Under the Hood: Story and Characters of NFS Heat

When we started our work on NFS Heat’s narrative, there were many things we needed to consider. Perhaps the most important among these were:What type of characters make the best friends and enemies within our world?How can we best support the duality of night and day?Who should our player character be?When we began story production on NFS Heat we knew that cops would be a major focus for the game. That made the choice to include them as antagonists clear, but we wanted to explore the antithesis of a lawful cop, out of which emerged the character of Lieutenant Mercer. Someone who would happily bend the rules for his own gain.It was important for us to engineer moments for the player and the cops to meet which felt plausible and above all consequential. Conflicts in NFS are most powerful when they are personal, so we wanted our antagonists to have a meaningful impact on the story and provide our scenes with a real sense of danger. When it came to our companions, we wanted to create a uni...