Forza Horizon 3 is pulling out all the stops for their newest game, attempting to create the most beautiful racing game ever made. Judging by the addition of 350 new cars and boasting a map two times the size of Forza 2’s, they are not holding back.
In the past, Ralph Fulton, creative director of Playground games has gone into detail at what the game truly holds in terms of visual beauty, pointing out the individual parts of the game that make it stand out from any other. This includes things such as the sky, that is “a genuine Australian sky. A bunch of our guys actually went out on location with a custom-built 12k HDR camera rig – they camped in a field for the entire summer taking images every second of every day.” This kind of dedication to a game is applaud-worthy. And expect of course to experience a truly diverse dynamic weather system, that will put the player through their paces and challenge them to a variety of different weather types. Rain will gather in the cracks of the road, with true reflections, reflecting what it should. It is safe to say that we will not be seeing phony drawn reflections, and we will catch a glimpse of our cars’ chassis as we zoom past puddles.
Being set in Australia, the developers have really been able to be let loose in terms of diversity in terrain. In an Xbox Daily interview with Ralph Fulton at this year’s E3, Ralph expresses that what they want for their players is “diversity”, and that they want players “to be able to find new, exiting ecotypes” and Australia is the perfect place for such ambitions. Players will be able to drive through the rain forests, or if they feel like it the endless and daunting plains of the Outback. There will be scorched coastlines to power across and beaches to blitz. All this and much, much more. This game boasts the most diverse and exiting terrain, all of which will most certainly be a sight to behold. It would seem that graphical beauty is extremely important in a driving game, and even more so when it is an open world venture. The more beautiful it looks, the more the player gets out of the experience, and the more they feel like they are truly driving a fast car through the roads of Australia. This feeling is the very nature of what racing games try to clutch on to, and it would seem that Forza have not forgotten this, and will be delivering a truly awe inspiring experience. No doubt it is the kind of game that makes me cringe when I see the Xbox One and PC only tag, as I sit jealously with my PS4.
Forza Horizon 3 is also expressing its focus on co-op and multiplayer, given players the ability to play up to 4-player co-op campaign with a drop in drop out mechanic, alongside multiplayer races and challenges to face off your friends and other players with. These challenges are in the form of the iconic Forza “showcase events”, in which the player races against wild and interesting opponents. One of which, Fulton describes as a race in which the player will be driving a buggy, while they race a jeep hoisted up by a dual-blade helicopter and flown through to the finish line while you zip through dense forest and various other terrains. This exiting and deeply different twist to racing is what will keep Forza fresh in the eyes of its fans and competition, and we’ll certainly be hearing and seeing more of it up until its release, hopefully with a few more surprises and jaw-dropping details along with way.
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