Behind the Creation of a new Character

This incredible update of Need for Speed No Limits introduces us to Jane, the new leader of the Police force tasked with taking the street racing crews – including you! – of Blackridge down.

The character was conceived by our designer Jake Rowe and artist Darren Yeow. We caught up with them to chat about the creation of this character. Note – though this does go through the design process, it does not necessarily reflect where the character or her backstory have landed.

Darren:

“Here are some work-in-progress shots of the Jane character. She's a bit mysterious, but I find I can make better and faster creative decisions when I take a character and make them an embodiment of their circumstances, history and internal drivers, not just drawing something that looks nice.

So, she's fairly young, world class fit (if she's not at work, she's working out and honing her body), singularly focused on bringing down street racers, and it's all underpinned by a current of latent anger.

Her intimidating nature was design driven, so my interest was why?

A potential answer I came up with was perhaps there was a significant personal tragedy occurred in her past - that she was on the receiving end of someone drag racing through a red light, and that's how she ended up with a significant arm injury.

That same accident claimed her child, represented by the butterfly fluttering upwards - the butterfly wings are constructed from tattoos of her little boy's footprints.

The scar and the child's death are interlinked, and rather than hiding it, she's weaponised her grief so that taking down people like those who took her little boy is her only drive in life now.

The "Be Good" tattoo is something that as a parent, you usually say to your kid when you drop them off to school or day care - it's a "I'll see you soon" farewell. She'll see him in the afterlife when her time is up, and given her dangerous job, that might be today or tomorrow.

The butterfly tattoo is inscribed on the arm that has a clenched fist, a symbol of a powerful violent force that was conceived at the crash site.

The other arm has blacked out tattoos, signifying a past she has erased and her hand on that arm is open, as if letting go of that life and transitioning to her new singular drive.”

Jake:

“Wolf has long been the focus of attention for the underground, so going into the Revolution arc, I thought it’d be interesting to shake things up a bit. With Rivera’s dismissal from the force in the wake of Underworld: Supremacy, there was a power vacuum that needed to be filled.

Someone who has what it takes to survive on the streets. That brings us to Lt. Jane Hendricks.

Now the most senior cop in the city and a telling sign that more than just a few cops have become concerned about the goings-on in Blackridge. We’d already explored a number of archetypes with the existing cops: Wolf as the hardboiled detective who lives for his job, Kat as the sly operative or Diego as the corrupt tough guy – so Jane was meant to subvert expectations.

With a striking physicality, her rise through the force has already become something of a legend among the BRPD, signalling a stone-cold determination to see the job done, whatever the cost. What her origins were and what exactly drives her was intentionally left mysterious, leading to the shift away from the tattoo that Darren had originally concepted. 

Instead, the character ended up with a kind of militaristic appearance to fit the intensity. The crux of Jane as a character really comes from that steely determination to see things through. Speaking of which, something we’ve already seen in Devil’s Night is the tension between her taking command of the war on the underground and Wolf being made subordinate where he once had free rein.

This has lead to some interesting interactions between the cast of characters, something that’ll continue throughout the finale events. These are interesting times to be a street racer in Blackridge, no doubt.”

Check out the update, which is live now.

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