Ubisoft reveals ‘The Crew’ plot will be a ‘revenge story’, stars Troy Baker

Racing games are notorious for having hilariously bad story arcs. Part of this is due to their nature, there's no central character to grow attached to, only a vehicle. Need for Speed has attempted to drive story for decades now with The Run perhaps being the pinnacle of painfully bad. We spoke with The Crew's creative director, Julian Gerighty about how his team is going to avoid these very potholes.

"The way we approach the narrative of the game is to make it fun and not pretentious," he says, "The last thing I’m going to tell you is that the story of this game is going to change the world, no it won’t.

"Thinking of the source material, it’s stuff like Gone In 60 Seconds, it’s stuff like The Fast and the Furious, which are super fun movies that don’t take themselves too seriously."

Rather than focus on one overarching story, the team has split up each region into smaller tales.

"[T]he time playing the narrative is about two hours to four hours per region. What we decided on was an approach where every region was going to give you another facet of the narrative.

"In New York, it’s about money, in the South it’s about taking out one of the criminal groups, and in the mountain states it’s all about creating new smuggling routes because it’s all off road. Every region changes the sort of overall objective from the narrative. It gives you a two, three or four hour objective that is fun and light."

Gerighty knows that more than anything it's about the quality his team imbues into the game, "What was important to me though is to have absolutely top-notch execution in it. The cinematics look fantastic; the voice acting is really good," he elaborates, detailing a well versed voice actors implication. "We started working with Troy Baker. . .He plays the role of the man guy, Alex Taylor. . .about three years ago [we started recording] and he elevates any material you give him."

Regardless of that Gerighty continues, "As long as we’re focusing on the best execution possible, I think it’s a good story."