Here's Everything You Can Customize in Need for Speed Unbound

The first thing you’re going to do when you jump into the game is to create a character. After you select a default model or template for your racer, you’ll be able to customize the head. Then you can pick from an array of features like eye and skin colors, hairstyles and color (hair tips included), facial hair options and color, face details like tattoos, makeup, dirt, bandages, or accessories like sunglasses. There’s even a voice option menu with a slider to adjust those singing pipes however you want.

Then you’ll head over to the clothing menu, where you’ll be able to select between various coats, jackets, tops, bottoms, shoes, hats, and caps. These will all be available to change at any point during gameplay, as long as you’re at a Safe House. You can also improve your pose game. Yes, emote-like poses are featured in NFS Unbound, and unless you’re 13, I imagine they're going to annoy you every time you’ll win a race and boast in front of the losers. (That’s just unsportsmanlike if you ask me.)

Next up are the all-mighty, all-encompassing car customizations. And let’s face it, your vehicle is the thing you’ll see most often on the screen. To access this menu, you’ll have to be in a Safe House and select Rides, which opens the car menu options like Style, Performance, Buy and Sell, and All My Rides. The names are pretty self-explanatory, nothing fancy or unheard of, but keep in mind that first and foremost, you’ll have to upgrade the Performance of your car, then everything else.

Under the Body menu, you’ll be able to choose body kits and panels, rims, real-world tires, window tints and headlight colors, taillights, front and rear bumpers, side skirts, or brake calipers. You can even personalize the text, background, and frame of your license plate. As for the color of your car, using the Wrap editor, you can edit the paint color or stick decals on it with fashion and manufacturer brands, street art, and even familiar decals from the EA universe. Hopefully, Anthem won’t be featured on any of them. (Boy, what a colossal failure of IP handling that was.)

After you’re done with your car’s looks, you can save your designs and share them with the community or download designs from other people. Just keep in mind they’re platform locked, so you won’t get skins and such from PlayStation if you’re playing on an Xbox, according to EA’s blog post.

Next, Legendary Customs are also coming to Unbound, and apparently, they’re “featuring silhouette-changing parts that transform a car’s appearance into a one-of-a-kind custom.” But wait, there’s more. You’ll have “Vanity Items” for your ride like “Underglow,” horn customization, and you can even change the sound of the exhaust system.

After you’re done with these, you can go over to the driving effects that are split into two categories, Tags and Samples. Tags are the anime-style visual effects you see when you jump, burnout, or drift. The more spectacular your driving is, the more you’ll see these pop on the screen, all the while your nitrous tank fills up. Samples are sound effects that play during key moments like gear changes or when you’re driving at high speeds.

To unlock these effects, you’ll have to complete challenges, find hidden items, or in a very Burnout Paradise-like style, crash through billboards. At the end of the day, the team behind that glorious game is making this one as well. And if you don’t want to see or hear everything I just mentioned, you can select Cloaked and Silent Sample modes for a more classical approach to the visual and sound effects.

For performance customizations, in the Parts menu, you can swap the engine to get into higher tier races and also upgrade the ECU, fuel systems, exhaust, turbochargers, nitrous tank, suspension, brakes, clutch, transmission, and differential. These various parts will go from Stock to Pro and higher grade versions, much like the part rankings from Gran Turismo 7.

There are also fun toys to pick from, like impact protection and repair kits, radio jammers, gadgets to fill your nitrous faster, and even upgrade the damage your car does while ramming into your opponents. All of this tuning and performance knob-turning will be available in your garage, which starts at the Basic level and can be upgraded to Elite. Of course, you can sell your vehicles, but keep in mind that you’ll need four different tier cars to compete in the biggest race from the game, The Grand.