Video Game / Need for Speed (2015)

"Tonight, we ride."
^note The game's Driving Icons, from left to right: Shinichi Morohoshi, Ken Block, Akira Nakai, Magnus Walker, and (representing Risky Devil) Richard "Fish" Fisher.

^{Click here for the Deluxe Edition cover}

The One Without a subtitle and an antagonist. Alternately, the one with import tuning celebrities.

Need for Speed is an online open-world racing game developed by Ghost Games and published by Electronic Arts, released for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in November 2015, and released for Microsoft Windows on March 15, 2016. It is the twenty-second installment in the Need for Speed series and a Continuity Reboot of the franchise, hence the lack of a subtitle.

The story revolves around the Player Character being introduced to a small Ragtag Bunch of Misfits... well, racers, waiting to be noticed by any of the game's five Driving Icons, all of them being real-world motorsport and street racing figures: Spike, the young gun that introduces the player to his crew in the first place after being impressed by their skills, wants to meet Magnus Walker; Amy, the crew's mechanic, has a desire to greet Akira Nakai, Robyn, the social butterfly of the group, wants to come to the Risky Devil team; Manu, the crew's big guy and drifting specialist, wants to impress Ken Block, and Travis, the crew's de facto leader, is inspired by Shinichi Morohoshi. As the game progresses, the player earns reputation among the other drivers and people he meets along the way. As soon as the player defeats Magnus Walker, however, Spike becomes jealous and angry that the player got the chance to meet and test him before Spike did, but eventually gets over it after Travis convinces him that if one of them gets noticed, they all get noticed. Once the player becomes the ultimate icon, the final challenge is against all the members of the crew and the icons.

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Need for Speed (2015) features examples of:

