Just a little over a year before we were blessed with the Need for Speed reboot, Ubisoft dropped a little gem known as “The Crew,” an open-world game focused on racing with an interesting story line. Like the NFS reboot The Crew was criticized for its always-online style of gameplay (makes you wonder why NFS did it a year later, huh?) but still received decent reviews despite the technical glitches and problematic user interface. Over the next few years, there were a couple of expansion packs released to keep the game relevant as NFS hit the shelves. Come E3 2017, and Ubisoft has officially announced a sequel, The Crew 2, which will be based in the U.S. again, but brings about a redesigned map of the country to go with the addition of new vehicles: bikes, planes, and boats.

Called “Motornation,” the redesigned map of the U.S. in the Crew 2 should be insanely massive, offer up more cities, and more details than before. Switching between vehicles types is said to happen on the fly, at your beck and call, so you can switch from four wheels to two wheels, to none at all with the press of a button. There will be four motorsports families in the game that will include street races, off-roaders, pro racers, and freestylers, all of which will offer up new rides and the ability to customize them as you see fit. New vehicles and items will also be earned through the various competitions or encounters of chance. And, for those of you who have sunk hours upon hours of your life into the first game, you’ll be greeted with a Crew Rewards Program that will offer you as many as 18 vehicles in The Crew 2. So, ready to check out the reveal and some gameplay of the upcoming game? Let’s get to it.

Reveal Trailer

So, we’ve got cars, boats, bikes, and planes – it sounds like grand theft auto without all of the killing, drug abuse, and prostitutes on a much larger scale, right? Personally, I’m still holding out hope for the next NFS game, but I can’t deny that this announcement trailer is definitely intriguing. The idea of racing boats and planes on a whim across a map that’s styled after the entire U.S. is definitely a big selling point for the game, but I never got into the first game that much because of that always-online nature (the same reason I put in like 20 hours of gameplay in NFS as well) so, with any luck, The Crew 2 will alleviate us from this annoying form of forced gameplay. Online play is fun and all, but not when you’re forced to do it and your progress can be stopped by some other player who just wants to be a prick and knock you out of a race. With that said, things are starting to look promising for The Crew 2, but what about actual gameplay? Well, there’s some pre-alpha footage here too, so let’s take a good look.

10 Minutes of Pre-Alpha Gameplay

Now that you’ve seen the gameplay, what do you think? It’s not quite as realistic as was depicted in the announcement trailer, but that’s to be expected. I have to say; the gameplay looks promising. The quick changing between vehicles, the wide-open U.S. – it’s all very cool. However, I think the rooftop racing goes a little too far as it’s far from realistic, but it’s still a cool feature too. This is pre-alpha footage, however, so who knows how much the game will change between now and the time it hits the shelves, but I must admit that it has my attention. What about you? Think you’ll jump on the opportunity to grab a copy when it comes out or do you think you’ll stick with Need for Speed: Payback when it comes out on November 10 of this year? Let us know what you think in the comments section below and stay tuned for updates on The Crew 2.

***Note to Layout team: take some screen shots of the videos above for static images. For the main image, take a screen shot of the main character standing with his arms folded in front of the various vehicles in the came. ***