Creative director Alex Ward gets us up to speed on Most Wanted, a new open world racing game from the studio that gave us Hot Pursuit and Burnout Paradise.
"I think people like competition. And they like personal competition. And playing with your friends makes it personal. Autolog was about social competition. Here's a video game, but again here's what your friends have been doing. So in the new game we're putting your friends in the game as much as possible everywhere you drive autolog is pulling that data and comparing with your friends - what they've done, what cars they've driven, how fast they went, how far they jumped through this billboard, we'll even put your friends' faces in the game world. So you could drive around and see all your different friends scattered around the city, then you can smash the car through their picture."
"Our design philosophy on this game has been building a city, an open world where the player can drive under, over and through buildings. I like to connect from one thing to the other. I like to get off the track. There is no barriers in this world, it's still truly open, I don't believe that we should be driving around hitting invisible walls. That's why the whole game is open from the start. You're free to go wherever you want."
When asked whether he had any message for Burnout fans Alex Ward had the following to say:
"All I've said at Gamescom is that I think about it all the time. That's my first game, my first love that's how I got started. It's what made Criterion."
"It will be back. If you watch any James Bond film at the end it used to say "James Bond will return". And we used to put that, if you go back and look at the end credits of Burnout, I think 1 and 2, it always said the Burnout team will return. The Burnout team will return."