Post by Deleted on Oct 6, 2014 12:14:03 GMT 1
Hello, as promised, here are what I think of the theories involving these two games. I promise, they're good and have a couple additions that I didn't see listed here!
Most Wanted:
-Female officer:
The female officer on the billboards and featured in early promotional artwork is model Lohralee Stutz. Simone Bailly is the actress who was partnered with Cross within the game. Unsurprisingly enough, the character was credited to Lohralee in the credits (in-game, Simone is listed correctly on imdb) to the character. Simone used to have a nice on-set shot with some other Most Wanted folks on her website, too.
-Bull:
Toru Sato (formerly Toro) used to have a vinyl on his car. I can't quite remember where or when I saw it, but I think it was on the official Australian website for the game. It was white and similar to a skeleton or something along those lines.
-Deleted Mia Cutscene
I'm pretty sure the cutscene clip we saw of Mia hanging out of the BMW with Razor driving is part of of a deleted fantasy sequence either by Razor on the player's inner thoughts "taunting" him. It makes no sense otherwise.
-Alpha Cutscene
The deleted alpha cutscene shows a truck that has a "Volo" logo on it. This Need For Speed team used to develop all of the driving missions in the James Bond video games at that time. "Volo" is short for "VoloTech", a cover company of the main villain Nikolai Diavolo, in the 007 game, Everything Or Nothing in 2004.
Need For Speed Carbon:
Ah, Need For Speed Carbon, SO much going on here! Long story short, I think most of the gaps in the story or landscape come from the fact that the NFS games were on such a short development schedule (which eventually lead to the studios being reorganized, etc, not that it helped). I'm quite certain that Carbon was planned and developed to be a bigger and bolder game than we ended up with. It would explain the missing/broken features, downgraded graphics, extras left in the files, etc.
-Mystery City
It wouldn't surprise me if Palmont wasn't the original plan for Carbon's world. However, the map really looks like it wouldn't "flow" well and I'm glad it got reorganized. I think leaving the map in the demo was just for the sake of showing something off as a placeholder until Palmont was finished.
-San Juan/Sal Mustalla
Due to the developmental constraints and lack of time, I think San Juan was just "cut" from the story. It's been mentioned that San Juan was the "training" ground before the player enters Palmont. A guy in the trailer for San Juan stated that developing one of the sections takes 8 months, so it's unsurprising that they didn't have time to create as large of a world as they originally planned. This also helps the case of Sal and the Salazaar street crew. I agree with the theory that San Juan used to have a boss and crew, and Sal was a member of it. It makes his appearance less "out of nowhere". When Carbon was still under development, I emailed the actor who played Sal hoping to get story details out of him. He replied, but wouldn't give anything away. If anyone can find an email listed for him on his website or anything, it wouldn't hurt to ask him. The Mazda dealer's background was probably made from leftovers from San Juan's car lot (had it been a fully developed section, it would've had a car lot). This car lot was likely the one shown in the cutscene in the beginning of the game. I'm not fully convinced that Kenji was really a San Juan boss, he was just developed first so he was used in the demos and trailers. But if downtown didn't exist in the same way in Mystery City (which might explain the lack of Le Samurai graffiti), I suppose he could've been.
-Crews/Le Samurai
I agree that the other crews initially had a larger role. I actually feel like the developers were almost shooting for a GTA approach to the crews and open world (minus the crime and violence, of course). I'm not convinced that Le Samurai wasn't just the previous incarnation of the crew and boss that became Stacked Deck and Darius. Silverton might not have existed in as much of a presence in Mystery City, and Stacked Deck is a much better fit for Darius and his crew. As for the Le Samurai graffiti, I think Downtown just got overlooked when the city was reorganized.
-Silverton Safehouse/Car Lot
If anyone has purchased the official strategy guide for the game, the map included shows both a car lot and a safe house in Silverton. The car lot is shown right where the road curves around the back of The Mirror casino. I was actually thinking the parking garage at that location is where the game's menu takes place (until I saw the video showing that the menu is where Montezuma casino is). The safehouse is shown in Diamond hills, close to where the road splits (not by the gas station, but further North, halfway). When gamers were wondering where the heck the missing cars for the game were (the ones that were NEVER unlocked despite completing the game), it was tossed around that there was a hidden car lot in Diamond Hills. This was most likely misinformation resulting from the Mazda dealership and the safe house shown on the map in Diamond Hills.
