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Ssince the arrival of the original Forza Horizon in 2012, the game that revolutionized the world of open-world sims by freeing players in Colorado’s British Development Playground. Sports it has promised its facts and conditions. For each episode, production teams are sent on location to capture thousands of photos, hours of video, and even detailed aerial photography, before filming begins. It’s a big job. But it seems that for the past ten years, one country has come a long way – a frightening prospect. “Japan has been on our list for several games now,” says project director Torben Ellert. But we didn’t feel like we were ready to do the building work.
It is not just about the country’s geographic diversity. Something is happening. Most video game players have an image of what it’s like to explore Japan. It could be inspired by the fictional town of Inaba in Persona 4, or the busy ports of Yokosuka in. Shenmueor perhaps the neon-drenched Kabukichō district of Tokyo, which forms the basis of all time in the Yakuza series. Over the years, players around the world have been exposed to images of the country that are often stylized and fragmented, but powerful and captivating. As art director Don Arceta says, “with Japan there is an expectation (of) what the players want – it’s a different kind of Japan that they draw.”
Playground’s answer was to move away from Japan that was featured in other games, as well as popular street legends such as Initial D and Wangan Midnight. Instead, it hired cultural consultant and one-time Porsche ambassador Kyoko Yamashita, who worked with the team for three years advising on the country’s presentation and racing environment. According to Xbox Wirethey were able to explain small things, such as the familiar types of store signs and what they represented. The dev team also worked with the famous Rocket Bunny from Kyoto and car artist Larry Chen, who appears in the game and leads a series of YouTube documentaries titled. Art of Drivinglooking at cars and places in Forza Horizon 6. “Because it’s a culture we see so much of, there’s a temptation to think you know better than you do,” Ellert said. “That’s why we tried so hard to get people to point us in the right direction.”
When it comes to driving, Playground has sought to emulate the Japanese experience. Seminal drift cars and wangans such as the Nissan Skyline, Toyota Supra and Mazda RX-7 are in it, as are the narrow, winding mountain roads of the forbidden. group athletics that appeared in the 1960s and gained popularity in the late 1990s. “We knew we wanted to do a group happened, but we also knew that if you get 50 people in a room and ask them to explain a group Ellert said: “We’re setting group restrictions, offering live fun cars and putting players on famous roads like Hakone Nanamagari or Mount Haruna. Someone will go, ‘Oh, that’s not what I thought First D would look like in Horizon’ – and it’s like, yes, this is ours based on what happened.”
Like the worlds shown in the previous episodes, the map of Forza Horizon 6 (the largest so far) is a kind of vivid color. “We looked for famous roads, famous places, traffic culture, interesting biomes,” explains Arceta. “There was a lot of filming, a lot of filming, trips to capture the vibe and the sights that make Japan so special. (In the previous game) we took out the Go-Pro on the dashboard, but this time we took pictures with 360 degree cameras that allowed us to capture the whole environment in 2D and 3D as we Googled the way we wear it. The world, but we also had the right size and scale – it gave a sense of space.”
You can look through the bamboo forests and rice fields, you can run near the railway tracks and see the bullet rocket go by. The place is full of details – small roadside temples, vending machines in rural areas. When asked about his favorite things, Arceta said: “It’s the things that go along with the car culture. Gas stations, garages, the early stages of the era, just taking in the vibe… Those were the things that were fun to work on.”
To the south of the map is a shortened but expanding version of Tokyo. It captures the hustle and bustle of Shibuya, the bustling shopping malls of Akihabara and the outskirts of town. Ellert seems to be very proud of the city: “When the game show was released I followed what was created by viewers in Japan, and someone called what we represented at the Tokyo railway station, I worked there and this looks really good. Honestly, to find a place with research, advice and support that we can get and then someone who lives there to say, ‘I know where we’ve been’ – I know where we’ve been.”
Arceta agrees. “(Tokyo) is probably one of my favorite areas, especially Daikoku, because that’s a church – a church of cars. It’s very sacred. So we did well and took that kind of meeting – it was very important.”
Those of us who have been playing Forza Horizon since the beginning have had many moments where we have seen places that we recognize. A cottage in a Cotswold village, the sun setting over Castelletto harbour, the wind blowing over the Maroondah forest. It will be interesting to see how Japan comes together as a racing scene, and if the game can give us things about the world that we have not encountered in games, movies and anime, or as visitors. We’re no longer in the era of world-class racers – The Crew, Test Drive Unlimited, Midnight Club, Burnout Paradise have all come and gone. Horizon is still here. His greatest test awaits.
