A picturesque village in Provence. Fields stretch out as far as the eye can see. The sun glints among ancient farm buildings. Nothing stirs.
And then suddenly, amid a cloud of dust and the whine of super-charged, engines a Lamborghini Huracán shoots out of a dust track, closely followed by a Nissan GT-R. The cars clip the edge of a field, smash through a wooden fence and disappear into the distance. Welcome to Forza Horizon 2.
Set throughout southern Europe, the latest open-world racer from Leamington-based studio Playground Games, takes us along the Cote D'Azur and down into Italy, through the north of the country and on to the Amalfi coast. "It's colourful, it's bright, it's uplifting, this is one of the most beautiful areas in the world," enthuses the creative director, Ralph Fulton. "There are great vistas, wonderful landscapes, great driving roads, and we're capturing it all in 1080p."
And it does look rather beautiful. Scorching through rural backroads, edging along coastal routes – it's sort of a modern Ridge Racer in the way it celebrates the landscape. "The secret to next-gen beauty is not about poly counts or textures, it about light," continues Fulton. "The way light moves, the way it bounces, the way it effects every surface differently – glinting from the body of a super car, reflecting back at you from puddles …"
"We've simulated the Earth's atmosphere"
Behind it all is the Forza 5 engine, built from the ground up for Xbox One – though locked to 30 frames-per-second in this title it seems. But then, with its open environment, Horizon has more to do than the main Forza titles with their neat, delineated circuits. Playground is also throwing in a dynamic weather system, which can lead to spot showers at any point in a race, as well as a day/night system. "We've simulated the Earth's atmosphere," says Fulton. "we've modeled the number and type of particulates, because the way that light moves through these particles determines the colour of the sky."
There is plenty more graphics titillation. The team has modelled the absorbancy on different surfaces to work out how they look and feel during and after rain. Puddles form and dry up in real-time.
Handling seems at this stage to be forgiving but still authentic enough to provide a challenge, and plenty of thrills. There's an element of late-era Codemasters in it; a propensity toward over-steer (depending on the model of course), but approachable enough that you're not flatlining into barriers every five seconds. Lots of people were worried about the prospect of driving exotics through wheat fields, and yeah, it's strange that your Huracán, which probably has the ground clearance of an ant, can hit dirt tracks and keep going. But then, I like the fact that Horizon 2 is valuing exploration and experimentation over stark realism.
This extends into the 700 or so events dotted around the map for players to find. Some of these involve crazy stuff like racing against steam trains or an 150ft cargo plane as it zooms in to land. More conventionally, there are point-to-points, street races and circuits as well as hill climbs and cross country events. Playground reckons it's more than 100 hours of content.
The skill system is back from Horizon, rewarding players for driving stylishly – cool drifts, near misses, the usual stuff. These points can then be spent on perks which give you subtle advantages: Fast Travel lets you whiz instantly between distant points on the map, while XP Everywhere, earns you extra points in every mode of the game.
The game retains its festival setting, with each player's solo world constantly connected online, allowing you to join friends with one button press. There's also a Club feature, allowing you to set up gangs to compete together and new Car Meet areas inviting players to stop and chat with other gamers via Kinect or a headset. Playground imagines a sort of harmonious community of petrol heads swapping tips and livery designs – but let's see if that holds up against the average online player's propensity toward griefing and insults.
The return of the Drivatars
The studio has also employed the Drivatar system from Forza 5, which learns how you drive and then uses that information to create an AI version to represent you online when you're not around. This will also turn up in your friends' games, so in theory, everyone competes against people they know, rather than robotic AI drivers.
Updated for Horizon's open setting, the Drivatars now learn not just how your drive, but also how you use the landscape. In a demo at E3, Fulton shows us a race against the drivatar of Playground's lead game designer, Martin Connor; we see his McLaren P1 taking a shortcut along a separate path – "this is a shortcut that Martin himself would have taught the Drivatar while playing the game," says Fulton. "It opens up a cool emergent feature – if you're driving around and happen across the Drivatar of a friend you could follow that car and discover any secret routes or items that they have discovered. Your friend is actually helping you asynchronously."
Due out in September, Forza Horizon 2 will be the first in a trio of racing games looking to explore the social capabilities of the next gen machines. DriveClub, Sony's major rival to Horizon, is out in October with Ubisoft's intriguing The Crew following in November. All are making dramatic claims about how they're going to change the genre, about seamless drop-in and drop-out competitive play, and about forming groups of players into driving guilds. These are interesting times.
With its Forza heritage and undoubted good looks, Horizon has a confident foot jammed on the accelerator. We'll need to spend much longer behind the wheel to know if the feel matches the theory.
• Forza Horizon 2 is released on Xbox 360 and Xbox One on 30 September
• Forza Motorsports 5 – review
