Open World. Open Game.

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Open World. Open Game.

August 14, 2012


(34) Comments


In Most Wanted, the entire city of Fairhaven is open from the beginning. Find a car, and it's yours to cause mayhem in. 

We recently presented a snippet of gameplay from Most Wanted that will hopefully explain a little about what we mean when we say that freedom, friends and competition are at the heart of the Most Wanted experience.

The video kicks off with our player in the Aston Martin V12 Vantage. The Vantage is refined, elegant and sophisticated: a gentleman among exotics.

But this is not the stock Vantage. This is the V12 - a 510 horsepower monster that’ll do 0-62 in 4.2 seconds and hit 190 mph in a straight line. It’s Bond on steroids.

Need for Speed Most Wanted Aston Martin V12 Vantage

The sequence starts with the player taking the car for a quick spin through our open world city of Fairhaven. You can cruise around, hit jumps, explore buildings, rip past speed cameras. You can pretty much drive anywhere.

Need for Speed Most Wanted Open World

The eagle-eyed among you will notice cars parked all over town. We’re tired of playing a game for hours to unlock our favourite car, so we’ve placed almost all the cars in the game throughout the open world. If you can see it, you can drive it. Drive over to any car and “jack” it.

Need for Speed Most Wanted Jack Spot

And in this instance, we’ve stumbled across Mercedes-Benz’ incredible SL 65 AMG Black Series. Each car has a unique set of events for you to play. You can tackle them in any order, but you might want to check their difficulty in Autolog before taking them on. Some events will seriously test you in an unmodified car.

Earn Speed Points by playing any part of the game (single-player or multiplayer) to rank up, move up the Most Wanted list and unlock Modifications for your car, that will help you beat our most challenging events.

When you’re ready to play, you can either jump to a event start or set a waypoint. This gives you a chance to explore the city or road-test modifications as you go. You can see the Mercedes' modifcations listed to the right of the screen, when you select the car.

Need for Speed Most Wanted Equip Modification

As the race plays out, you'll see how Autolog transforms your open world driving experience in Most Wanted. Autolog puts your friends at the heart of the game.

Check out your friends' records at the start of any event on the "Speedwall" - a leaderboard for every event.

Need for Speed Most Wanted Race Speedwall

Fairhaven City is full of speed cameras. Rip past any camera, and Autolog displays your friends’ highest recorded speeds through that camera. Just playing races will record fast times, but you can also visit any camera in open play to session it, testing for the fastest route, the fastest car and the fastest Modifcation package for that location.

Need for Speed Most Wanted Speed Camera Speedwall

Every billlboard in Fairhaven City has a Speedwall. Autolog displays it to the left of your screen, whenever you drive close to one. You can see your friends' record jump distances for each and every billboard jump in the game.

Need for Speed Most Wanted Speedwall

Hit the ramp, smash through the billboard and record the longest distance jumped of your friends to reach the top of the Speedwall.

Getting to the top of any Billlboard Speedwall will replace the picture on the billboard with your profile picture. When your friends play the game, they’ll have to put up with your ugly mug beaming down at them and gloating over your fast times.

Need for Speed Most Wanted Billboard

Whether you're playing an online race, losing the cops in an epic chase or just exploring the streets, Autolog is watching, recording and broadcasting to your friends.  And bringing your friends' records back to you.

The only problem? Deciding what you want to do next!

34 people have commented. Add yours now!

I hope this game is free roam , unlike the run , or else i'll just throw it in the trash


Hey need for speed, could you put an option for the details in game? my computers pretty cruddy, and the only game it can handle is need for speed world. i tried to download nfs hot pursuit, i could'nt, so i bought a graphics card. it aint work!


thats awesome game ever


i wish there was a free mode where you and your friends can just screw around but also get cops on you and fight together. also i think it would be cool if you could customize your car like the first most wanted


I like the Concept of finding a car to unlock it but when the game is out I'm sure that most people just look on the Internet for where the cars are. I love Burnout Paradise and can't wait to get my hands on this, I already pre-ordered it


So excited for this game! I loved paradise and hot pursuit. Now this looks to be a hybrid of both or paradise 2 from what people are saying. I for one am stoked. I really hope there is freeburn challenges online more than anything. Also when you guys are done with this how about a Need for speed Underground 3? :) I've been waiting yeeeears for another one!


I really hope that there will be a cockpit camera in this game. I love cockpit camera and of course helmet camera from Shift 2 was one of the greatest things I've ever seen in NFS games. Criterion team, I'm almost sure, that You are reading theese comments, so please, add cockpit camera to this game!


i have a request. when a race ends, it would be pretty cool if the other racers didn't disappear. it would be cool to see them escape and get busted by the cops. it would be even cooler if there was an option to help another racer escape from the cops which would give you experience (in this case, speed points). PS, Criterion, you make the most fucking badass arcade racers out there. please do this for the criterion fans!!


i can not wait to play it


Why is it hard to realize people like to unlock things? I'd rather unlock the map rather than have it all open, I'll get bored of it in less than a week.