-Locked Cars
This is what I believe "confirms" that the game was unfinished and underdeveloped. SO many cars were supposed to be in Need For Speed Carbon, but weren't anywhere to be found without hacks or buying them. I think they ran out of time and simply forgot to include a way to acquire them or unlock them. I think the cars being unfinished would also support why some are only available as "custom" cars in quick race and not as fully customizable cars. This all might apply to some of the locked customization options, but a lot of those can be unlocked by playing online and gaining XP levels.
-GameCube bugs
This is just some more evidence for my opinion that the game was underdeveloped. Firstly, the GameCube version looks terrible compared to the other console's I've played on, and I'm not sure if it applies to PS2 or Xbox. The 1999 Mitsubishi Eclipse has those glowing "lines" on all of the edges of the car, and it looks horrible. I think the last generation had its day by the time Carbon rolled around. Also, half the reward cards didn't work! You would meet all the requirements and the corresponding quadrants to the cards would be blue, but the gold border around the whole card wouldn't be there, nor would the reward unlock. Never got some of the visual rewards, nor got to drive the Police Interceptor or Cross Corvette. The autosculpt on GameCube was incredibly choppy, and not worth the time, either. One more interesting tidbit is that the Junkie XL remix of Feel the Rush sounds slightly different on the GameCube version. There's actually three version's of JXL's remix. This weird GameCube version, the one that was on the other consoles, and the one that was on the iTunes single.
-55DSL
It's been touched on, but about half the clothes on the characters came from this clothing label. The promotional artwork featuring melody. (not as Yumi) came from the trailer on their website. The clothes were expensive, but if you were wealthy at the time, I DID see Samson an Sal's shirts for sale on their website! ;-)
Closing thoughts:
Overall, I think Need For Speed Carbon was planned to be a MUCH bigger and bolder game than we ended up with. With the Need For Speed series on such a short development cycle, I'm quite certain that the developers simply didn't have the time, money, or hardware to back up the dreams and features meant for the game, hence the broken or missing features littered throughout the game. I feel that the head honchos dream too big for what they can handle at the time. Still, I think Need For Speed Carbon was the highlight of the series.
Most Wanted:
-Female officer:
The female officer on the billboards and featured in early promotional artwork is model Lohralee Stutz. Simone Bailly is the actress who was partnered with Cross within the game. Unsurprisingly enough, the character was credited to Lohralee in the credits (in-game, Simone is listed correctly on imdb) to the character. Simone used to have a nice on-set shot with some other Most Wanted folks on her website, too.
-Bull:
Toru Sato (formerly Toro) used to have a vinyl on his car. I can't quite remember where or when I saw it, but I think it was on the official Australian website for the game. It was white and similar to a skeleton or something along those lines.
-Deleted Mia Cutscene
I'm pretty sure the cutscene clip we saw of Mia hanging out of the BMW with Razor driving is part of of a deleted fantasy sequence either by Razor on the player's inner thoughts "taunting" him. It makes no sense otherwise.
-Alpha Cutscene
The deleted alpha cutscene shows a truck that has a "Volo" logo on it. This Need For Speed team used to develop all of the driving missions in the James Bond video games at that time. "Volo" is short for "VoloTech", a cover company of the main villain Nikolai Diavolo, in the 007 game, Everything Or Nothing in 2004.
Need For Speed Carbon:
Ah, Need For Speed Carbon, SO much going on here! Long story short, I think most of the gaps in the story or landscape come from the fact that the NFS games were on such a short development schedule (which eventually lead to the studios being reorganized, etc, not that it helped). I'm quite certain that Carbon was planned and developed to be a bigger and bolder game than we ended up with. It would explain the missing/broken features, downgraded graphics, extras left in the files, etc.
-Mystery City
It wouldn't surprise me if Palmont wasn't the original plan for Carbon's world. However, the map really looks like it wouldn't "flow" well and I'm glad it got reorganized. I think leaving the map in the demo was just for the sake of showing something off as a placeholder until Palmont was finished.
