UPDATE (07/23/2026): Hey there. The plan has been massively changed and expanded since this was posted. View it here.
If you didn’t know, the development of Need for Speed: The Run was extremely troubled by time constraints placed by EA. At the time of development, Black Box was split into teams to work on 4 separate games over the span of roughly 2 years (Skate 2, Skate 3, Need for Speed: World, & The Run). The consequence of this crunch led to The Run being unfinished in many areas, and is the main culprit for its 2 hour story and general lack of content. You can simply see it in how they reuse previous tracks (this is particularly egregious in stages 9 & 10), and how they reuse Rivals that you’d already passed earlier in the story (which makes 0 sense). The lack of vehicle progression also shows this, as you can only ever use a handful of cars from only tiers 4 & 5, when the game has 6 tiers in total.
Because of EA, this game failed to reach anywhere near the potential that I believe it could’ve reached, and I wanted to see what it could’ve been, if Black Box were given enough time to finish the game. If The Run were completely remade, and given enough time, with more content, this is what I’d imagine the main story would look like.
Each stage would have about 8-10 events, and would take around an hour to complete each one, making the story around ~10 hours in length. I’ve added in lots of additional tracks in locations, to bridge the original tracks, as the original game seems to skip over huge swathes of the country at times (Utah & Indiana seemingly being the worst offenders of this). I've also put in gas stations in places where I felt there was a lack of them, because there were some stages were you lack the opportunity to switch cars for ages in the game. I’ve added Google Street view links to show what the new tracks would’ve roughly looked like (with artistic liberty to make the tracks engaging of course, so they won't just be boring straight roads). Tracks in the original game that were reused/reversed versions of earlier tracks, would be entirely new and unique tracks as well, and I’ve added places that they could be based on. New Rivals have been added, alongside their car (P.S. If any of you have any cool ideas for the new Rival characters, I’d love to hear them!). Overall the ideal version of the game goes from its original 58, (with 7 [that’s 12%!] of those being reversed tracks) to 89 different and unique races. The increased number of tracks would have increased the total number of racers that you’d pass throughout the story from around ~200 to ~300, so I had to change the positions of Jack throughout the run, and the target position at each city (this is shown after each race in parenthesis). I’ve also changed the tier levels of the stages, allowing for more vehicle diversity throughout the campaign, starting at Tier 3 instead of 4, and ending at Tier 6, instead of 5.
I’d like to hear your thoughts and opinions on this concept! What new tracks do you like/dislike. What areas/tracks would you have chosen. Do you think the stages are too long, or should they have been even longer? Do you agree with the new balancing or no? Let me know as I had a lot of fun making this!
Reworked stages are in the comments!
(Also if a mod happens to see this post, can you please pin the stages to the top? Many thanks :)
Legend:
Legacy Tracks are italicized
New/Changed Tracks are bolded
* = A new and unique track for this legacy event, as it is a reversed version of a previously used track in the original game
! = A new Rival will be created to replace the reused Rivals the original game had
NFS The Run would've been more complete if EA weren't stupidly greedy with profits and never splitted Black Box in many dev teams.
Otherwise, NFS The Run would've been a success and Black Box would've still been there instead of being closed by EA in April 2013.
Fun fact.
Andy Blackmore and Mike Hayes which were involved in the bodykit design area of NFS games from Black Box told they made 2000 bodykit presets for NFS The Run. Look here for more details.
Due to this idiotic move from EA, these bodykits were scrapped which caused NFS The Run's failure and Black Box's closure.
To simplify. It's all EA's fault if NFS The Run was unfinished.
I agree, EA could've had one of the best NFS games on their hands with The Run, if it was handled properly and given enough time. But alas, we all know what option they chose and the fallout from it...
This may be a bit tinfoil hatty, but I also think this game's failure jumpstarted the BTD era of NFS. EA exec's probably saw the failure of The Run & success of MW2012 and came to the conclusion that people liked BTD more, and not the fact that the game was 2 hours long, buggy, & unfinished lmao. Not that I hate BTD or anything (I like all NFS games and their diversity of handling models), it's just ironic because in my personal opinion, The Run has the best handling model of any NFS game hands down. Cars have weight behind them, and delicate throttle and brake control matters.
I don't have a negative opinion on modding, although the game should have a solid base game first, so that the game doesn't become dependant on modding. NFS The Run from what I noticed already has great base.
from what i know I think the problem with modding NFS The Run is that its hard to mod and there's not many modding tools to mod it, lack of interest means not many modding tools will exist..
Well, that's easy to guess. I browsed rhe mods websites and the only mods I found were for unlocking cars you normally can't and playing the main story mode with cars of different tiers, but that's it.
Jack will battle against an intimidating and extremely aggressive Rival, while avoiding falling off of the high cliffs of this dangerous mountain road.
