A lot was revealed in the latest Forza Horizon 5 “Let’s ¡Go!” dev stream. Developers Playground games went through the new content coming to not only the upcoming Series 2 starting later this week, but also content coming next month in Series 3.
A significant new addition is community events. In Series 2, there is a Horizon Secret Santa event, where everyone is encouraged to take part in sending gift drops to each other. This can be in the form of the usual gift drop from barns, or going to the Forzathon shop and buying a car as a gift. The latter is a new form of gift-giving.
Also new is that you can gift these cars directly to friends (so if you ever wanted to spam your friends with meme cars with anime liveries, the next Series is the time to do so) or be a Secret Santa for a random player.
The list will show a random selection of five of your friends, but you can go back and reselect the option to see a different random selection of friends in the list. Which is, oddly unintuitive, but it’s something.
These gifts will need to be opened at the Horizon Wonderland- a Christmas-decorated plaza in the starter town of Mulege. As part of the “evolving world”, various parts of Forza Horizon 5’s Mexico will be decorated differently in each series.
Series 2 will see the large, empty stadium becoming an ice rink, and the New Year in Series 3 will see lanterns being hung around the streets of Guanajuato.
The Horizon Secret Santa event will keep track of the global number of gifts being given. Give enough gifts and everyone gets to unlock rewards, a Santa Suit and a mystery new legendary car.
On a possibly related note, the dev stream also revealed 24 new cars coming through Series 2 and Series 3 (including the 8 cars only available via the Car Pass- all of them being new cars to Forza).
One, in particular, is the meme car itself, the Peel P50. The small car with a moped engine will be coming to Forza Horizon 5, though unlike all the other cars mentioned on stream, the devs were being coy with how to unlock the car. Though you can assume it has to do with partaking in Horizon Secret Santa.
Like the reveal in Series 1 with the DeLorean, somehow Playground Games got the actual Peel P50 into the office for the dev stream. Shoutout to game designer Dave for not only appearing inside the car for the big unboxing but remaining seated inside the little car that could throughout the rest of the live stream. He described participating in the bit to be “the highlight of my career”.
All the 24 new cars coming to Forza Horizon 5 in Series 2 and Series 3 are as follows:
Car Pass Series 2
- Ferrari J50
- Ferrari Monza SP2
- Lamborghini Espada
- Lamborghini Huracan Evo
Car Pass Series 3
- Audi TT RS
- Jaguar XJ13
- Ford Mustang Mach 1
- Jaguar XJ220 S TWR
Series 2
- Lamborghini Aventador J
- Ferrari 599 GTO
- Maserati 8CTF
- Lamborghini Aventador SVJ
- Ferrari 575M Maranello
- Lamborghini Gallardo LP570-4 Spyder Performante
- Peel P50
- Peel Trident
Series 3
- Zenvo TS1
- Jaguar XKR-S
- Ford Mustang Mach 1
- Lotus Carlton
- Toyota Land Cruiser Arctic Trucks AT37
- Toyota Hilux Arctic Cruiser AT38
- Toyota Celica SS-I
- D8 Donkervoort GTO
Car Pass requires an additional purchase, and is included in the Premium Edition of Forza Horizon 5. The rest of the cars are unlockable throughout the series either as part of rewards for completing the Festival Playlist or purchased in the Forzathon shop.
Forza Horizon 5 is good fun and a car paradise we recommend trying out. That said, it is currently suffering from many issues regarding online play, something the devs are aware of and working on fixing.