-San Juan/Sal Mustalla
Due to the developmental constraints and lack of time, I think San Juan was just "cut" from the story. It's been mentioned that San Juan was the "training" ground before the player enters Palmont. A guy in the trailer for San Juan stated that developing one of the sections takes 8 months, so it's unsurprising that they didn't have time to create as large of a world as they originally planned. This also helps the case of Sal and the Salazaar street crew. I agree with the theory that San Juan used to have a boss and crew, and Sal was a member of it. It makes his appearance less "out of nowhere". When Carbon was still under development, I emailed the actor who played Sal hoping to get story details out of him. He replied, but wouldn't give anything away. If anyone can find an email listed for him on his website or anything, it wouldn't hurt to ask him. The Mazda dealer's background was probably made from leftovers from San Juan's car lot (had it been a fully developed section, it would've had a car lot). This car lot was likely the one shown in the cutscene in the beginning of the game. I'm not fully convinced that Kenji was really a San Juan boss, he was just developed first so he was used in the demos and trailers. But if downtown didn't exist in the same way in Mystery City (which might explain the lack of Le Samurai graffiti), I suppose he could've been.
-Crews/Le Samurai
I agree that the other crews initially had a larger role. I actually feel like the developers were almost shooting for a GTA approach to the crews and open world (minus the crime and violence, of course). I'm not convinced that Le Samurai wasn't just the previous incarnation of the crew and boss that became Stacked Deck and Darius. Silverton might not have existed in as much of a presence in Mystery City, and Stacked Deck is a much better fit for Darius and his crew. As for the Le Samurai graffiti, I think Downtown just got overlooked when the city was reorganized.
-Silverton Safehouse/Car Lot
If anyone has purchased the official strategy guide for the game, the map included shows both a car lot and a safe house in Silverton. The car lot is shown right where the road curves around the back of The Mirror casino. I was actually thinking the parking garage at that location is where the game's menu takes place (until I saw the video showing that the menu is where Montezuma casino is). The safehouse is shown in Diamond hills, close to where the road splits (not by the gas station, but further North, halfway). When gamers were wondering where the heck the missing cars for the game were (the ones that were NEVER unlocked despite completing the game), it was tossed around that there was a hidden car lot in Diamond Hills. This was most likely misinformation resulting from the Mazda dealership and the safe house shown on the map in Diamond Hills.
-Locked Cars
This is what I believe "confirms" that the game was unfinished and underdeveloped. SO many cars were supposed to be in Need For Speed Carbon, but weren't anywhere to be found without hacks or buying them. I think they ran out of time and simply forgot to include a way to acquire them or unlock them. I think the cars being unfinished would also support why some are only available as "custom" cars in quick race and not as fully customizable cars. This all might apply to some of the locked customization options, but a lot of those can be unlocked by playing online and gaining XP levels.
-GameCube bugs
This is just some more evidence for my opinion that the game was underdeveloped. Firstly, the GameCube version looks terrible compared to the other console's I've played on, and I'm not sure if it applies to PS2 or Xbox. The 1999 Mitsubishi Eclipse has those glowing "lines" on all of the edges of the car, and it looks horrible. I think the last generation had its day by the time Carbon rolled around. Also, half the reward cards didn't work! You would meet all the requirements and the corresponding quadrants to the cards would be blue, but the gold border around the whole card wouldn't be there, nor would the reward unlock. Never got some of the visual rewards, nor got to drive the Police Interceptor or Cross Corvette. The autosculpt on GameCube was incredibly choppy, and not worth the time, either. One more interesting tidbit is that the Junkie XL remix of Feel the Rush sounds slightly different on the GameCube version. There's actually three version's of JXL's remix. This weird GameCube version, the one that was on the other consoles, and the one that was on the iTunes single.
-55DSL
It's been touched on, but about half the clothes on the characters came from this clothing label. The promotional artwork featuring melody. (not as Yumi) came from the trailer on their website. The clothes were expensive, but if you were wealthy at the time, I DID see Samson an Sal's shirts for sale on their website! ;-)
Closing thoughts:
Overall, I think Need For Speed Carbon was planned to be a MUCH bigger and bolder game than we ended up with. With the Need For Speed series on such a short development cycle, I'm quite certain that the developers simply didn't have the time, money, or hardware to back up the dreams and features meant for the game, hence the broken or missing features littered throughout the game. I feel that the head honchos dream too big for what they can handle at the time. Still, I think Need For Speed Carbon was the highlight of the series.
Nice!