How racing royalty came together for this year’s Need for Speed.
With the release of Need for Speed Unbound this week, Criterion Games is properly back.
Thanks for chatting to me, I’m sure you’re exceptionally busy with launch not many days away.
Need for Speed Unbound
That’s a long time and an incredible legacy.
The DNA of the studio has never changed since I’ve been there.
Was that X Wing: VR Mission?
I played it and I loved it - it was fantastic.
Kieran Crimmins:Oh, thank you!
That was my baby.
I absolutely loved that.
And we’ve worked on all sorts of different stuff.
And then we’ve come back to it and got to do some other stuff.
It was a wonderful experience for everyone.
Kieran Crimmins:You’d think so wouldn’t you?
We try and deliver the best possible kind of game feel - we are essentially a game feel studio.
It didn’t actually feel very different - it just felt like the next projects going on.
Although I guess we’ve got a little bit more skin in the game!
How would you define that, and what’s the difference for you that makes Criterion stand out?
And one is the iteration loop.
The other one is more the technical knowhow of how we do it.
Those sensibilities and those techniques have never changed, though, so I hope that’s the case.
But I would say I can guarantee you that it is a wonderful arcade visceral driving experience.
That’s the thing that Criterion are known for, and we’ve delivered that in this game.
Is that history and the legacy has gone into it evident in the final thing?
We pretty much speak the same language, but they had slightly different ideas and slightly different sensibilities.
We didn’t necessarily want to emulate all the systems in those games.
So we’re trying to make you bet big on your own abilities.
It feels like a sort of homecoming of sorts, having only this week coming back to Criterion.
Is the studio committed to the series for the foreseeable future?
Is it basically a Need for Speed studio now?
Yeah, well, I believe so!
I don’t know the future that well.
I mean, but yeah.
I know we’re looking at other Need for Speed titles.
Kieran Crimmins:Yeah, absolutely.
It’s not something we’re looking at doing now.
It’s not my next game or anything like that.
So I guess what I’m saying is, I would love to do that.
It’s not in the immediate future plans or anything like that but man, it’d be really fun
