"Need For Speed is always too ahead of its time" Veteran NFS developers on the series' habit of polarising releases that end up beloved
"I was shocked how highly rated some of the fans made that game. Because I had thought that’s a bit of a lump of coal in my resume."
Which entries in the about to turn 30 years old Need For Speed series are your favourites? Did you think the same of all of them right after playing them for the first time? You might well have done, but a lot of games in the iconic racing series, especially over the past decade or so, have garnered a bit of a polarised or mixed reception on release.
While Need For Speed: Unbound felt a bit of this, the likes of Need for Speed Payback and Need For Speed (2015) really come to mind for me. However, that's not to say games like these can't end up attracting a cult following among NFS-heads, something that the series' developers are clearly aware of.
At a developer roundtable in celebration of the Need For Speed series' 30th birthday attended by VG247, long-time developer on the series Patrick Honnoraty - who's been a key producer on recent entries like Unbound, Heat, and Payback - touched on this as part of a discussion about how the series has evolved over the years.
“I think it’s classic as well, we look at this and we’ve seen I think every Need For Speed I’ve worked on," he said, "When it’s come out it’s been ‘Oh my god, it was no good, it was rubbish, people didn’t like it’ and then years pass [and] it’s like ‘Oh, it was so good, it had these great elements to it, it was the best Need For Speed, why don’t you go and make one back like that?’.
"Need For Speed is always too ahead of its time, is my thing, every time we bring one out. Every time we bring it, it doesn’t strike, but people look back on ‘em so fondly."
Honnoraty's comments followed on from another long-time NFS developer, Justin Wiebe, who currently serves as a studio design director at Battlefield studio Ripple Effect, outlining how his view of his work on Need For Speed: The Run changed when he realised it's got a bit of a cult following.
“We really tried to break some ground there," Wiebe explained, "We talked about getting out of the car and we had all these grandiose visions for like, it’s gonna be more than just racing, this character’s gonna get out of the car, but then we realised very quickly that we can’t really do that, so we introduced some quicktime events.
“I’ll be the first to stand up and say ‘well, that didn’t really work’, but I’m proud of the fact we tried it and I was on a fan forum a few months ago and I was shocked how highly rated some of the fans made that game. Because I had thought that’s a bit of a lump of coal in my resume, but it turns out that it actually has a massive cult following and there are certain people that absolutely adore that game. That kinda brought a bit of joy to my heart, that we took a risk and there’s some people who really found something to love about it.”
Criterion senior creative director John Stanley, who's currently a key development figure on Need For Speed Unbound, also added to Wiebe's point by referring to this kind of thing as being a part of "the benefit and the curse of Need For Speed", with the series having done so many different things over the years, and which bits folks like sometimes varying a lot from fan to fan.