While much of the Xbox-related spotlight is going to Bethesda’s Starfield, the gaming giant has another big 2023 title on the way: Forza Motorsport.
As its name suggests, the latest Motorsport serves as a soft reboot of sorts for the Forza subseries. It’s also been some time coming, having been revealed in 2020 before the Xbox Series X and S were even released. Now, though, Xbox is finally ready to fully demonstrate the game, as seen during its Xbox Games Showcase on June 11th. On top of that, the company held a behind-closed-doors hands-off demo for the racer, and it made quite the impression.
My biggest takeaway from the presentation, as someone who isn’t really into racing games, is just how many options Turn 10 is giving players. In fact, the developer has added so much to the experience that it somewhat jokingly referred to Forza Motorsport as a ‘caRPG.’
According to creative director Chris Esaki, that all comes down to the franchise’s new gameplay loop of “level, build, dominate.” To start, the game has a new ‘Car Mastery’ system that provides players with constant feedback. “Every corner in the game is now a moment-to-moment objective,” Esaki explains. What this means is that the game will persistently track your racing statistics in a given area and compare this to future runs. Depending on how close you get to your best time, you’ll be scored out of 10 and given car XP accordingly. This can then be used to unlock new parts and other customization options — hence, the ‘caRPG’ moniker.
Next up is the ‘Challenge the Grid’ system, which gives complete flexibility in the rewards and difficulty on a race-by-race basis. Essentially, you can choose where to start on the grid between one and 24, and your potential payout will change accordingly. Esaki says this lets you “dial in the drama” to give the game a risk-reward element. On top of that, you can tweak AI difficulty settings and rule sets (such as damage and rewind toggles) to further affect the payout.
Finally, as mentioned, there’s the ‘Build’ part of the mantra. As mentioned, the XP you net can be put towards car customization, allowing you to alter everything from the exhaust and intake to the fuel system and paint job. That’s the physical component of ‘Build,’ but it’s clear the suite of customization options to personalize your experience only adds to that sentiment.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Forza game without stunning visuals, and Motorsport also has that in spades. Given that the game was developed exclusively for the Xbox Series X/S and PC, Turn 10 has clearly been able to squeeze out even more graphical fidelity at 4K/60fps. From the way your tires glisten in the rain to the clouds reflecting off your car’s side doors, Forza Motorsport is every the bit stunner you’d expect. It should be noted that Turn 10 didn’t even have HDR running on the demo TV, so the final product should look even prettier.
To get even more into the nitty gritty, Esaki says the physics have been improved such that a tire’s single point of contact has been increased from one to eight, the suspension code and weight modelling have been rewritten and more. Of course, this would be harder to gauge without going hands-on, but there’s no reason to doubt the handling of the car.
Turn 10 also talked about accessibility, coming off the lauded assistive features in Forza Horizon 4.
“We have incredible assists that we’ve built over the years — things like throttle assist, braking assist, turning assist — you can turn all of those on or off at your will, and we have additional new levels of fidelity around all of that. So we even have one button driving now,” explains Esaki. “If you want, you can play the game with a single input. So if you only want to steer, if you wanna brake, if you want to accelerate, that sort of thing, you can just play the game with just that and the car will do really well.”
On top of that, he says Turn 10 has added a number of audio assists that will give you indicators related to your speed, upcoming turns and more. “These are all audio cues that you could turn on or off to the point where if you turn all of them on, you can literally put a blindfold on and drive around the track if you get used to all the different systems,” he says.
“What we really wanted to do is make our simulation game — which is really difficult if you actually turn everything off, it’s very complex, it’s a real car, real physics — to be the most accessible racing simulation ever.” He adds that these features help all players, not just those with disabilities.
“We wanted anyone, no matter their skill level in terms of control, as well as whatever your skill level in actually competing to be in the game, to have fun in the career mode. Whether you’re sighted, blind, slow, or fast, you can have a great time in the game.”
Forza Motorsport will launch exclusively on Xbox Series X/S and PC on October 10th, 2023. The game will also be available on day one on Xbox Game Pass and mobile via the subscription service’s Cloud Gaming feature.
Image credit: Xbox
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