I'm not hot and bothered for this because I am so bored of open world racing games.
Burnout Paradise is probably the best of them, but the entire reason I wanted them to go back to the old Hot Pursuit style is because I wanted more environments. I'm tired of the dull repetition that open world racing games so easily succumb to. By that I mean:
I spend the entire game in the same place. I drive around a neighborhood looking for a race location, and once I start up that race, it's the same neighborhood I was just in, except now they're shuttling me down a specific pathway in that neighborhood. I've already seen this neighborhood.
NFS:HP and HP2 were great because you had race tracks in Rome, Yellowstone, Hawaii... each location was visually different and offered up unique track designs. I appreciate the work Criterion has put in to this in developing four distinct "flavors" in their open world map design, but I'm STILL going to encounter "I drove out here to race, and the race is set up using the exact route I took to get out here in the first place".
This is quickly turning out to be not the bold revival I was looking for in the NFS franchise. Not that I don't have faith in Criterion, not that I think it will be a bad game, just... still not for me, despite effort to apparently make it for me.
Edit:
eso76 said:
seriously, why does everyone still consider this 'open world' ? It really isn't.
The map layout is telling, if videos were not clear enough.
This is not open world as in BP open world, with tons of intersections and intricated maps, 90° turns and alleys. It's not even free roaming, it's just a number of mostly straightforward point to point tracks, which happen to connect with each other and be carved inside the same large map.
This is more like the original NFS (except the 3 main A->B tracks were not connected). It's more like Outrun if you like, with one intersection every several miles.
Really? You will have to excuse me for hearing them say "OPEN WORLD RACING GAME" and my eyes glazing over for everything to follow.
This may be more worth a look than I thought.