Forza Motorsport – Everything We Know So Far

Forza Motorsport got a massive development news over this past month. Between a trailer revealed at the Xbox Games Showcase, to the more detailed insights given during the Forza Monthly on the brand new Builders Cup and the plethora of new systems coming to the franchise’s reboot, October 10th looks to be a great day for Forza fans.

We also got the chance to be involved in an exclusive Q&A session with Chris Esaki, Creative Director at Turn 10 Studios, and Dan Greenawalt, General Manager of Forza Motorsport and Turn 10 Studios, alongside key community leaders and press with plenty of interesting insights on the development of the game. While we were limited in the topics we could discussed, there is plenty of ground to cover.

Forza Motorsport Builders Cup – New Campaign Revealed

The main focus of  the first content drop was taking a look at the franchise’s all-new approach to single player content. The Builders Cup is a series of championships, grouped into ‘Tours’ that focus either on specific groups of cars, time periods, manufacturers, and more.

Right out of the gate, this channels a lot of parallels with campaigns of previous like Motorsport 7 but with a mix of campaigns of old like Forza Motorsport 4, with a linear progression through different disciplines culminating in a final Showcase, with an exclusive car that can only be earned by completing that event.

The key difference and what separates this campaign is what feels like a lack of ‘connecting tissue’ between the championships. All the Forza campaigns boil down to “Go here, complete X championship, repeat” but the difference with this and say, Forza Motorsport 4’s campaign, is you felt like you were truly developing as a driver. You got to see yourself travel around the world, competing in suitably themed championships by location.

If you went to Suzuka, you bet you were driving something Japanese – and slowly build up to the best of the best of automotive engineering. If that didn’t fit your bill, you then had the Event List should you want to jump straight to a cup you wanted for a break, but that was the secondary option rather than being the primary.

Turn 10 did also confirm in this Q&A and in footage that as more cars are added to the game, more series will be added to the Builders’ Cup, mimicking the live service aspect the Horizon series pioneered in Forza Horizon 4 with the Festival Playlist, so that will hopefully fill the gap a more connected Career experience leaves, and with the focus being on the connection to your cars this time around, this campaign still looks like a fun romp through all aspects of automotive culture.

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Our preview took us through the ‘Built for Sport’ campaign, including diving into the 2023 Nissan Z for a tour of Kyalami, where we got to see plenty of scenic shots and the game’s new dynamic weather system, but that wasn’t the main talking point of the showcase.

Challenge The Grid – Play to Your Strengths (Or Weaknesses)

Another big departure for the series this time around is how this iteration approaches it’s difficulty.

A key question that always comes up with Forza, be that Motorsport or Horizon, is “Why do I always start at the back of the grid?” but here, FM2023 has turned that question into its own risk-reward system. A logical extension of the Credits rewards for Assists, which themselves have seen a refactor in the form of ‘Rulesets’ (presets of assists designed to have a good balance of difficulty for a suitable bonus, though I hope we still get individual assist customisation like prior titles), being able to choose your grid position is a big plus for customising your difficulty.

I’ve always loved this kind of system – It’s a great balance between rewarding those who want an extra challenge, and not forcing the more casual players down a path where they have a lesser experience. An extra percentage or bonus on your winnings for pushing that little bit further to zero assists, or in this case starting further back, is always welcomed.

Another big plus in this system’s favour is that the team at Turn 10 insist that the AI ‘no longer cheats’, losing any mechanics like rubberbanding and artificial stat boosts to bring the pack closer together or giving the player a challenge, which is a great change for the greater focus on competitiveness and esports this title seems to embody, but hopefully for more casual players we can have rubberbanding on a toggle, like arcade titles such as Need For Speed Underground had when it used to be called Catch Up.

Car Points – Double Edged Progression System

One of the biggest – and most controversial, but we’ll get there – changes to the game’s formula this time around, Car Points. The mantra of “Level, Build, Dominate” got plenty of mention by Esaki during the 11-minute showcase, and that was exemplified with the game’s new Car Points system.

Gone is the old Brand Affinity system which rewarded you for aligning with particular brands, and in comes Car Level, designed to reward mastering and ‘learning’ individual cars instead of pigeonholing you into a specific manufacturer and limiting your options in future championships – Overall a good change.

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Car Points are the exclusive currency of upgrades, with Credits now being exclusively for buying new cars, Car Points being earned by levelling up your car through good driving and performances, to spend exclusively on that car (It was confirmed in our Q&A that only that version of the car will level, and duplicates will start from Car Level 1) and upgrade categories, like Intercoolers, Sway Bars and more being unlocked on your way to Car Level 50.

This microprogression really makes you want to invest and develop into your car, build a connection and grow with it as you gradually earn Points to spend and upgrade paths to spec into, almost like a Skill Tree in RPGs (and something Esaki lovingly nodded to, with terms like Car-PG flying around in reference to early 2000s Japanese games like Choro-Q and Gadget Racers) as you can take any route from a crazy, 1000 horsepower rocket, to a tightly controlling technical track weapon.

Where this becomes a problem is for community leagues and Multiplayer as this system has been confirmed by the team that this progression will apply everywhere, not just the Builders Cup.

Forza Motorsport Multiplayer?

While there are little details confirmed on multiplayer, having this system in multiplayer could be a dealbreaker for any themed hoppers or in particular.

With a variety of events in many different classes and specifications, having Car Level be a limiting factor on upgrade paths can not only create a high barrier to entry for prospective racers, requiring anywhere between 2-5 hours to get a good selection of cars for a championship (The team confirmed that it takes around 1 hour to unlock all car upgrades, and 2-3 hours to max out a car to Level 50), and if you want to switch to a different car or manufacturer that you haven’t unlock, have fun grinding.

Grinding is the #1 killer for fun for me in a racing game – I want getting new cars to feel rewarding and natural, but not to the point of optimising and completing set tasks to fulfil a checkbox imposed by the game’s economy or otherwise. Hopefully in the case of multiplayer, there are some mitigations or workarounds to not stifle creativity and leagues within the scene, especially given some of the big improvements alluded to through ingame hints, like Teams now being baked-in as shown by the Results screen from our Kyalami demo.

Overall, this big reveal has a lot to love, with some asterisks attached. Some big departures from the franchise’s past with a clear signalling that they really want this to be a reboot, a reinvigoration of the franchise mean that we have a lot of things to look forward to, and much more to be revealed in the coming months ahead of Forza Motorsport’s release on October 10.

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