Criterion collaborating with DICE on NFS: Hot Pursuit

Digital Foundry's revealed DICE is working with Criterion on Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit.

The Battlefield developer's been helping the Guildford-based studio on creating the racer's massive open world.

"It's been a great collaboration actually," said Criterion art director Henry LaBounta. "Early on we set style guides for what we wanted to create out of this game, to offer players the ability to see a wide variety of types of environments from the deserts to the mountains to the forest to the coastal routes and so forth."

Criterion's senior engineer Alex Fry told DF that roughly 15-25 DICE artists are helping out on the project.

"We designed the world here, handling guys and the world artists worked together to make sure the game world drives well and feels right," said Fry. "Once we finessed that and locked all the roads down, Henry set out the art style and how this game was going to look.

"Then we built in core locations... this is going to be seaside, this is going to be the mountain range, we wanted a bridge here... we mapped out the rough lay of the land and then DICE with our art director went in and turned it into something beautiful."

Expect Hot Pursuit to be a key part of EA's gamescom press conference tomorrow in Cologne.

Get details on it here.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit releases on November 19 on PS3, 360, PC and Wii.