Going Underground Again

John Davison

When Need for Speed Underground shipped last November, its greatest virtues were obvious, even to nongamers. It is one of the best-looking PS2 games ever made, and it taps into the hottest aspect of car culture. That said, no one was really fully prepared for just how hot it would turn out to be. It hit the No. 1 spot in its opening week and hung on to the position for more than a month��an especially impressive feat considering the number of high-profile games released during the holiday season. By the end of December, the game was in the No. 2 spot for the entire year behind EA stablemate Madden NFL 2004 and had sold nearly a million units on PS2. Underground has remained popular in 2004 as well.

It��s no surprise to learn that Electronic Arts is keen to take advantage of this success and hit us with some kind of Need for Speed sequel this year. Rumors have been flying as to exactly what form this would take; the most likely guess seemed to be that the sequel would mix the ��traditional�� NFS fare (exotics like Ferraris and Lamborghinis) with Underground��s rice racers. What no one seemed to expect was a full-on sequel to Underground in such a short period of time, but that��s exactly what we��re getting.

We hooked up with some of the key members of the Underground 2 team and stood around looking at a tricked-out Honda Civic.

OPM The first Underground is still pretty hot; you must have started cooking on the new one almost immediately after the original. What��s the vision for this one?

Chuck Osieja, Executive Producer The vision from the start has been to take Underground 2 to a whole new level in terms of the experience and how the player interacts with the world. The first Underground allowed us to introduce players to tuner culture and allowed them to discover what tuning is all about. We really wanted to nail the idea of giving players enough customization options to build the cars that they really wanted.

This time out, we��re expanding that idea to the world and focusing on the idea of discovery of the tuner scene. The player isn��t handed every race. They have to go out and find them. This year the world is huge, and it��s all interconnected. There will be five distinct sections of the city, and the whole thing will be tied together with a pretty intense system of freeways. Players will be able to drive from one end of the city to the other, once they��ve unlocked all of the areas.

The first Underground was really a collection of tracks that were in the same world, but you could only drive on one at a time. This year you can drive from a circuit event to a drift event to a drag event without ever leaving the world. You can be racing in a point-to-point race and drive right past an area where a drift event is taking place. The world is alive, and things are happening as you drive through it.

You also drive to all of the tuner shops in the world. In order to get the parts in the game, you��ll have to find out where they are by talking to other drivers and then finding the shops in the city. Inventories change and new parts and options arrive all the time, so knowing where the best shops are is really an advantage. We��re really building on the idea that once players are in the Underground 2 world, they never have to leave. It��s a much more organic approach to the game this year.

Habib Zargarpour, Senior Art Director We��re using the previous game as a launching pad and adding an amazing number of parts, cars, and customizations that will provide much more variety. Underground 2 will look like it��s related to Underground, but with many visual enhancements that push the look further in the same direction. We had some great goals to begin with last year, and it took a daring sense of adventure to try and go there. Now we dare to go even closer to those goals.

OPM How can you possibly make the new game look better than the last one?

Neil Eskuri, Senior Art Director Underground was a very good-looking game with fabulous detail, but for the sequel we��re adding greater variety in terrain as well as implementing a cinematic look. When you watch a movie, color is used to achieve a mood and feeling. Underground tended to have a similar look throughout all of the races, so for the sequel we��re planning on several distinct areas of the city, and each will have its own mood.

OPM The first game pushed the limits of the PS2 quite visibly. Are there things that you want to do with the franchise that the current technology just won��t allow?

Chuck You��re right, we were pushing the limits of the hardware. There are quite a few things that we��ll be refining from the first engine that will allow us to add some slick effects into Underground 2. We really only got to about half of the effects that we wanted to get into the game.

The rendering team has developed quite a few effects that will really change the way the game looks and feels. We have a ��button�� in the engine that allows us to turn on all of the effects that we��ve added at once and instantly swap from Underground to Underground 2. The difference

is really dramatic.

Habib We can still push the PS2 further in terms of graphics. There are some great-looking titles out there, but it is becoming increasingly tougher to squeeze more out of the box. There have been some great strides made recently��like streaming data so not all of it has to be in memory at the same time, allowing us to make bigger worlds��and we are looking for more clever ways to use the same hardware. The trick is to focus on a few specific things we want to do graphically and push those as far as we can. We are all looking forward to the next generation of consoles to be able to match the visual complexity seen in today��s movie effects.

Arn Andt, Lead Engineer The effect we��ve always wanted to do is a ��true�� motion blur, but the hardware isn��t at a point where we can do those effects to the level we want yet. There��s definitely more room to push the graphics, though.

