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“If you go off-road, it will take two or three hours [to travel from each end of the map]. If you take a more efficient racing car, it will be either one hour or 45 minutes. [In this demo] You saw going from New York to Miami took about 20 minutes in a pretty fast car.”

Even if you’re driving around casually exploring The Crew’s map (something I spent much of my time doing), skill missions, shown through little triangles on your mini-map, are scattered everywhere.

They involve tasks like driving as fast as you can for a period of time, or weaving in and out of poles in a timed slalom race. They shake up the monotony that often sets in from driving around aimlessly, and do an excellent job of filling out the map.

“We want to let the player be free to play the game as they want,” said Beley.

“If you want to play solo, or competitively – it’s really up to you. We have a fast travel system if you want to go fast or if you want to go right to a competition.”

Each spec — the word the game uses to classify the type of car you’re driving –- whether it’s street, dirt, perf, circuit, or raid, controls differently. Every vehicle in The Crew can be customized to fit into these various categories.

For instance, at one point in the game I took a Street spec vehicle off-roading through a forest and frustratingly found myself unable to find a path back to a street.

Cars can be heavily customized with new paint jobs, decals, and various parts. Altering your car’s components gives it a point score and a level, much in the same way you’d level up a character in a traditional massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). Vehicle damage also surprisingly isn’t only cosmetic and actually affects the performance of your car.