New Need For Speed Game Seemingly In Development

On LinkedIn, a job listing for Criterion Games seems to indicate that a new Need For Speed game is currently in development. However, there's an interesting twist to this.

In this job listing, the following is stated;

"With a proud history working on beloved franchises including Battlefield, Star Wars Battlefront, and Burnout, we're now challenging the conventions of the racing genre to take the Need For Speed franchise to the next level."

The job listing then goes on and indicates that we could see a randomly generated Need For Speed world:

"Work with the Environment Director and Technical Art team to explore and test different methods for creating and laying out the world, including procedural layout tools, developing new workflows and standards."

That's also not the only mention of a procedural world, with the job listing stating that a potential applicant should have:

"Experience with many different methods for creating a game world including modular systems and usage of procedural tools."

If this is a procedurally generated Need For Speed game that Criterion Games is developing, then this would be one of the first racing games to ever have a procedurally generated world and the first Need For Speed game to fall into this genre. There are likely a whole lot of challenges that come with a procedurally generated racing game, more so than any other genre, as you still have to be able to actually complete the course for the game to work at all.

The last Need For Speed game launched in November of last year and fell under the radar due to being launched in a packed environment. It was critically received rather warmly though, so hopefully a new installment in the franchise comes at a better time.