• Always Night: The game takes place in constant nighttime, ranging from dusk to dawn to then back to dusk.
• Always Someone Better: During the last stretch of the Speed career path, Spike becomes steadily more and more jealous of the Player Character's abilities behind the wheel, causing some friction between the two. However, the other crew members and Magnus Walker himself call him out on this. In the end, Spike eventually accepts being second-best to the player, and rekindles their friendship.
• Artistic License – Cars:
  • The Honda Civic Type R featured in the game is clearly the pre-facelifted 1997 model, despite being labeled as a 2000 model. They would later carry over (still labeled as a 2000 model) in Payback, Heat and Unbound.
  • One of the hints states "Donuts in a FWD car? Forget." Except that, both in real life (and even in the game), you can do donuts in an FWD car - you just need to do it in reverse.
• Bad Guys Play Pool: Subverted. The Longhorn is Spike's Local Hangout where the rest of Travis's crew occasionally also hangs out and sometimes plays billiards during cutscenes. The only thing that qualifies for the "Bad Guy" part is that the main characters are actually illegal street racers.
• Battle in the Rain: While previous games had featured rain as part of their weather mechanic, this game takes it up even further, with Ventura Bay being draped in near-endless downpour. One Let's Play gamer describes Ventura Bay as a city with the weather as a "tropical rainforest".
• Bladder of Steel: Being an online-only game, even if you're using single player, the game lacks a pause button. There is a menu but everything still goes on in real time. Oh and don't think about going to the bathroom whenever you're in a pursuit or in a Marathon Level.
• Bookends: The game begins and ends with a meetup in the Club with the crew.
• Call-Back:
  • A BMW M3 E46 is available to the player in the game, with the Deluxe Edition giving players a modified version of the vehicle that looks like Most Wanted (2005)'s M3 GTR as a free starter car, and it is even represented on the Deluxe Edition cover using that familiar design.
  • The Legends Update brings back Eddie, the Big Bad from Underground, alongside Melissa from the same game (now acting as his Dragon), as well as a series of default wraps based on the characters from previous titles, and even a handful of songs tracing from the very first NFS up to ProStreet.
• Continuity Reboot: Word of God states that the 2015 installment is a complete reboot of the franchise, possibly as a result of the backlash over Most Wanted (2012) and Rivals by the tuner-era fanbase.
• Dance Party Ending: Each of the career paths end with the crew throwing down a party to celebrate their success. The only exception is the Outlaw path where it's just Travis and Morohoshi-san simply congratulating you and sharing a toast at a diner.
• Disc-One Nuke: If you have the Deluxe Edition of the game, you can grab the BMW M3 E46 "Deluxe" (bonus points for being free) and blast through the early stages to the game by a huge margin.
• Downloadable Content: In a surprise twist for an EA game, all the game's DLC were released as free updates under what Ghost Games called the "Living Game".
• Fictional Social Network: The game features a social media app named Bl@h; the usernames in it start with an "@" and it uses a light blue color scheme, just like Twitter, but the fact that the characters in the game appear to use it for instant messaging and voice messages makes it look more like WhatsApp (or Telegram for that matter, which does also have a light blue color scheme).
• Gratuitous Japanese: Morohoshi-san and Nakai-san speak Japanese in the game full of English speaking characters.
• Greasy Spoon: The crew tends to hang out at an archetypal American diner, simply called "Diner".^note Even in the European Spanish dub, it is still called "Diner". Oddly enough, it seems to also double as a Bad Guy Bar, as the group of Outlaws the anonymous Outlaw (aka Travis) belongs to also reunite there to plan their law-breaking runs, even though the main crew also hang out at an actual bar called "The Longhorn" which looks more like a typical BGB.
  Spike: [after arriving with the crew at the diner] Nobody order anything over five bucks.
  Manu: It's a diner. Everything's over five bucks.
• Group Picture Ending: The game's Golden Ending, where, after winning the final race, you are greeted with every one of your friends as well as the five Icons having a photo with the player character (who wears a mask).
• Improbably Cool Car: The Beck Kustoms F132 is a forbidden killer machine, and perhaps one the rarest vehicles to have appeared in the series. It's a concept supercar, combining a body of a 1932 Ford hot rod, an engine from a NASCAR stock car and the aerodynamics of a Formula One car. It's considered an Infinity +1 Car due to its non-upgradable maxed stats and being already fitted with a Nitro Boost by default.
• Instant Web Hit: Some of the game's career paths, like the ones for Magnus Walker and Ken Block, require you to upload a video of your performance in a race online to get tons of views and likes, to the point that the Driving Icon gets interested on you. Gameplay and Story Segregation applies: How well you do on the race doesn't matter in the slightest; regardless of how badly you screw up, apparently you're still considered good enough for the Icon to want to find you.
• Lighter and Softer: Compared to Rivals, this game emphasizes more on The Power of Friendship. In fact, it doesn't even have a villainous antagonist; the Driving Icons the player faces against are all friendly rivals.
