GamePro has the exclusive first look at Criterion's Burnout 5 (working title), due out for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 this fall.
Burnout 5 will allow players to play how they want, when they want, anywhere in the city. "We want one thing to lead to another," Ward told GP. "A race could become a Road Rage, which could then become a Pursuit, and then in the middle of that [the player] could get taken down and start flying through the air." From there, you could decide to record the episode as a crash, and "seamlessly blend into what you thought you knew was Crash Mode-because we are taking that to a whole new level. It really is about blending experiences together. We want the player to be able to start things and end things anywhere."

It's a sprawling metropolis of industry and commercialism and entertainment, tangled up in 90 miles of wheel-melting asphalt. It's a haven of interwoven pathways; of heart-stopping jumps at unfathomable speeds through unbelievable obstacles. It's a world tailor-made for racing and crashing, built from the ground up to steer the genre's most explosive franchise to the top of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 hit lists. This is Burnout 5: Criterion Games' latest and greatest ultra-speed destruction derby.

But this is no ordinary retooling of a square-pegged game to fit the round holes of the next-generation platforms. This is a complete reinvention of everything under the series' hood. We jumped at the chance to talk with Criterion about how their prized possession is evolving from a multi-headed speed demon to a streamlined, destructive machine, and we weren't disappointed one bit with what we learned.

It's still Burnout -- you don't have to worry about that. It's just got a new transmission and a hell of a lot more horsepower. Read on for all the gritty details.

Sayyed via gamepro.com »