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Need for Speed: Heat will have series’ best weather yet, Rivals-style heat multipliers

The team consider it 'Rivals at night'

The upcoming Need for Speed: Heat will see a return of the heat multipliers from Need for Speed: Rivals and feature more dynamic weather.

The creative director of the game, Riley Cooper, answered questions at Gamescom. He stated that Heat has been dubbed internally ‘Rivals at night’ because the mechanics of generating heat are very similar. “Some of the ways we talk about the game in the studio is ‘Rivals at night’, because it does function in a very similar fashion,” He said. “You have a limited amount of car health, your Heat increases the more you race. Higher heat brings more cop attention, which threatens your car health more, but also acts as a multiplier, so you’re tempted to push your night further.”

Heat is the barometer for attention from police as you race around. In Need for Speed: Rivals, you could get heat multipliers by doing as much illegal activity as possible. It was a fun way to incentivize being a general menace.

The weather is also getting an upgrade. In Rivals, certain conditions were locked to certain regions. In Heat, the combinations for both day and night are greater than any previous Need for Speed game.

“Even though we divide the game experience into day and night, there are different day settings, different night settings, times of day within day, within night,” Riley explained. “And then weather can dynamically change, most dramatically with rain. It can begin raining in the middle of a given day or night, the roads will get wet. If it stops raining during day in particular, the roads will dry up, but you could have a sunny day with wet roads, new combinations that Need for Speed hasn’t had.”

We can test the roads for ourselves when Need for Speed: Heat comes out November 8, 2019.