NFS: Most Wanted 'had to be open world, people didn't get Burnout Paradise', says dev

Need for Speed: Most Wanted follows the same open world format as the original game, and this was the only option, Criteron's vice president Alex Ward has explained, despite his fears that people didn't 'get' Burnout Paradise's open world setting.

In an AusGamers interview, Ward explained the need for an open world setting, "You might think that following [Burnout] Paradise - which is a pretty revolutionary game nobody understood, there’s no way that we could do an open-world game - that is what Most Wanted always had to be for us - without building on what we did before. There’s no way we couldn’t put easy drive in, there’s no way we couldn’t put social challenges in the multiplayer, and shake it up."

2So to us it’s just about taking it further," Ward added, "we always said each game is a reflection of who we are at the time, and this game, Most Wanted, reflects who we are, probably more than anything else: which is social, connected, and everything a game needs to be in 2012. Like I said, we just need to change it up really; that’s what we’ve got to do."

"I believe that in 2012," Ward continued, "a game’s got to be very connected, they’ve got to have friends at the heart of the game. I’ve got to be able to do whatever I want, whenever I want to do it."

"So obviously," Ward concluded, "Paradise was a great stepping-stone from there. We like a bit of revolution; we like to turn things on its head. We did it with Burnout, and now we’re doing it with Need for Speed."

What do you think? Do you like open world racers, or should the team go back to the arcade vibe of the Burnout games? Let us know below.