What's happened: Electronic Arts has just announced Need For Speed: The Run. The publisher is promising a more gritty urban storyline, focusing on a fugitive that has to escape the city and the cops by any means necessary.
Traditional Hot Pursuit style races are linked with Quick Time Events featuring your character dashing out of different cars and avoiding the law against ever-more extreme scenarios. Pressing Triangle at the right time will make your character leap across buildings, while pushing the left stick and pressing X will get him to pull himself out of a crashed cop car.
What Svend Thinks: I'm not sure about this one. I love Hot Pursuit for the thrill of racing against the urban elements, and I appreciate the new direction EA wants to take with The Run, but I don't think hot-footing it and enduring QTEs is the way to go about revitalising the franchise. Add the fact that these on-foot events are scripted and it doesn't really seem to add much beyond eye candy. And the main character seems a touch too generic for my liking.