Y’know, the collective chatter amongst Kotaku writers has unofficially dubbed Need for Speed Rivals as the best next-gen game so far. Several among us have raved about the way it draws you in and entices you to keep playing. But, man, the lines coming out of the characters’ mouths in this racing game are terrible.
As seen here, Rivals’ first-person spoken text pops up in the game’s cutscenes and when you’re choosing a Speedlist of activities. They essentially form an internal monologue for the character that you’re supposed to be embodying, in either the Racer or Cop campaigns. It’s not the kind of dialogue you get in, say, a Mass Effect game. But that does not excuse the awfulness of lines like “You are asleep. I am awake.” Really?
In my review of the latest Need for Speed, I said that neither side of Rivals’ opposing factions are likable. The dialogue that’s responsible for that feeling creates a weird dissonance while playing. You want to best Rivals‘ challenges to prove your skill but the ham-fisted bluster surrounding the in-game action deadens the thrill of it. Thankfully, the instances where you have to listen to bro-tastic psyche-yourself-up talk are few. Still, you’ll wince every time you hear one of those gravel-voiced snippets.
With most games, the cutscenes and little bits of character insights delivered in spoken dialogue are supposed to be little rewards that draw you deeper. In Rivals, though, they’re laughable and clunky. For all the sizzle of Rivals’ design and visuals, it’s pretty clear that not all of this Need for Speed’s components got an upgrade.
Comments
12 responses to “The Best Next-Gen Game. The Worst Next-Gen Dialogue.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDA37BmvNwM&feature
If this is Next-Gen, I don’t want it…
boohoo its locked to 30fps… so it plays exactly the same as on every other system…
yes it’d be nice for us pc gamers to get 60fps… but if this is how they want it… then so be it… it still plays great in my opinion…
i look forward to copping shit for this post but its not that much of a big deal if the game plays how its meant to be played…
who knows they might patch it so we can run at 60fps without it screwing with the game, but if not i’m still going to play it and still going to enjoy it
Locked 30fps is a joke that takes literally nothing for a developer to disable. It’s lazy porting at its finest. Don’t support shoddy ports. Look at DaS, if not for Durante that would be almost unplayable – now it’s got a thriving PC community, namco have apologised and DaS2 is going to have a proper port. Speak out!
As I said, if this (locked to 30-FPS, multiple, unskippable cutscenes even to start the game, horrible interface/menus, terrible PC support in general etc) is what we’re supposed to consider ‘Next-gen’ then I don’t even know… I feel like there’s a joke that I’m missing.
Shouldn’t games get better over time, not worse? Why are you happy to pay more money for shinier graphics and less features/usability?
not saying the game is perfect… don’t quite understand your “happy to pay more money for shinier graphics and less features” comment… i have it on pc… it cost me about $35-40 during the amazon sales which i think is fair based on how new it is
i had bought it on PS4… but returned it because i didn’t feel i’d be happy for $68 (bigw price matched)… lol
Wow, just… wow.
Come along way since NFSU2 .___.
I’ve got it on the Xbone, did the tutorial last week when I got it, then it came up with “finding game”, and no matter how long I waited it would not proceed. The same thing happens EVERY TIME I boot it up.
Hi, if you can get to the options, try changing the game type to single player. This helped me on the PS4 after getting booked constantly…..
At least the racer is just a douchebag. The cop is a psychopath who seems to think street racing is the beginning of the apocalypse and they all need to be murdered before they destroy the world.
To be fair, media in general does an excellent job of informing the general public that this is the role of our police force. The thin blue line stands between order and chaos and chaos is winning according to the media. That’s why politicians always offer to enact harsher sentencing laws just before elections, it gets the newspapers and TV guys on their side.
I enjoy the little cutscenes to be honest, they’re so gloriously cheesy it’s amazing.
That being said I’ve only be going through the Cop side so far. . .
Are those actual quotes in the header photo? Goddamn that’s some corny dialogue. Maybe I can grow to love this game the way I love Fast and the Furious “Bullshit asshole, no-one likes the tuna here!”