Forza Horizon bridges the gap between car simulator fanatics and EDM festival thrill chasers looking for the next rush. I couldn’t imagine a more perfect marriage of beats and speed, with a multi-channel soundtrack curated by the BBC’s Rob Da Bank, also the organizer of the wildly successful summer-fest Bestival. Tunes were picked for freshness and longevity and have that signature BBC flare like Skrillex’s remix of Avicii’s Levels, or Toronto’s very own Azari & III’s Reckless With Your Love or Scuba’s The Hope, (full tracklisting posted below).
Set in an immersive Colorado environment, the game lets you explore a massive map with various challenges for you to discover along the way with fun elements of car culture like the chance to discover roadsters in abandoned barns, drag racing hot spots, and one of my favourites, an abandoned factory.
While the game came out last fall, they’ve just released a significant free expansion pack called the 1000 Club that adds hundreds of new checklist style challenges to suck you back into the fun. Check out my interview below with Design Director, Ralph Fulton.
It’s interesting what you’ve done in creating an immersive arcade game versus the last iteration of Forza.
I will stop you last there, I wouldn’t call it arcade. It’s come up a lot. Is it an arcade racer, or a simulation racer? We see that as an outdated way of thinking. For us it’s important to see that in arcade games, cars are disposable, cars are weapons. There’s no incentive or reason to keep the little hatchback that you started out with in one of those. In this game, you get to drive a killer Viper which is a reasonably fast machine and then you get into a 95 Kia Cerato which is a sporty little front wheel drive car that is fun to drive but it’s not a super car. And then we give you some cool fast cars that you unlock. You can paint them however you’d like to, you can put more turbos on it, throw in a bigger engine, turn that Cerato into a super car mini monster if you want to.
That’s what Forza does, it allows you to keep the cars that speak to your personality, and then you can take that car all the way to the end if you want to. Ok, I don’t know if the Cerato will ever go head to head with the Hennessey Venom but you can certainly maintain. You don’t throw them away. You collect them, you love them, you share them with your friends and that’s really he difference.
Yes, there are things you love to do in arcade games that you can do in Horizon, like 360s, smash through fences, 180s and get points for all that stuff. And those are fun things to do, and we are letting you do all those things with the same physics that we put in Forza Motorsports 4, and the reason that’s important is because all that is based on real world research. We went and figured out what the flight-wheel mass and travel distances are because we want those cars to be the best interpretation in the virtual world. Horizon is the same way. It should be a new feeling for people that play arcade games. But you should notice that one car is totally different from the last one that you just drove. In the game you go from a 600+ horsepower Viper to the front wheel drive Cerato to a 70 Mustang Boss, to an all wheel drive Subaru STI Evo.
How is the appeal between gamers vs. simulator fans?
Some people ask, ‘why didn’t you make an open world simulator?’ Why do we have this party, skill points etc.? We never set out to make the worlds greatest simulation with Forza 4. We set out to make an immersive car experience that happens to take place on racing circuits.
In this case, Playground Games who developed this game for us with our knowledge, this is their dream game. WE told them to make dream cars on dream roads, at the world’s greatest car and music festival. They chose Colorado because that was a world that gave them the most diversity for roads and it’s conceivably a place where the festival might take place.
What is the Horizon Fest?
Imagine a huge summer music festival and the world’s greatest car festival, that’s what it is. Thousands of people come to celebrate cars, music and have fun drives. The spirit is having fun with your friends, not fierce competition. The music chosen for the game was curated by Rob Da Bank from the BBC. When it came to music, he looked at it from the point of view of what he would put on. It’s the same music you’d hear at a festival but it also has to be the right driving music. Adele doesn’t necessarily work. He also told us where to put the bathrooms would be laid out if safety marshals ever would allow something like this to happen, hahah.
Is there any actual partying in the game?
You don’t get out of the car and dance, party, drink and meet girls but we want you to think that’s what is happening around you. Although you do meet people in the game, there are lots of people around cars, so humans are new to the Forza franchise. It wouldn’t feel real without people.
Is Top Gear involved this time as in past Forza games?