Neil It��s an interesting dance between technology and artistic appetite. I��m constantly amazed at what is added through technology and at the same time frustrated by the limits of the processors or just what we can put on the DVD. It��s always an issue, but it also enhances creativity to find ways to achieve what you want within the limits. In Underground 2, the world is much larger, and we��re always trying to put more into the look of the cars. There is a limitation to how much we can put onscreen at any one time, but we want to show more. Therein lies the creativity. The team is extremely resourceful at finding ways to keep pushing the bar. Artistic issues push the limits of technology, and then technology will open artistic ideas that were not possible previously.

OPM The first game had an incredible sense of speed; what are you doing to enhance or make this new in the second game?

Chuck I��m not giving away any secrets this year. We��ve got a few more things that we��re planning to add into the mix to crank up the sensation of speed a few more notches, but after seeing some of the driving games that are going to ship later this year, it��s obvious that they��ve learned a few things from Underground that they��re applying. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so I shouldn��t be surprised that camera shake and wet streets are already showing up.

OPM What are the most challenging aspects of working on the Need for Speed franchise? ��

Habib Driving games are very challenging because of the amount of road that can be covered at high speeds. This means a ton of geometry and textures whipping by. The Need for Speed franchise is especially difficult because the worlds are fictitious; we don��t copy an existing city. The roads are specifically designed to give you the best racing experience. The worlds surrounding the many miles of driving have to be designed to look interesting and be exciting to drive through, and that��s the biggest challenge.

OPM As cool as the challenges in Underground are, it gets kind of repetitive because of the sequence (race, drag, drift, wash, rinse, repeat). How will you add more variety to the experience so it doesn��t feel like you��re doing the same thing over and over again?

Chuck You noticed, huh? I personally put in over 1,000 hours tuning the game, so I know where you��re coming from. This is one of the focuses for Underground 2��let the players determine their experience. We��re designing an event system that allows players to play only the events they want to play and still make it through the game. If you love drifting and circuits, you can become great at those. If you prefer drag or one of the new modes, play those.

OPM What are the new modes?

Chuck I can��t tell you right now. What I can say is that there will be over seven different race modes, so I think that everyone will find enough events that they want to play, and they won��t be forced to play the ones that they don��t like. You don��t have to finish all of the events in a region to move on, either. Earn enough cash and reputation, and new areas of the world will open up to you. We��ve also designed the events so that you can go back and play any event over again.

OPM What cars do you want to get into

the sequel?

Chuck We��ve already settled on our car list, and I think players will be happy with the choices that we��ve made. We��re still in negotiations with some of the manufacturers, so I can��t mention the cars right now, but it will definitely be a broader selection of vehicles than what we had last year.

If you��ve watched the tuning scene over the last year, and lord knows I��ve been to enough car shows, the types of vehicles being tuned are really starting to run the gamut. Things you wouldn��t think of as being tuned last year are showing up all tricked out this year.

The majority of the list will still be hardcore tuner cars. We had a long list last year, and we had to make some pretty painful cuts to get the cars done. We��ll be going back in time for a couple of older models, and we��ll also be looking into the future at a few cars we think will be big on the scene in the next year or so.

OPM You drive a Toyota Sequoia, right? With SUVs being such a big part of the mod and tuning culture now, is there any desire to bring a bit of big-truck bling into Underground?

Chuck Hmm. Interesting idea. If we did, and I��m not saying we are, you��d have to make them fit. You can��t just throw them in and expect the player to say, ��Yippee, they put SUVs in Underground.�� They need a reason to be there, and they need to be integrated into the rest of the game. They would need to bring something special to the party. Stay tuned.

OPM Have you seen any trends in the online play of Underground that you want to address and improve in the sequel?

Chuck I��m really stunned by how many people are playing online. I��ve played some other racing games online, and after a week you��ll be lucky to find anyone to race against. Underground has really struck a chord with online gamers.

The biggest trend I think we��ve seen is the popularity of the drag racing. I think the reason for it is that the races are so short. You don��t have to be a pure driver to be good at drag racing; you just have to have good reactions. The other factor is that even if you know you��re going to lose, the races are short enough that there isn��t any reason to quit out; 20 seconds later, you can get right back into another drag and try and change the results. We��re working on a couple of new race modes that are similar��what we call ��burst�� experiences, short races that are very, very, intense. I think they��ll be just as popular online.

OPM What��s the fastest speed you��ve ever experienced in a car?

