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Forza is back with a new expansion to Forza Horizon 5 and an upcoming Forza Motorsport title for 2023!
Forza Horizon 5’s Next Expansion
Forza Horizon 5’s last exciting video game racing expansion let players live out their toy box fantasies with their Hot Wheels tracks and cars. This time the franchise brings things back down to earth by introducing rally racing career mode, a new area to explore, and several other fun updates including a few new cars to enjoy. Not only that, but we’ve also received a glimpse at the upcoming Forza Motorsport that’s coming out later this year. Let’s dive into what to expect from the Forza Horizon 5 Rally Adventure expansion pack and what we know so far about the new game from Turn 10 studios.
Forza Horizon 5 Rally Adventure Updates & Cars
Welcome to Sierra Nueva, a new location that is tailored to be one of the best off-road adventure settings yet. Racers will traverse sand and dirt trails that should push these rally-ready cars to their limits. Sierra Nueva is made up of roads still, but they sound more unpredictable and jarring than anything players have experienced before. This mix of dangerous roads that transition into wild off-road sections should shape up to be the perfect place for a rallying experience. Plus, we get a new punk genre focused radio station that’ll give us some new tunes to rock out to as we carve through this new landscape. Forza Horizon 5 Rally Adventure doesn’t stop at a new place to explore and some added music though. We’re getting a number of great updates that fans of the series can’t wait to enjoy firsthand starting on March 29th.
Rally Career Mode
The Rally Adventure expansion introduces the Horizon Rally event, a series of rally racing events throughout Sierra Nueva that takes place between three teams that players can choose from. Each team features eight unique races, PR Stunts, and culminates in the final Ambassador Race where you take on the leader of the team. Beat all three and you unlock the special Horizon Rally Goliath event, a rally race that will take you throughout the entirety of the new Sierra Nueva map.
Adding onto this new career is the new point-to-point, timed rally racing stages alongside the typical multi-car races. A new feature found in all these Rally Adventure races is the navigator callouts that real life rally racers experience. Instead of your traditional co-driver in the passenger seat next to you though, turn-by-turn callouts will be provided to you from a helicopter flying overhead. This callout feature will be a useful resource as the Sierra Nueva provides low visibility situations mixed with tight corners and perilous conditions to navigate.
Rally Adventure Cars
With rally racing inspired events comes the need for new rallying inspired cars. The Rally Adventure expansion only mentions ten cars being added, but there’s already over 600 cars in the game and I’m sure a couple more rally icons of note will make appearances as season rewards. Those ten added cars are still pretty cool though. The newest of the bunch is the 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning Platinum. The all-electric truck probably isn’t what you’re thinking when “rally car” comes to mind, but they’re adding some customization options to make it more rugged for the off-road focused expansion.
Another Ford of note being added is racing legend Colin McRae’s 2001 Ford #4 Focus RS rally car. The engineering marvel has a long list of accolades and gave the Focus a better appreciation rather than being your typical commuter hatchback. From there the car choices expand past traditional rally and more into the realm of the Baja 1000.
Hoonigan’s 1973 Volkswagen Baja Beetle, the ‘Scumbug’, is making its way into the game to join the ranks of the ‘Hoonicorn’ and ‘Twerkstallion’. Alumicraft adds more models to its list with the additons of the #6165 Trick Truck and #122 Class 1 Buggy. Another one of RJ Anderson’s builds is coming to the game, this one being the #37 Polaris RZR Pro 4 Truck. Polaris themselves even come in with their RZR Pro XP Factory Racing Limited Edition model. Jimco is making its Forza debut with the #179 Hammerhead Class 1 and the #240 Fastball Racing Spec Trophy Truck. Finally, Casey Currie Motorsports brings us their #4402 Ultra 4 ‘Trophy Jeep’ that features an advanced off-road suspension and a custom-built LS crate motor. All of these new rides should make diving into Sierra Nueva a high-speed (and high-flying) fun time.
Build Rally Monsters & Shoot Flames with Anti-Lag
As I already mentioned, Forza Horizon 5 already has an extensive list of vehicles to choose from. Knowing this, the Playground Games team made sure to provide rally-ready customization parts for all the other cars already available so that fans could craft their very own rally monster. Lifted suspensions, new visual customizations, and the exciting introduction of anti-lag!
Turbochargers can suffer from a delay between pressing the gas pedal and feeling the turbo actually kick in. This is called lag. Adding an anti-lag system helps keep the turbocharger spinning so that there is no turbo lag and results in instantaneous power coming out of corners or switching gears.
Anti-lag is a staple to rally cars as they need that instant acceleration as they navigate winding routes and slap through gears. These anti-lag systems are also what give rally cars their distinctive pops and flames out of the exhaust pipe. A minor but super cool addition to the game. Another rally inspired gaming mechanic is the addition of launch control, an electronic assistance system that helps cars accelerate perfectly from a standstill.
A New Forza Motorsport Coming in 2023
The new rallying expansion isn’t the only news surrounding Microsoft’s racing property. A new Forza Motorsport game was also announced not too long ago, and we’ve been given a quick look at what to expect from the next iteration of the racing simulator. The recent trailer for the game gave us a glimpse at the improved car graphics, some of the cars we’ll be able to drive, and some of the different racing locations.
There will be over 500 cars at the launch of Forza Motorsport. Of those initial cars, it’s hard to tell for sure how many carryovers will be from games past, but they do state that this game will have more new race cars than ever before. We took note of the numerous models from Audi, BMW, Chevrolet, Dodge, Ford, Jaguar, Lamborghini, Mazda, McLaren, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, and Porsche that they listed separately, but most of these models were from 2021 or older. Nothing up to today’s brand new models of note quite yet, but there’s still time to add in some 2023 or even 2024 to the list. The team mentions that there are over 800 unique upgrades for these cars too, but then they also show us the same generic rear spoiler that’s been featured for a long while now.
20 different environments will be available at launch as well, each with different circuits to race through. We’ve caught a couple looks at Circuit Hakone, Maple Valley Raceway, Laguna Seca, Suzuka Circuit, and Kyalami Grand Prix Circuit throughout the trailer and they look great. The team brought back multiple terabytes of highly detailed photogrammetry and laser scanned data. You’ll be able to pinpoint the smallest details found at real-world locations.
The engine running this game has been built from the ground up. The biggest enhancements coming to the game are additions of damage improvements, tire wear, fuel management, dynamic time cycles and weather that affect racing experiences, enhanced audio, better car visuals, and real-time ray tracing while racing to provide an even better racing simulation. Forza Motorsport is also improving the actual driving dynamics and the physics within the game, so there should be a better feel of the car’s handling over the changing road surface.
Forza Motorsport 7 came out back in 2017, so a new edition of the franchise has been wanted for a bit now. While there isn’t a hard date on when we can actually play Forza Motorsport, Microsoft is still stating it will be coming out sometime this year.
