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From time to time I like to let my inner race driver play a racing game. From Mario Kart to Project Cars or Forza, I play casually and just try to stay on the track.
But millions of players are taking their racing games seriously and many of them are anticipating the release of Forza Horizon 4 on October 2 on the Xbox One and the Windows PC. One of the great things that differs from this version is the introduction of full seasons with a dynamic time.
The seasons change every two weeks, allowing players to burn rubber during the summer or to slide on the leaves in the fall on the same tracks. In winter, you have to face rain or snow. On a slippery track, you can not take as many risks, even if this same track is perfectly safe in summer. You will encounter nature-specific things in England, where the game unfolds. Many small stone walls, for example, represent barriers on the side that you can blow through. But the big stone walls will stop your car.
According to Ralph Fulton, Creative Director at Games, who developed the game with Turn 10 Studios. I took Forza Horizon 4 for a brief overview at a preview event in San Francisco, and then I interviewed Fulton about the experience.
Here is an edited transcript of our interview.
Above: Ralph Fulton is creative director of Playground Games, developer of Forza Horizon 4.
Image credit: Dean Takahashi
GamesBeat: The seasons change everything, then?
Ralph Fulton: The seasons change everything! That's what we find. It sounds like a marketing slogan, but it's not intentional. It's one of those things that I think is true throughout the game. It's certainly something that when you invest as much in one function as in the seasons, it's a long time. There has been a lot of false starts over the years as we think about it. How can you change seasons in an open world game?
This is the first time we think as a studio that we are mature enough in terms of development and pipelines and tools to be able to accomplish this colossal work. In reality, this equates to the size of Australia's Horizon 3, four ways. Each season is profoundly different. When you invest so much in this type of feature, you do not want to change it. You want to make sure that you broadcast all aspects of the game.
Clearly, visuals are what you're most excited about, but the driving experience, the gameplay – using the seasons as an operator to change more fundamental aspects of the game. We bring new content each week to each new story. season. We also use it as a mechanism for our live support of the game. After the first four weeks of game execution, the first year in Horizon, we bring new updates with new features and new options. content and personalization. It will be free for everyone.
This will be the pace in which we engage in the game. The team's job now is to support this game and to evolve this game for our players. He has this pace to bring new things.
GamesBeat: How did you decide on the weekly seasons?
Fulton: We go with weekly based analysis of how people play our game. Horizon 3 has been a huge advantage for us in many ways, but one – I think we have exceeded 10 million players which is great. This gives us this incredibly robust dataset that we can examine and analyze to see how people play our game.
Many things we suspect are true about our players in terms of the number of sessions per week, the average duration of the sessions and also the fact that our game – and we are extremely lucky in this respect – is sort of leafy persistent. This is not a game that people drink and lose. They play regularly and regularly. When Call of Duty comes out and they play Call of Duty, they come back to it later and they resume almost with the same regularity.
It tells us what the game is for, how people use the game, and therefore how we should set up the game experience to add to it.
Above: Forza Horizon 4
Image credit: Microsoft
GamesBeat: A large group of players can browse the content for a week, then they have something different the next week.
Fulton: The important thing to understand about the seasons is that there is a background of content in the game that is independent of the season. Something important for us about the seasons is that they change and you experience the images, but you can still do whatever you like to do in Horizon. There are no closed doors because it's winter or because it's summer. All of these things are the constant, and then the seasons bring seasonal leagues, events, a new stock in the shop, a bunch of new things that overlap and keep the game fresh.
GamesBeat: In your opinion, how easy and accessible is driving? At least on a normal setting.
Fulton: We now see ourselves as the driving game for everyone. This kind of accessibility and inclusion is important to us. In a spirit of play and play, you should be able to have fun instantly, regardless of your skill level. Many of our features, many of our modes are designed to ensure that there is no barrier to entry, whether based on skills. If you are terrible in the game, you can still find fun doing these things without the game saying, "No, try again." I think the design philosophy is a bit out of fashion now.
The great thing about Forza is that the depth is there if you want to access it, on several different axes. In terms of vehicle physics, I can adjust my car and improve my car. I do not do it myself, because it's not what I get out of the game, but I know a lot of people like that kind of depth. You can beat the difficulty and take up the challenge if you wish, but it is always a ball in your court, as opposed to the game that prescribes it. These are things that the Forza franchise embodies – not just Horizon – that did what it is.
GamesBeat: I saw that the stone walls were quite flexible. I could spill them. There were walls, however, you hit them and you stop.
Fulton: I know you only played for a very short time. It's something we worked hard on in the studio. I think you will find that in a very short time you will learn to understand the visual language of these things. Britain is full of dry stone walls. They are tens or hundreds of years old, and they are everywhere in rural areas, to the point that we could not have them. But if we have them, they can not be unbreakable. If they stopped you every time, you would have a bad time. We had to make them breakable.
Likewise, there are brick walls or stone walls that do not break, but there is a clear visual language that you will quickly learn to interpret. Same thing with trees. A great point of view from Horizon 3 was that it was never very clear whether a tree was going to break or not. Obviously, this uncertainty has led to frustration. We spent a lot of time and honestly, I think we were successful. There is a very clear language for the width of the trunk – I never thought I would talk about the width of the trunk in a game, but here – there is a range of breakable widths and a range that are not. There is a big gap between the two. Very quickly, you will be able to look at the horizon and interpret the width of a tree, and so if that will stop you or if you can break it.
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