EA announced today that Christina Hendricks (Mad Men) and Sean Faris (Vampire Diaries) will appear in the upcoming Need for Speed™ The Run. The genetically endowed actress and some guy from the Vampire Diaries will appear as lead characters in the story, which will take players in a cross country race from San Francisco to New York.

...dear lord.

The game will be built off the Frostbite™ 2 Engine, an EA property currently also being used by Dice for Battlefield 3;  Frostbite 2 will take full advantage of Direct X 11 (finally) and 64 bit processors, with no more support for DX9 (Nor XP it would follow), and by extension it’s assumed the game will feature the touted abilites of the fancy-shmancy Frostbite 2. Frostbite boasts enhanced in-game destruction abilities btw, so I might expect some state of the art destructible environments in the game, although nothing has been hinted of in this direction.

Frostbite 2 demo of Realtime Radiosity.

Black Box is the Studio responsible for this new iteration of the franchise which is expected to push the genre in terms of gameplay and tech. EA is selling the game as the action racing blockbuster of the holidays, and it will be available on Nov. 15 according to the website.

Jason DeLong, the Need for Speed The Run Executive Producer teases us with this, “Need for Speed The Run brings unprecedented racing action into an expansive race course which encompasses a coast-to-coast race from the Golden State to the Empire State. Our innovative, all-new performance capture technology pushes the boundaries of character animation allowing us to perfectly capture Christina and Sean’s likeness resulting in an engaging narrative experience coupled with top-notch racing.”

Christina Hendricks who plays Joan Harris in the hit AMC drama Mad Men, plays Sam Harper in The Run. Her character is ambitious, street smart and loves fast cars and fast livin’. She’s turned a passion into a livelihood, managing the best drivers on the outlaw street racing circuit. She is attempting to break into a male-dominated racket in a significant way. One of the weapons in her arsenal is Jack (Sean Faris). She fronts Jack, the story’s protagonist, $250K for a race buy-in, with the hopes of winning a $25 million prize. Sam plays Jack’s eyes and ears on the course and plays a sort of boss/support character role throughout the game.

 Hendricks says of taking on this role, “It’s very exciting to be part of Need for Speed The Run. I’ve never been a video game character before so this is definitely a first for me. It’s been fantastic fun to do something so different, and to show a different side of myself as well”.

Sean Faris (The Vampire Diaries, Never Back Down), one of Hollywood’s up-and-comers, plays the lead, Jack Rourke in The Run. Jack’s cocky and arrogant, and this has led him into debts he can’t repay, to the freakin mob! The mob has a price out on his head, and this provides some of the primary conflict in the game. As a last ditch effort, with the help of  Sam Harper, he enters the race to New York. And there you have the lion’s share of the plot to this game, which if your a racing game fan is only so important, but hey it’s nice to know their trying to up the ante dramatically.

Developed by Black Box, an EA studio, Need for Speed The Run will be available November 15, 2011 in North America and November 17, 2011 in Europe for the Xbox 360® , PlayStation®3, PC, Wii™ and 3DS™. For more information on Need for Speed, visit http://www.needforspeed.com.