No, but some of the lunacy those guys do was inspired by the game, as you get to do things like race against airplanes and do other stuff.
Did Forza Horizon emerge from Forza 4 as a ‘what do we do next’ concept or somewhere else?
Two years ago, we were all working on Forza 4, and we had this vision of the studio to be a world leader in automotive entertainment. Nobody has that, outside of Top Gear. If we just saw ourselves as guys who make a great racing simulator, then that’s all we’ll ever do. We wanted to bring more people into the fold. There are lots of people who may not be inspired by drag racing, certainly in the states, outside of NASCAAAAR (said with a southern twang). Forza’s not something that makes big news in the states, it’s a nichey sport but people love cars, going fast and playing arcade racers. We feel it’s our job to expand the definition of what Forza is. Forza isn’t just circuit-based track racing, this is where you come if you love cars. We started looking for another developer that would help tell our story in a unique voice, and that’s who Playground Games is. They love cars and they want more people to love cars. This is their interpretation of car passion. We think that’s great because now our fans don’t have to wait 2 years for a great Forza game, they get one year. It wont be a 2012, 13, 14 versions, every year it will be a different experiences but you know it will have that same Forza DNA.
Forza Horizon Soundtrack curated by BBC’s Rob Da Bank
Horizon Bass Arena
Levels (Skrillex Mix) — Avicii
Reckless (With Your Love) — Azari & III
Cinema (Skrillex Remix) — Benny Benassi
Blind Faith (feat. Liam Bailey) — Chase & Status
Hot Mess (feat Elly Jackson) (Duck Sauce Mix) — Chromeo
Encore — Digitalism
The Power (feat. Dizzee Rascal) — DJ Fresh
Silicone Lube — Feed Me
Lies (Alex Metric Remix) — Fenech-Soler
Icarus — Madeon
Show Me A Sign — Modestep
Lick The Rainbow — Mord Fustang
Remanence (Junior Remix) — Mr Magnetik
Me & You — Nero
Reaching Out (Fred Falke Remix) — Nero
Blue Monday — New Order
Language — Porter Robinson
Everyday (Netsky VIP Remix) — Rusko
Somebody to Love (Sigma Remix) — Rusko
The Hope — Scuba
Bass 4 — The Hacker
Illmerica (Extended Version) — Wolfgang Gartner
Horizon Pulse
Need You Now — Cut Copy
Awake — Electric Guest
Walking on a Dream — Empire of the Sun
Iron Deer Dream (Chad Valley Remix) — Fixers
Don’t Stop (Color on the Walls) — Foster The People
Hawaiian Air — Friendly Fires
Hurting Friendly Fires
No Love — Hooray for Earth
Over & Over — Hot Chip
Black, White and Blue — Ladyhawke
Let Me Go — Maverick Sabre
Paddling Out — Miike Snow
Life is Life (Yuksek Remix) — Noah and the Whale
Take A Walk — Passion Pit
1901 — Phoenix
Bom Bom — Sam and the Womp
Disparate Youth — Santigold
Spirit of the Night — Tesla Boy
Pelican — The Maccabees
Punching in a Dream — The Naked & Famous
Aroused — Tom Vek
Something Good Can Work (The Twelves Remix) — Two Door Cinema Club
Yeah Yeah — Willy Moon
Horizon Rocks
R U Mine — Arctic Monkeys
Lonely Boy — Black Keys
The Infected — Four Year Strong
Back of your Neck — Howler
Give It Up — LCD Soundsystem
Bring Em Down — Lostprophets
We Bring An Arsenal — Lostprophets
Teenager — Mona
Animal — Neon Trees
Wildfire, Smoke & Doom — Pulled Apart By Horses
Lazy Eye — Silversun Pickups
Surrender — The Duke Spirit
Away from Here — The Enemy
Had Enough — The Enemy
Hate To Say I Told You — The Hives
She Bangs The Drums — The Stone Roses
Rock n Roll Queen — The Subways
Motoring — TOY
Bug — Wavves
Farewell to the Fairground — White Lies
Bite My Tongue (feat. Oli Sykes) — You Me At Six
Get Away — Yuck
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