Chuck I��ve gotten up over 120 mph a couple of times, mostly in high school when I was young and reckless.

Neil I was driving my brother��s Pontiac Le Mans and trying to impress my girlfriend. We were on the freeway at around 2 a.m. and I pegged it at 120 mph.

The car started to shake and my heart began to pound and I brought it down. It was a thrill, but that was the only time.

OPM Will gearing make it into the new version? Will you be able to affect the setup of the car in a more specific way?

Chuck Oh yeah. One of the focuses of the game this year is to have a deep performance-customization aspect to the cars. We��re not changing the kits and packages that we had last year, but instead, we��re adding the ability for the player to buy and tune individual performance parts. Gear, shocks, torque curves, and much more will all be there for the player with enough car ��know-how�� to squeeze that little extra out of the parts that they put on their cars. Not only will you be able to tune individual parts on your car, but you will also be able to save multiple setups and then load them before each race.

At the same time, we don��t put the players who don��t have a lot of tuning knowledge at a disadvantage, because they can still buy and apply the kits and packages and get great performance upgrades for their cars.

We��re adding more parts to the game that you can customize both visually and mechanically. We��re also adding some new areas on the car to customize. We��ve been seeing a lot of really neat trends happening in the tuner scene over the last six months, so we��re making sure to be as up-to-date as possible. The other significant aspect that we��re adding this year is that visual parts that affect the physics of the car in real life will now have the same effect inside the game. Some of them, like spoilers for example, will also be tweakable so that you can increase or decrease the net impact of the part on the car.

OPM Mechanical upgrades were pretty generic in the first game. Will this be expanded on in Underground 2?

Chuck The ability to tune performance parts was the most requested feature that we heard during our consumer feedback research for Underground. That��s why it has become a focus for Underground 2. We really want to give players the same flexibility mechanically that we gave them visually. At the same time, we don��t want to turn the game into the type of experience where you need to know about wheel camber and gear ratios to be successful. The game is being designed to be easy to pick up and play, with a lot of performance tuning depth for those players who want to dig into it. The fail-safe is that as a player, you��ll never be able to screw up your car permanently, because for each part, kit, and package there will be a way to reset it back to its original performance specs.

OPM Can you keep more than one car in Underground 2? Not being able to was one of the disappointments of the first game, and it��s something that everyone would probably ask for next time.

Chuck Yes, you��ll be able to fill your garage with more than one car and then take the one you want to each race. In fact, you��ll be required to own more than one car, because there will be certain events that you won��t be able to do with certain cars. You won��t be able to make it all the way through underground mode this year with only one car, but you also won��t have to give up a car that you really love. You can buy other cars and have them in the garage. That means that the ��economy�� in the game will play an important role in your success this year. You��ll have to decide when to spend your money, not just what to spend it on.

OPM Street-racing culture is very much a nighttime thing, but will we see races or events in the sequel during the day? If so, what

different challenges do you face dealing with the change in lighting?

Neil No, we��re not planning any daytime stuff. But it would sure make it easier for the user to see the road. One of the biggest challenges for daytime lighting is in presenting the level of detail throughout the world. Because the sun illuminates everything, you��ve got more of the world lit, which you don��t need when it��s dark. Because it��s daytime, you don��t have as much of the specific lighting that you have at night, so a lot of the cool-looking neon and street lighting you can��t use. The use of shadow becomes one of your biggest tools, along with the angle of the sun and any weather you add to the game.

OPM What is the future of racing games? Where is it all going? Is there anything that can be done to make the genre much different in the future?

Chuck That��s really the million-dollar question, isn��t it? I think that games like Underground and the GT series have proven that players really want the ability to customize their racing experience. Whether it��s with a wide selection of visuals and performance, like in Underground, or with a wide variety of cars, like in GT, I think that��s the ��cost of entry�� now. As a player, you need to be able to express yourself and your personality through the car you��re driving or through what you��ve done to it. Unless it��s a pure arcade experience, I think that any time you��re asking a player to invest significant time, you need to give them enough choices to personalize their game.

The biggest problem that I see is a lack of creativity. It��s rare that I pick up a mag and see a racing game and say, ��I can��t wait to get my hands on that.�� There is way too much ��me too�� in the industry, and consumers are too smart to fall for it. Look at all of the GT clones that have shipped in the last few years. They didn��t even try to do anything different. We��re seeing the same thing now with Underground. We knew it was going to happen, but here come the ��street-racing games with rain-slicked roads.�� Whoo-hoo, can��t wait for that. As a gamer, I play as much as I can, and I think that my tastes are as discriminating as anyone��s. I��ve only got so much time to dedicate to my gaming, so I want my experience to either be ��tried and true�� with a brand that I know consistently delivers, or I want it to be something new and fresh that challenges my skills. I want to get my $50 worth every time.