• Made of Indestructium: The VBPD's police cars are very indestructible, no matter how many times or how hard you try to hit them.
• Marathon Level: The final race, "On the Dream Team": You against the rest of the crew and the Icons, in a race around the whole Ventura Bay.
  Robyn: #UltimateBestNightEver!
• Multiple Endings: The game offers five different endings - one for each career path, and a Golden Ending/Omega Ending after clearing all career paths 100% and doing the two final races.
• Nice Guy: Majority of the characters sport a very friendly facade. Downplayed for Amy though who is perhaps to be more of a Jerk with a Heart of Gold due to her constant teasing manner.
• No Antagonist: The game doesn't have a villainous antagonist; the Driving Icons the player faces against are all friendly rivals, with the challenge laying more on the player themselves testing their skills. The one that comes the closest is Travis, after it's revealed to be the one sending anonymous messages to the player for the Outlaw events, but it's ultimately shrugged off as being Travis's unorthodox way to motivate the player, and the way he brings Nakai-san's RWB 911 to the garage making it look as if he stole it, but that fact that he later brings Nakai-san himself to the garage reveals that he was okay with lending him the car.
• New Game Plus: The Speedlists update introduced Prestige mode, which unlocks after completing the story mode. It can be toggled on or off at will and lets the player face the five story paths with increased difficulty and ranked timing with three medals - Bronze, Silver, and Gold. Good luck trying to get even Bronze in these challenges, you'll need it.
• Palette Swap:
  • The Toyota GT86/Scion FR-S/Subaru BRZ triplets. In real life, they are all the same car sold under three different brands, since it was a collaboration between Toyota and Subaru (and Scion was an American brand of Toyota).
  • The same would go for the MY17 Nissan GT-R introduced in one of the patches, joining alongside its MY15 counterpart.
• P.O.V. Cam: All the cutscenes are viewed in the perspective of the player. The only time it departs from it is at the very end when the player goes to take a group photo with the rest of the main cast (where they use a fox mask to keep their face covered).
• Police Are Useless: The police AI in this game is so amazingly dumb, it's actually difficult to gain the achievement of escaping a two-star pursuit, simply because baiting them into chasing you was hard to begin with, and then you had to go out of your way to babysit the police into increasing your wanted level.
• Product Placement: Due to this installment's partnership with Speedhunters,^note although the partnership between NFS and Speedhunters began with Shift six years prior, actual aftermarket manufacturers that have partnered or been featured in Speedhunters such as Rauh-Welt Begriff (a renowned Porsche tuning shop, with its owner, Akira Nakai, being featured as a character in-game and also an opponent) and 6666 Customs (owner of Rocket Bunny and Liberty Walk) are going to appear in full form instead of generic parts. Ken Block's presence in the game also means that Monster Energy drinks are featured as well. There are also Hot Wheels-branded trucks and billboards in the game world, too.
• Scenery Porn: The game continues the trend set by Hot Pursuit (2010) and Rivals, with Ventura Bay possibly being the best-looking locale seen in the series so far. The PC version exploits this trope to the fullest extent with 4K graphics and an unlocked framerate, which was a huge breath of relief for those coming from the (underwhelming) PC port for Rivals.
• Score Multiplier: Drift-related events fall under this trope:
  • In Drift Train, your score multiplies when you drift closer to nearby opponents. The more opponents that are within your proximity, the bigger the multiplier.
  • In Touge, your score multiplies when you overtake opponents. Take the lead for a maximum multiplier.
• Spectacular Spinning: Donut Spots. One of the collectibles around Ventura Bay that require you to perform donuts in order to collect it.
• Shout-Out:
  • The platinum Trophy for the PS4 version is titled "I Feel the Need...", once again explicitly referencing that the name of the franchise is inspired by a quote in Top Gun: "I feel the need… the need for speed!"
  • One of the challenges is named "Assume the Position", a reference to the taunt the opponent racer made to the player in one of the FMVs of the original The Need for Speed.
  • During the cutscene where Travis brings Nakai-san's Porsche to the garage, to Amy's astonishment:
    Amy: Never said you actually knew [Nakai-san], Travis.
    Travis: Ha ha ha... Nakai, Obama, the Dalai Lama...
  • One of the AI roaming racers is named "PatrickStar".
• A Taste of Power: Subverted. The first car you get to drive as a "taste" is a pokey, bone-stock, black Foxbody Mustang. After that, you start your career with one of 3 cars: either a Subaru BRZ, a Honda Civic Type R, or... a red Foxbody Mustang.
• Two Girls to a Team: The main racing crew consists of Amy and Robyn (female), Spike, Manu, and Travis (male), and the Player Character (who is implied to also be male).
• Vanity License Plate: The game uses a license plate design from Real Life for the first time in the series (that of California). The Showcase Update would later add Rivals' racer license plate designs as customization choices and allowed players to change the plate frames for the first time, a feature that would stick with subsequent games.

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"Everyone say 'SPEED'!"

"SPEED!"