It’s fair to say there’s no upcoming game that excites us more than Forza Horizon 6. And now having seen it in motion, there’s going to be a constant, high-pitched buzzing inside our skull until it’s finally in our hands. The good news is, we don’t have too long to wait. The next instalment in Playground Games’ superlative open-world driving game series is confirmed as arriving on Xbox and PC on May 19, so be sure to quit any jobs and end any loving relationships you need to ahead of then.
As you can probably tell from the screenshots and trailer, Horizon’s long-awaited take on Japan looks both absolutely stunning and utterly authentic. The development team has even gone as far as to render physically accurate fallen cherry blossoms on the road. File that under sentences we never thought we’d write.
The playable area will be an artfully compressed version of the whole country, and the game’s take on Tokyo is confirmed to be the largest urban area in the series to date, with multiple recognizable districts. “Having the opportunity to finally deliver on that promise of going to Japan—not just having Japanese cars in our games, which we’ve had in many iterations of the game—was something that you only get to do once right, and I don’t think we were able to do it before now,” design director Torben Ellert told us.
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“It’s that combination of us really wanting to do it, but also holding ourselves to account on whether we could do it justice; whether we would be able to make a Tokyo city that felt like the experience of driving around Tokyo city, whether we could build a map of Japan that was big enough.”
But it’s not just about geography. Forza Horizon 6 has to capture the unique and distinctive car culture that exists in Japan—that’s the thing fans have been begging for for over a decade now. It’s bringing with it two elements inherent to that: online multiplayer car meet locations, including the famous Daikoku car park, and a specific touge game mode for recreating Initial D drift battles up in the mountains. And yes, there will be a tofu delivery mission.
Each home you purchase will have its own customizable garage, where you can stroll around admiring your various vehicles, from a launch day list of 550. You’ll also, for the first time, have your own large estate on which you can build structures, roads, and tracks to your own—possibly deranged—specification. The layout remains persistent in your version of the world, meaning you can invite your mates over to your very own personalized automotive playground. For those looking to get even more depth, the fully customizable EventLab returns, with a feature called Co-Lab that allows multiple players to work together on a custom circuit or stunt track. Just be thankful the Health and Safety Executive doesn’t exist in the world of Forza as you add that second loop-the-loop.
Also revealed alongside this first proper look at gameplay is the cover car for the game, the entirely appropriate Toyota GR GT. While you’ll begin the game as a mere tourist following the Horizon festival around the country, hoping to earn a wristband, your very first 10 minutes will apparently be a dream-like glimpse of what’s to come as you chase a Shinkansen bullet train in the 640hp GR GT.
Toyota’s relationship with driving games has been up and down for the last decade, and Forza Horizon 4 contained no road-going Toyotas at all, but it’s fair to say the brand now recognizes the importance of video games in generating new fans. “Just like the GR GT and the GR brand itself, we want to make sure that as many people as possible can drive and enjoy our brand and vehicles,” GR GT project manager Takashi Doi explained. “Also, people without driver’s licenses, we want to have them feel that excitement.”
Excitement is certainly not something that’s in short supply when it comes to Forza Horizon 6. Japan is by far the most fan-requested location for a Horizon game, and if these early teases are anything to go by, it’s poised to absolutely deliver on that promise. Now, if you’ll excuse us, having watched that gameplay trailer for the fourth time straight, we need to go and take a cold shower and calm down...
NOTE: This article first appeared on TopGear.com. Minor edits have been made.
