The Crew cops-and-robbers DLC goes full PvP

Among Ubisoft’s Gamescom announcements was the Calling All Units DLC for Tom Chick’s Official GOTY 2014, a.k.a. The Crew:

Players will hit the road as a cop or street racer to prove their driving skills and team up in crews to take over the USA. This new police-chase fantasy will have a deep impact on the gameplay and on players experience all over the gigantic open world offered by The Crew. Players will be introduced to this brand-new police versus racer gameplay through a twelve-mission story that will allow them to build up their own cop style and tactics, ride in fully tuned police vehicles and collect new parts, vehicles and XP.

Oh, so it’s just some new multiplayer mode that forces you to wait in a lobby for a full team? In other words, something separate from what makes The Crew great: it’s open world?

In this always-on, all-terrain confrontation, each side will rely on a set of special abilities and a great variety of vehicles as they race across the US. As a member of the police, players chase street racers across the US in frantic, high-risk pursuits. They will perform successful arrests and get their hands on a wide range of exclusive cop vehicles, from exotic supercars to legendary motorbikes or indestructible SUVs, fully tuned up with police livery and light bars. Players who prefer to hit the roads as a racer will take off with cargo for heart-pounding rides and high rewards. Chases can be triggered anywhere, anytime, bringing even more intensity to the multiplayer experience, already enjoyed by more than nine million players.

“Always on”? Sounds like full-blown PvP to me. Consensual PvP. Some players carry “cargo”, some players hunt down the cargo carriers, and everyone else goes about their business.

Additionally, all The Crew players will be able to take part in this frantic face-off as they will have total access to the street racer gameplay, which includes special abilities such as blinding flashbangs and unlimited nitro. All players will also enjoy the new level cap, now set to 60.

So carrying “cargo” — c’mon, Ubisoft, just be like Rockstar and call it drugs already — is available to everyone as a new means of advancement, but only folks who buy Calling All Units get to be the law.

The release date is November 29th. Ubisoft also announced a bunch of other stuff at Gamescom, but I wasn’t really listening.