What do you do when you are asked to be one of the premier launch titles for new Xbox One? If you’re Turn 10 Studios, you blow the doors off every car you put in the game. In Forza Motorsport 5, Turn 10 looks to do more than just race to the finish line, on the way they want to build a relationship between the cars and the individuals who drive them.
The first way Turn 10 builds these relationships is through ForzaVista. ForzaVista gives you the opportunity to explore and learn about the cars in the game, of which there are hundreds. You know that cool demo they did during E3 a couple years ago with Forza 4 where the player could really go in depth and see everything in great detail – from the exposed brakes to the vents on the interior? In Forza 4, you could have that experience with just two dozen cars. In Forza 5’s ForzaVista, you can have that experience with every car.
The next way Turn 10 wanted to build the relationship is through technology. The developer team worked directly with Xbox One architects to design the best ways to marry the physical technology and inner workings of code Forza 5 is built on. The team also focused a lot on what they called “physically-based materials.” Our demonstrator, Brian Ekberg, spent a long time talking about this and I am really impressed. All materials that make up the cars in Forza 5 are all built in game based off of their real life counterparts. He said they found their cars were turning out too perfect, so they went off to achieve a goal of reality to give each car a feeling of reality and weight.
Next was the introduction to Driveatar. More than just a ghost that drives the exact race you previously drove on the track, the Driveatar feature is more like an AI program that learns from your driving experiences and builds a profile of you that it then uses to “be you.” It learns how you drive in tight right corners or how you perform in a certain type of weather or when you throttle out of a turn. I do hope it isn’t too specific or my Driveatar will constantly be driving in the gravel. Besides being a pretty amazing feature, your Driveatar will go out into the cloud and race for you, bringing you back hard-earned winnings. With your Driveatar, you are always making progress.
Forza 5 has really embraced the Cloud. Whether it’s your Driveatar uploading up for a race or giving you suggestions for cars based on your preferences, or downloading user-generated car designs for you to enjoy, Forza 5 is all about using Turn 10’s dedicated servers. Having their own servers gives them a lot of flexibility and it really showed through in the short 30 minutes I had.
Forza 5 looks absolutely stunning on the Xbox One and is completely loaded with features I think their community will whole-heartedly embrace. And with 50 race series over 8 leagues and boasting a dynamic career mode of over 60 hours, you can tell the love and care Turn 10 has placed into this game. If I have any concerns at all, it’s that I didn’t really get to see the racing in action and as any racing game fan can tell you, it doesn’t matter how pretty the paint job is if the car doesn’t perform on the track. But with a legacy like the one Turn 10 has, I am optimistic this will be a fantastic Xbox One launch title.
Forza Motorsport 5 Official Teaser
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfZT3NVkezw