Underground 2 in 60 Seconds

For those of you who don��t want to read the feature

1 Underground ended 2003 as the No. 2 game for the year behind Madden. It has now sold more than 1 million copies.

2 The new game takes place in an open city, and you drive between events.

3 You also drive to the tuner shops, which earns it the obligatory ��influenced by GTA�� badge.

4 There will be at least seven different types of events this time, and although not yet announced, there will be more short-sharp-shock events like the drag race.

5 The graphics are going to be even better (if you can imagine that), and the whole thing still takes place at night.

6 You don��t have to race certain events if you don��t want to. Don��t like to drift? What are you, weird? Then don��t.

7 The customization system is way deeper��you��ll be able to tune individual parts, and body kit parts will actually have a discernable aerodynamic effect.

8 You can build a collection of cars and put them in your garage. You don��t have to stick with just one. Cool.

HABIB ZARGARPOUR

SENIOR ART DIRECTOR

? Zargarpour worked at ILM for nine years on many films, including The Mask, Twister, Star Wars: Episode I, The Perfect Storm, and Signs.

? He was nominated for two Academy Awards for visual effects in Twister and The Perfect Storm.

? He won the British Academy Award (BAFTA) for visual effects in Twister and The Perfect Storm.

? Comic book fans will be pleased to learn that he created Spawn��s cape effect in the movie Spawn.

? He��s the creator of MelBotWars www.melbotwars.com.

Chuck Osieja

Executive Producer

? He��s been working in the game industry for 14 years.

? He invented the batting cursor for the World Series Baseball franchise for Sega Genesis.

? In the Genesis World Series Baseball games, he appears as every player.

? He��s traveled to every single baseball stadium twice (before 1998).

? He went to wrestling school while researching EA��s WCW Mayhem.

Arn Andt

Engineering Lead

? Andt is the cofounder of the Black Box Games

studio (now part of EA Canada).

? He was the lead rendering programmer for Hot Pursuit 2 and Underground.

? He created Underground��s awesome lighting system.

? The first game he wrote code for was Grid Runner for Sega Saturn.

? He��s been an international techno DJ for seven years, playing shows around Canada and Japan.

Neil Eskuri

Senior Art Director

? He was a ski patrolman at Mammoth Mountain for several years.

? He worked on the Academy Award�Cwinning EFX team for Total Recall.

? Eskuri was the digital effects supervisor for Disney��s Dinosaur.

? He is an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences member in visual effects.

? He worked his way through college as a professional magician.

How Many Cars?

We don��t know yet��but there will be lots

Although a final car list hasn��t been announced yet, the team has been able to drop some hints using the images it released for this story. Across these pages you��ll find the kick-ass new Nissan 350Z, the diminutive and rally-dominating Peugeot 206GTi, the blisteringly fast Mitsubishi Evo VIII, the space age Mazda RX-8, and the universally appreciated Mazda RX-7. All of them are heavy hitters, with the RX-7 in particular being an evergreen favorite. Import Tuner declares, ��If you��re going to s**t-talk the RX-7, you may as well be smack-talking your own mother.�� We��re assured that there will be plenty more when the game is released this November.

Under the Hood

It��s much more complicated this time

Using the performance upgrades is a much more complex process in Underground 2, and the effects they produce are much more adequately communicated through a much cooler-looking interface.

In the first game, you simply bought what appeared to be generic upgrades that enhanced the performance of your ride. In Underground 2, you��re presented with many more choices, and you now have to manage your available cash to find the best possible upgrade for specific events. As you can see here, there are more performance chips available for you to buy, and they vary greatly in cost and benefit.

Many Underground fans were frustrated that they couldn��t directly affect the way the car was set up. This time you can go much deeper and tweak many aspects between each race. This example shows the suspension sliders you can tweak, which will affect the performance graphs that appear at the bottom of

the screen.

Need for Urls

Check out these sites to meet like-minded fans

Many of the top Need for Speed sites are PC-centric because of the huge download opportunities. The forums are great places to hang out and talk about cars, though.

www.needforspeed.com

The official homepage for the game.

www.needforbetterspeed.net

Awesome site with great forums and downloads.

www.racerplanet.net

A great network of gearhead gamer sites with great forums and news.

www.nfscheats.com

Guess what? Cheats for the NFS games.

Copyright © 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine.