The latest of the fortnightly Forza Horizon 5 ” Let’s ¡Go!” live streams dived deep into the campaign mode of the upcoming open-world racing game, which is getting some significant changes.
The main campaign is now called Horizon Adventure. In Forza Horizon 4, the term “Online Adventure” refers to the online multiplayer races. The “Adventure” word now has a different context in Forza Horizon 5.
While Horizon 4 walks you through all the different racing disciplines as part of the mandatory career progress, Horizon 5 will be more freeform- you get to choose what kind of races and what kind of activity you want to do to reach the Hall Of Fame, which signals the end of the campaign and lets you off to do whatever you want in the game.
In the new Horizon Adventure screen, you can pick what kind of races or activities you want to engage in. There are six different paths you can take (at least that’s what’s shown on stream) and they are:
- Horizon Festival Mexico
- Horizon Apex (Road Racing)
- Horizon Wilds (Dirt Racing)
- Horizon Baja (Cross Country Racing)
- Horizon Stunts (PR Stunts)
- Horizon Street Scene (Street Racing)
During Horizon Adventure, you will be expanding the Horizon Festival (the part music festival, part car show that’s been the running theme of the series) across Mexico.
Whatever order you wish to expand the festival (which unlocks more races/events) is up to you. It’s possible to completely finish the events of one particular Horizon Festival and ignore others, or dip in your toes in a little bit of everything.
You will need to unlock the events on the Horizon Adventure screen, and that is done through achieving accolades. These are small, achievable milestones gained from just playing the game however you want.
There are thousands of these encompassing races, exploring the world map, online interactions and even for players who just like to make custom liveries, and the devs are not expecting players to unlock all of these. Achieving enough accolades will let you unlock any of the Horizon Adventure events.
The live stream showcased one new event under the Horizon Adventure (which also includes the opening sequence and the first Showcase event revealed back at Gamescom). Expeditions are the events where you will go to a different part of Mexico to set your newly chosen Festival, and each should be a unique drive.
The one shown on stream for Horizon Apex has you traverse eastward during a thunderstorm, more ferocious than the ones seen in Horizon 4. There’s also a little break during the event where you can spend the time exploring ancient ruins, with optional objectives you can do that are also accolades needed for campaign progression.
The Horizon Adventure events can also be done in co-op with friends.
The live stream also announced a preliminary reveal of the full car list (subject to change until the game launch) with a list of 427 cars, and answered a few questions by fans. Here’s a summary of the little new details revealed from the Q&A from this live stream:
- Common and rare clothing can be directly bought from a clothes shop, not just acquired from Wheelspins
- You can now gain barn find rumours. Some barn finds are unlocked differently. One can be earned from Horizon Adventure.
- Improvements on steering wheel force feedback. More adjustments sliders for steering wheel force feedback
- Mechanical Trail Scale
- Force Feedback Minimum Force
- Force Feedback Load Sensitivity
- Road Feel Scale
- Off-Road Feel Scale
- Servers in Forza Horizon 5 are now more “MMO-like”. Everyone connects to the same server. You’ll encounter different players all over the world, and it would be more at appropriate places (towns have more chances to bump to other players compared to somewhere in the jungle). Forza Horizon 4 has you connect to a 72-player server, for reference
- No dedicated Spanish-language radio station, but all the radio stations have the influence of Mexican music.
- No demo for Forza Horizon 5
- Kudos are social currency. Various online interaction will let you give and recieve kudos. For example, sending barn find hints and sending other players a “barn find gift” (cars you can tune, customise and then gift to other players via a barn find).
- Race-themed props to make your own race track will be available in Eventlabs
- There’s no definite end to the campaign
Forza Horizon 5 releases on November 9 for the Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and PC (Steam, Microsoft Store).