Grid Legends brings a live-action story to the classic racing game

EA Play Live kicked off this year with the world premier trailer of the new Codemasters game, Grid Legends. The game combines the high-octane racing experience you would expect from the Grid series with a live action story featuring real actors, including Sex Education star Ncuti Gatwa. It’s all shot using extended reality (XR), which has the actors in front of giant LED screens. It’s the same technique that was used to create the backdrops in The Mandalorian.  

The story mode is designed to bring you further into the racing experience and promises a classic underdog tale, putting you into the driving seat during the Grid World Series, facing off against the Raven West team.

There’s a huge range of vehicles, including big rigs, stadium trucks, drift cars, open wheelers, muscle cars, electric cars, hypercars – including the Aston Martin Valkyrie. There’s a race creator that allows multi-class mixed racing, so you can pick any of these vehicles and put them on the same track.  

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There are new modes available too, including boost mode and elimination mode, and some new locations including Moscow, London, the Strada Alpina.

Looking at the trailer there seems to be a slight disconnect between the graphics of the racing and the live action scene but that could be as the game is still in development. Codemasters have form in creating stunningly real racing graphics, as they did in the F1 2021 game. Grid Legends is set to go on sale in 2022 for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, PS4 Xbox One and PC.

Other games revealed at EA Play Live

The other big reveal was a teaser trailer for the next-gen remake of Dead Space. The survival horror game is being rebuilt from the ground up exclusively for PS5, Xbox X/S and PC.

Apex Legends Emergence is the next development for the Legends series from Respawn. We’re introduced to Seer, a character that has previously been teased and has drones that come out of his chest that track enemies. A full gameplay trailer is due to drop on July 21.  

Stop-motion animation title Lost in Random is an EA original and inspired by dark fairy tales. In this world, every event is driven by the chance of a dice roll.

Knockout City: Fight at the Movies is a new season of the dodgeball game, with new arena features inspired by classic films.

Battlefield Portal allows you to take your favorite Battlefield maps and build custom set ups using characters, vehicles, gadgets and weapons from anywhere in the franchise.