start the game by picking a starter car. In Unbound, your starter car is either the Dodge Charger, the Lamborghini Countach, or the new-to-NFS Nissan Silvia S14. It’s expected, like how you pick a starter Pokemon in a new Pokemon game, Unbound clings to this tradition of offering a choice of cars from the main three regions of car manufacturers in the world: USA, Europe and Japan.

Fascinatingly, you are required to give a “name” to your starter car. As in, enter a custom license plate. Profanities are disabled when you put a name on it.

From there, you will be going through quite a long tutorial, where your character spends time with Yaz. The two of you fixed the starter car into running form and now aspiring to rub shoulders with the local racers in Lakeshore.

In-between the races, you’ll be back in the garage and you can spend the time customising the car. Part upgrades to make it faster is curiously missing, but Yaz will always remind you about making the car be stylin’. Put on a fender. Add a custom hood. There’s even a point during this bit where you enter the safehouse and the first thing you see is the custom body kit options. Each of the starter car has a Legendary Custom that radically changes the look of the car into a one-of-a-kind build, and Yaz will nudge you into getting one. You should have enough money to get that body kit.

Of course, you totally can keep the car stock, but it’s curious that the game really wants you to show up with a styled-out whip.

And that becomes apparent when you reach the end of the tutorial, where the rug pull happens. You are then betrayed by Yaz as she steals all the cars in the safehouse, including yours. Your car.

After a time skip, the game flashes forward where you meet Yaz again, now running a new racing scene in Lakeshore with a big payout: The Grand. Also, your car is again seen, now Yaz’s, with the same license plate and now with the Legendary Custom body kit applied.

And that’s how this quest to become the fastest racer becomes personal. Not only you want to get back on Yaz by beating her on her own game. But you want your car back.

It’s a fascinating setup, and not entirely new. Criterion has likely picked up why NFS fans continue to be in love with the BMW M3 GTR featured on Need For Speed Most Wanted 2005 that it now becomes an icon. In that game, the premise is also similar. You start with the BMW, get done dirty by a rival and lose the car as the rival who got it uses that to climb up the leaderboards after a time skip.

In Unbound, rather than a pre-determined cover car, that car at stake is your own. The one you tricked out during the early hours of the game, thinking you’ll be stuck with this one for a good portion of the early game. What a way to get you attached to a simple narrative.

And that’s why the prologue in Need For Speed Unbound is brilliant. It shows the understanding of why the really good games from the series still remain loved, and Criterion’s attempt to replicate, or even one-up, that intangible feeling is, in my opinion, a good effort.

I’m invested in getting back my oddly coloured Charger with an unfortunate license plate name that has been turned into a fancy hearse. The slow start was worth it for me.

Need For Speed Unbound is out now on PS5, PC (Steam, Epic Games Store, EA App) and Xbox Series X|S. Stay tuned for our full review soon.