Interview with Chuck Osieja, Exec Prod for EA's NFS:Underground

Warcry: Can you tell us who you are and what you do at EA on the Need for Speed:Underground project?

Chuck: My name is Chuck Osieja and I'm the Executive Producer for Need for Speed Underground.

Warcry: How does Need for Speed:Underground differ from the Need for Speed titles before it?

Chuck: It's completely different. Traditionally Need for Speed has been about high end, exotic sports cars. Need for Speed Underground sort of turns the franchise "on it's ear" by going in a different direction with low-priced, custom built, "Tuner" cars. It's really the antithesis of the traditional Need for Speed. In Underground the player gets to build a 600 bhp "urban exotic" car piece by piece. What the car looks like and how it performs is completely up to the player. They get to build their dream car. It's a reflection of what kids are doing today - all over the world.

Warcry: What were the main issues that had to be overcome before releasing Need for Speed:Underground?

Chuck: The two biggest issues that we had to solve were creating a believable sense of speed and the ability to swap parts on the car and maintain a high visual quality.

The sense of speed in Underground is like nothing you've ever felt before. We really made an effort from the beginning to make sure that when the speedometer says you're going 120 mph it really feels like you're going that fast. Too often driving games don't match the sensation of speed with the speedometer. We've taken great care to understand what makes a car look like it's going fast, from the camera to the way light reflects in the world. The results have been amazing.

Underground goes so fast at times that I've seen people physically react to game. Their palms sweat and they literally jump out of their seat on a close call. You can be physically exhausted after a: 30 drag race. Underground is taking racing to a whole new level in terms of speed.

The parts swapping is another area that we set a high bar from the beginning of the project and the team was able to rise to the challenge. We wanted to make sure that if we were going to include the ability for the player to swap parts on the car that in the end the car maintained the same level of visual quality. We're not talking about 5 or 10 parts. There are literally hundreds of parts for each car so it was a pretty big task. We shipped the game with 20 base cars but with all the parts that we built we calculated that we actually built almost a hundred total cars. It was tough but the car team and the rendering guys are extremely talented and I think the results speak for themselves.

Warcry: How customizable are the cars?(can you upload your own skins?

Chuck: The car customization is one of the major focuses of the product. It's not just a marketing "bullet point" for the back of the box. It's something we've taken great care to get right.

Anything you think you could customize on the car is customizable. There are hundreds of parts per car as well as over 100 different paint colors in multiple paint styles, and hundreds of after market manufacturer decals. The vinyl system alone offers over 400 separate vinyl's that the player can custom color and layer on four separate layers of the car.

I wouldn't compare what we're doing in Underground to what anyone has done in a driving game to this point - it just wouldn't be fair. One of the guys on the team calculated how many different ways you could build out just one of the twenty cars in the game. The number was over 71 billion (yes that is with a B). One of the "mantras" of the game design from the beginning was that "10,000 people who own Underground could all have the same model of car and they could all look completely unique".

Warcry: Will players be able to set up their own race servers?

Chuck: We run all of the on-line through our EA.com servers.

Warcry: What direction do you see Need for Speed going next?

Chuck: We've started working on the next title in the Need for Speed series but it's a bit premature to talk about it. Actually, I'm still recovering from Underground.

Warcry: Anything you would like to add about the upcoming release?

Chuck: Prepare to set aside a lot of free time. Besides all of the racing options I've personally lost countless hours just customizing and tweaking my ride. It can be pretty addicting.

With all of the customization options it is quite possible that you will never see a car like yours. I also downloaded the demo and I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised by the graphics and the feel of the game. If you are at all into the new street racing scene but can't afford those speeding tickets I would suggest giving this game a spin and checking out just how many cars you can create.

[a href = "ftp://largedownloads.ea.com/pub/demos/nfsudemo_release.exe"] Need for Speed Demo[a]
[a href = "http://www.eagames.com/official/nfs/underground/us/home.jsp"]Official Homepage[a]