Free roam in Assetto Corsa Evo is real. The much-touted feature where you get to freely drive the open world of a 1:1 scale recreation of the Eifel region in Germany, is indeed coming to the sim racer that’s still in Early Access, sitting at version 0.9.
The development team even did a full keynote to re-reveal the open world (the devs specifically don’t mention “open world” and only referring to this mode as “free roam”) featuring the Lamborghini Temerario. The new “baby Lambo” isn’t out yet in the game, but it’s definitely coming as we not only see the real-life car, but also its in-game version.
Free Roam in Assetto Corsa Evo is available as a single-player experience as well as multiplayer. The Eifel region, which includes the entirety of the Nürburgring, includes dynamic weather and a day-and-night cycle and matching variable AI traffic to boot.
Kunos really emphasised that the roads in the open world map are all represented here, with accurate length and, more importantly, width. Usually, open world games truncates the city layout from its real-life inspo as for most games, that’s a lot of empty, non-interactive space. But since a racing game like Assetto Corsa Evo (and the Test Drive Unlimited series) are all about driving on such roads, this is a non-issue as the roads are the interactive feature players are engaging with.
Players can partake in world events like Time Attack challenges. Also, you can explore the region on foot, from a first-person view. You can do a bit of carspotting in the multiplayer server, just like how locals or tourists who come to the region would do in real life.
But for the most part, you’ll be driving around the Eifel region in free roam for the sake of driving, for the experience of driving a car with realistic physics on the road instead of on the track.
Assetto Corsa Evo won’t launch the full open-world Eifel region just yet, as it will be expanded over time. The initial playable area is naturally the area surrounding Nürburgring, that also includes the fabled Nordschleife layout which is a public toll road when it’s not closed off for private tests and endurance races.
Assetto Corsa Evo Wants To Be A Proper Sandbox
The keynote here says a lot of interesting thing on where Kunos Simulazioni is heading with Assetto Corsa Evo and offers some reassurance to fans of the original Assetto Corsa. This is mostly seen in how the team is rejecting any sort of progression altogether.
AC Evo launched with a progression system that felt underbaked and the developer proceed to remove them entirely. And now this is part of the selling point: AC Evo is a sandbox where you find or create your own fun through the its realistic driving simulation. Modders are welcome to add more to the game, but the game itself won’t dictate what you can and cannot do.
As such, the open world free roam won’t have a checklist of things to do and car repairs don’t cost in-game money, but you can try and get through the hairpin as fast as you can and suffer the consequences of going over the limit of a car by crashing. It’s an interesting philosophy that not only contradicts the current crop of open world games and racing games, but rejects game design entirely. Yet this is indeed the core of what made the original Assetto Corsa still beloved today: it’s a sandbox for the dedicated players to tinker and make their own fun out of a solid driving simulator.
Assetto Corsa Evo is positioning itself not to rival the likes of Forza Horizon or The Crew, or even Gran Turismo. Rather, its market position is alongside BeamNG Drive.
The free roam mode in Assetto Corsa Evo will be playable at Sim Racing Expo from October 16-18.
Currently there’s no ETA on when free roam will be added to Assetto Corsa Evo, but it’s coming. Assetto Corsa Evo is out now in Early Access on PC (Steam).