F1 24's Career Mode Seems Inspired by RPGs Like Diablo and Destiny, and It's Awesome!

Drive the best you can, score high, and after you get a good enough reputation, talk with your agent to get secret contract meetings with rival teams. Just be careful during negotiations because the longer they last, the more your team will likely find out, posing problems. It's a gamble, but it's up to the player to decide whether the risk is worth it.

However, staying loyal to your brand or employer will earn extra reputation and improve stat bonuses like Racecraft, Awareness, Pace, or Focus. The best part is that if you play it safe, you'll enter contract renegotiations after a while, which could help you further down the line without any risk or hassle. It depends on your style, so having the option of carefully constructing your career path sounds great.

The Research and Development system also ties in with your reputation. When the latter grows, your team will have more drive to design and build new parts for you. Thus, you'll find upgrades available often with a faster-than-usual production time and better reliability. A morale meter shows you the failure percentage chance of a part and the build time. In other words, "item rarity" will increase, yielding better "loot," just like in the loot-based Diablo games.

Another feature comes via the resource points that again reflect RPG stats points like Vitality, Mana, Strength, Dexterity, Magic, etc. Only in F1 24, you'll spend these rare points to level up your car via systems like aerodynamics, chassis, powertrain, durability, and so on.

Season modifiers were made to bring some spice to your career life, so no two seasons should feel the same. Just don't expect F1 24 to revolutionize the gaming industry with this type of gameplay mechanics, because the challenges might differ, but things tend to blend after a while. You'll get used to the season-long effects like high inflation or chip shortages in no time, and navigate through these hard times with no issues.

It sure looks like these negative gameplay modifiers were inspired by games like Destiny 2 or Helldivers 2, where dungeons or missions sometimes have negative debuffs or present the opposite conditions with bonuses to make things more interesting for the players. The high inflation "debuff" translates into more expensive items like upgrades and parts, while the chip shortages limit you to one per month. Other restrictive modifiers force you to use only Aero and Chassis upgrades, making you think thrice before spending those upgrade points.

While it's a stark reminder of the real-life market conditions from two years ago, it's still great Codemasters took the game design in this RPG-like direction, making the experience sound more engaging than ever.

Accolades are a new introduction in the F1 series and aim to deliver a "unique twist" to the formula. Accolades are long-term goals tied to each driver based on their real-life F1 performances. If you start with a new character, you'll earn them by playing the best you can. When choosing a living legend like Lewis Hamilton, you'll be challenged to win his eighth world title, for example. Other icons like Max Verstappen will have to defend their title as champion.

Good news comes in the form of a two-player career mode for those in love with playing co-operatively. All these new single-player features are also present in the Two-Player Career mode. And yes, sure, you can attend secret meetings without your friend knowing, if you're into Game of Thrones-style political games and whatnot.

Lastly, there's Challenge Career, a format designed for players to enjoy shorter scenarios that will change over time. The only caveat is that you must stick with an existing driver and team, while the events are the same for everyone. However, there is a global leaderboard where the player with the highest score will be dubbed champion of the Challenge Career.

F1 24 seems to be shaping up to be a sensational game, but it's all theories and promises until it officially comes out on May 31.