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The interview was conducted person to person, and while I did actually speak to a good amount of people, the people I quoted after asking are Larry Lopierre Producer on the game, Justin Weeb Associate Producer, and Habib Zargarpour Senior Art Director on the Need for Speed titles.
XE: What are the key differences in the Xbox and Xbox 360 development?
Justin: The 360’s rendering engine is definitely the most noticeable and basically biggest addition to the 360 version of the title. Actually 85%-90% of the code within the games are common.
Habib: High-definition support, real-time shadows and so on. We really opened Pandora’s Box on the visuals so to speak.
How long has the game been in development for both the Xbox and the 360?
Justin: Both have been two years in development, with six months of preproduction.
Larry: Well since we are working with a new system on the 360, it is obviously going to take a bit of time to investigate how to use the hardware. We really started on the 360 version not knowing what exactly the 360 could do. There are still things out there that Microsoft doesn’t make available to us because they are still finalizing details, so it is a constant struggle figuring out if we can do something or not. Luckily, the 360 is plenty powerful for what we have.
The front of EAX in Vancouver.
XE: How long have you had the beta and final 360 kits?
Larry: I can’t really say anything but like I said before we have been working on the game for longer than you would think on the 360.
XE: What is the involvement of Hollywood?
Larry: Josie Moran who is sort of the ‘Need for Speed’ girl this year is in it. A lot of people who are working on the team have worked in Hollywood.
Habib: I actually used to work at Industrial Light and Magic. I worked on the wave in ‘The Perfect Storm’, effects in ‘The Mask’, and the pod-racing scene on ‘Star Wars: Episode 1’.
XE: What about the soundtrack this year?
Larry: When we first started the game we thought well we will license songs but then we went back and said we should compose our own music, and mix it in with licensed songs. So when you are getting chased by the cops, the music becomes more intense and you feel like you are in a Hollywood movie or that you are actually there in the action. It give the game a real organic feel.
XE: What elements from the past NFS titles will we see and what is new?
Larry: It isn’t completely an arcade game, not simulation, a bit of ‘Underground’ mixed with ‘Hot Pursuit’. If I had to sum it up in one sentence I might say that.
XE: With the Xbox 360 you have a real challenge: a lot of these racers are only available for the console like ‘Full Auto’, ‘Project Gotham Racing 3’, and so on. The game is also coming out to other current generation platforms as well so why shouldn’t someone just buy the new Xbox 360 exclusive titles over ‘Most Wanted’?
Larry: It is all about what people want. Would you rather see if you can see what neat tricks you can do in the game or watch someone beat a certain track and then try and beat that? I would rather want to get down to it, race, get chased by the cops so I can outrun them, and so on. In the end we spend just as much time on 360 games as much as developers who work just on 360 games. In fact you seen around the office that most of us are concentrating a lot of our efforts on the 360 because it is the new system and we need to be up to par on it.
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