EA and Criterion surprised players with Need for Speed Unbound’s announcement, giving a first look at the city of Lakeshore and the city’s illegal street racing scene at the heart of the game. The game appears to pulling from the series’ more popular titles, including Need for Speed Underground and Hot Pursuit, to give players a more arcade-style, over-the-top racing game. It will also feature famed hip hop artist A$AP Rocky as a key character in the player’s quest to become the best street racer in Lakeshore.

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To accomplish this, players will need to unlock the game’s 143 total cars to customize for the streets, ranging from a number of Porsche 911 models to one of Lamborghini’s newest supercars, the Countach LPI 800-4. Other brands such as Honda, Ferrari, Mazda, McLaren, and Mercedez-Benz are also back in the game with plenty of cars to choose from, but what mat catch players by surprise this time around are the omissions. Toyota, Audi, Hyundai, and Maserati are four of the notable brands which will not have any vehicles features in the game at launch.

Toyota’s absence makes it the third-straight Need for Speed game the brand has skipped out on having its cars features, the last one being 2015’s Need for Speed. The reason it has previously given is it doesn’t want to be involved in “promoting illegal street-racing” according to a 2019 Twitter post. It hasn’t been completely absent from gaming, though, as Toyota’s cars have been featured in the more recent entries in the Forza and Gran Turismo series.

It would not be surprising to see some players disappointed by the news of these omissions, namely due to the cars that will be absent from the game at launch. The 1998 Toyota Supra, for example, has been a car long associated with street racing in entertainment thanks to its association with The Fast and The Furious film series and its late co-lead, Paul Walker. It also means just fewer cars for players to speed around the city with, though this could easily change with post-launch content if Criterion decides to add more cars to the game.

Need for Speed Unbound Car List

Need for Speed Unbound is scheduled to release December 2, 2022, on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.

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Source: Need for Speed