Huge fan of The Crew 1, played a lot with it and with Wild Run DLC, my impression from the beta so far.
Pros:
-graphically improved: Lighting is the most improved thing, The Crew 1, after the PBR patch, was good but flat, too much desaturated.
-handling improved: The Crew, when released, it was like driving in GTA or Watchdogs, very basic, very unrealistic. After the patch, control was good but not perfect. Now cars reacts much better, it's not Forza Horizon but it is a good compromise. Also boat have different handling if you drive on the river or in the ocean.
-map complexity: map is more varying but less complex. The Crew 1 was like long straight roads and the forest with the same trees. Now everything is more different, more polished, more interesting.
-weather conditions: The Crew was like 1 day sunny/ 1 day raining, very annoying. Now weather is much more realistic. Rain, fog etc are affected by clouds position. Other games, when simulate rain, have this strange effect of turning to grey arbitrarily, in TC2 if there is a cloud over the city there's the rain.
Also you don't have specific region with sun or snow but climate change can hit every area. I don't know if it is from server side. Sadly, some climate changes occurs in every point of the map, so if it is snowy in Chicago, is also snowy in... Los Angeles and Miami :(
Cons:
-No Summit, no buy;
-some areas are gone: famous building in some cities are missing for unknown reason, for example New York had a Grand Central Station building and now is gone. Military base on the north from Chicago, that with a huge ramp, is gone forever, and i believe its not the only. Maybe it's just my impression, but for me cities have less objects but at the same they are more variegated.
-traffic is reduced: The Crew 1 had lot of traffic and lot people around the streets, while The Crew 2 feels empty in comparison. I don't need for cathedral in the desert, i want living cities!
-please insert a brightness slide in the option menù, sometimes it's just too dark.
-joining the crew: The Crew 1 had a easy way to join a crew: see a car, approach to it, ask for joining, face the challenges. It was very easy and fast to join strangers on the fly. Now (maybe) you have to add people in your friend list.
- In the Crew 1, every car can (almost) have any setting, now you have to buy a street car, a drag car, a off road car, etc. I don't like it very much.