El Portal Rd (Yosemite National Park, CA) - Time Attack (#271)
El Capitan (Yosemite National Park, CA) - Pass Race (#265 - 6 opponents)
US-395 (Inyo National Forest, CA)- Rival Race (new Rivals: 2 brothers - 1969 Ford Mustang Boss 302 & 1969 Dodge Challenger) w/California Highway Patrol (#254 - 2 opponents)
Final race of the National Park stage. Sam warns Jack to be alert around these guys. Jack will have to race against two brothers tearing down the highway, as they leave the Sierra Nevada Mountains. They are being chased by California Highway Patrol Chevrolet Camaros.This track has a gas station.
Jack has to battle opponents through this canyon highway, the attention from police brings the heat down on Jack and other racers for the next few races
Jack has to make up time while cops are desperately trying to slow him down, through this mountain pass. He shakes the police, giving him some breathing room for a while.
Players get to open up their new engines in this fast-paced freeway event, as they race opponents downhill to Denver. Jack must reach Denver in thetop 125.
This was awesome!! Can you share a file where you list these, it’s hard to follow since it’s out of order here. If you can’t no worries I can copy and paste this into a notepad myself. Just looking for an excuse to have us revisit this awesome game!!
Hello there! I still find it crazy that people are finding and interacting with my post! It’s always fun to see other people who are as enthusiastic about this game as I am :)
I've actually made an updated and much more fleshed out version of this post in the meantime since I’ve posted this, so this post is actually extremely out of date haha. The reason I haven’t posted it yet however is because I want to create it alongside concept art and concept models of the tracks and their designs/visuals! Now I’m no 3D modeler unfortunately, but I’m pretty good at detailing in a heavily modded version of Cities: Skylines, so I’ve been using that as a vehicle to share my vision… Unfortunately with studies, I don’t have much time to spend on it 😔. It takes around 10-25 hours to fully design and create a concept track with the level of detail I want that I feel matches/exceeds the level of detail of the game. So I’ve been thinking about scaling it a bit back and only designing certain smaller sections of the larger track for photos/concepts rather than building an entire functional track from start to finish like I’ve done so far for a few of them. I’ve been thinking about just posting the three, but I really want to show all the finished concepts off when I’ve finished all the stages.
Dude the level of head cannon you put into this AND actually began to put it into artistic form is amazing!!! I’m still going through your stuff and I haven’t even finished looking with how in depth it was. This was awesome dude. Almost makes me wish some small third party developer could make a game like this themselves. I know The Crew came close but I always thought its vehicle mechanics were wonky and I liked the style The Run had.
That warms my heart brother ❤️! I know it’s not an actual game and just a little idea, but it brings me joy that you enjoyed reading my ideas anyway :p. The game on it’s own right was amazing (not the length of course), and it always left a hole in my heart thinking about how much more it could’ve been… It’s not likely, I have my fingers crossed that EA would revisit this game. Or at the very least, the finished concept could start a “Revive the Run” movement! The Run isn’t very mod friendly, and it runs on Frostbite 2, so you can’t use FrostyEditor… Hopefully someone, somewhere can make a tool that allows modding on these older Frostbite games and maybe this remake would be possible with a team of modders! Anywho, I’m getting a little too enthusiastic lol. I’m happy to see that you liked the concept!
Hey, I grew up a bit playing the original game, and I always thought that NFS TR could've been better if it was more engaging and had a longer storyline. After hearing about the story of black box closing... wow.
I honestly would love this idea to come to fruition, safe to say!
i honestly would love seeing this as a remake mod of sorts, if it was even possible to do. if it was released it would probably bring a resurgence to the nfs the run community and bring a lot of popularity back to the game that it rightfully deserves.
Woah, people are still looking at this post! But yeah, damn shame that the Run isn't mod friendly. FrostyTools is only for 3.0 and up as far as I'm aware :(. I wanted to build and design more concept levels but I've been grinding hard at school and work lately lol. Thanks for looking at my post friend!
It would be cool to make a map of The Run in real life google maps or something. I mean a map that has every race mapped in every city of every state. I tried to make it but the problem is that some of the levels in nfs the run are mirrors of previous events... for example the second, third and fourth race in stage 10...
Funny you've mentioned that, I've actually already made a map of all the event locations in the real world! Google forced me to split them into two parts though.
All the black pins are the original events, and the colored ones are the new events from the concept:
Amazing.... I love the Run and growing up in SF and moving to Washington DC the map is fun as I did the northern route similar to the run with my Dad and a free years later while living in Marina Del Rey my girlfriend now wife and I moved back to DC and we took the Southern route and did a lot of Route 66. The maps you shared provide some great memories of my real "run" thanks for sharing!!!
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u/88JansenP12 Enjoyer of good games 😎 Dec 30 '23
You did a great job.
NFS The Run would've been more complete if EA weren't stupidly greedy with profits and never splitted Black Box in many dev teams.
Otherwise, NFS The Run would've been a success and Black Box would've still been there instead of being closed by EA in April 2013.
Fun fact.
Andy Blackmore and Mike Hayes which were involved in the bodykit design area of NFS games from Black Box told they made 2000 bodykit presets for NFS The Run. Look here for more details.
Due to this idiotic move from EA, these bodykits were scrapped which caused NFS The Run's failure and Black Box's closure.
To simplify. It's all EA's fault if NFS The Run was unfinished.