As the final announcement during The Game Awards, Michelle Rodriguez took the stage to offer a first look at a new Fast and Furious game called Crossroads. It looks bad.
Movie tie-in games have the unfortunate reputation of being low budget products from unknown studios rushed out to meet the release of an upcoming movie. In Crossroads' case, it may not share the title of Fast 9, but it certainly was developed to support the upcoming film, given they're both scheduled for release in May 2020.
As far as the developer goes, there's a surprising amount of pedigree behind the game. Published by Bandai-Namco and developed by Slightly Mad Studios, the developers behind the critically acclaimed Project Cars series, Fast and Furious Crossroads doesn't have any excuse to look as shoddy as it does.
Boy, does this game look rough. All of the faces have the same flat, featureless face that you would expect to see from a game as old as GTA: San Andreas. The character models are stilted and have unnatural animations, especially apparent in the shot where one of the characters jumps from the hood of the car onto the train. It's not just that it looks bad, it looks dated.
By no means are we preemptively declaring Fast and Furious Crossroads to be bad game. The series is meant to be an action game no doubt, and there are plenty of absurdly fantastic set pieces on display here to suggest that despite its visual limitations the game could actually turn out to be a lot of fun.
At The Game Awards though, on the night of all nights, it's pretty disappointing to see something that looks this bad share the stage with the best games of the year. Staging it as the finale of the show leaves a real bitter taste after all the fresh and exciting things on display before it.
Fast and Furious Crossroads is billed as "a team-based, vehicular-heist action game" in development for PC, PS4, and Xbox One. The game will star Tyrese Gibson, Sonequa Martin-Green, and Asia Kate Dillon alongside Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez.