Codemasters has announced the latest entry in the GRID franchise during today’s EA Play Live presentation: GRID Legends. The fifth entry in the franchise sees a return to narrative-based action and will apparently feature extensive live-action cutscenes.
Legends will make use of Extended Reality, or XR, for its cutscenes, for deeper immersion and further blurring of the lines between virtual and reality. As Senior Game Designer Becky Crossdale, points out, this is a “classic underdog tale”, where the game places you behind the driver’s seat in the Grid World Series as you compete against the ever-dominant Ravenwest Motorsport team. If we had to guess, players will assume the role of the character portrayed by Ncuti Gatwa, who plays Eric Gaffiong in the Netflix original series Sex Education.
If the drama sounds familiar, it should. It seems Codemasters took the Braking Point story featured in F1 2021 to the next level. Now, with even more focus on paddock politics, personalities, and on-track drama.
As far as gameplay, Legends will include vehicles from a number of racing disciplines, including the Aston Martin Valkyrie. In addition, players can contend with big rigs, stadium trucks, drift cars, open-wheelers, muscle cars, electric cars, and hypercars. To make things more interesting, Legends features multi-class racing, allowing players to mix disciplines on the circuit.
Without revealing anything too specific, Crossdale also discussed some of the new features in the game. This includes new locations such as Moscow and the city of London, and a new track venue by the name of Strada Alpina.
Stay tuned for more as it’s available.
See more articles on EA Play Live 2021 and GRID Legends.
All I ask is that we get Tom Cotcher (Voice of Rick from the TOCA Race Driver games) as the crew chief. Throwbacks to the Race Driver games!!
As long as cut scenes are skippable all is not lost lol, probably be worth picking up in a sale eventually…
I have never gotten the appeal of story modes in racing. I just want to drive. The last Grid was terrible and I was bummed because the original Grid as well as AutoSport were two of my favorite racing games. If most of this game is locked and requires that story mode or purchase to unlock I’ll pass. Guess I’m finally too old for games cause if I want to watch I turn on a movie. I get games to PLAY. Very disappointing news. honestly I’d prefer a simple Grid I /Autosport remaster
So instead of improving physics / car handling, pushing graphics/realism up – this is (well…was) a racing game after all – they gave us a novel! Same for F1. I will check if my grandmother is interested, thank you!
Another one gone. EA is killing all the good games one by one.
What's next? A story of an old man looking for revenge for never been able to enter the rally championship for Dirt Rally 3? Can't wait…
What? F1 2021 is the best looking, best feeling codemasters f1 game so far. The team working on the physics are not the same people working on the story narrative.
Yes, F1 is a great game and Codemasters have done a great job with it – totally agree. I’m referring to the new story mode – fortunately it seems just a separate mode for that game – you don’t have to play it if you don’t want to. But in the case of Grid Legends it seems an integral part of the game similar to some of the Need for Speed games EA launched. I understand some people may be excited for it. For me – personally – it's a bit disappointing because I’m just interested in the racing aspect – couldn’t care less for stories, novels, whatever.
looks like your average annual EA money grab tbh, perhaps not much flesh apart from the cheesy new story… (content recycling ftw)
Add Ricky Bobby and Cal Naughton, Jr. characters as DLC.Shake n’ bake!
Need for Speed – Grid.
Probably be full of micro transactions, season pass and that gubbins. Didn’t take long for EA to get them money grabbing paws into Codemasters games.
Gonna finish Autosport’s single player career first and meanwhile I’ll look up some videos to see if it catches my attention. Currently in the 50/50 zone.
Going to wait this one out. Last few CM games I bought (Grid 2019, Dirt 5) ended up being light on content, lacked incentive to complete their careers, had odd physics with an equally odd collision bias in favor of the ai, and were/are very light on post-release content compared to other games. And that’s not counting how their engine has some very odd and off-putting graphical anomalies, particularly on Xbox consoles.
I’m not going to put myself through that a 3rd time, will have to wait and see what people say after a few months.
Not really that hyped for this. It looks like a cross between Grid 2019 and NFS 2015. I’m sure I’ll get this at some point, and that it will be fun for a while, but this is not a day 1 purchase for me.
I know it’s a little odd saying this but maybe the EA money isn’t a bad thing. With the live action story it looks like Codemasters might be able to try something fresh with the series here. If Braking Point is any indication this might end up being a pretty decent game.
What a refreshing take! I gotta agree mate, f1 2021 was a huge step in the right direction, so yeah fingers crossed it translates over to their other franchises.
Grid 2019 was really repetitive but fun, maybe i try this new game too, looks good with trucks and everything
Damn, GRID (2019) died pretty quickly
Grid 2019’s biggest problem (for me) was that it only had solid fundamental gameplay going for it and not much else, so I’m excited to see Codies taking a new spin and taking risk with that Grid 2019’s base. Definitely excited to see how this project will pan out.
In my opinion they should rework Racedriver Grid and build on that. The original game is one of the best racing games I have played. Story wise maybe not so detailed, but you need to earn enough money to race in your own car, racing contracts to build enough cash, then you build your team up and hire a teammate. That’s more fun and challenging than a probably scripted career