At the recent Forza Monthly stream, Turn 10 gives a peek at the new Forza Motorsport, simply titled Forza Motorsport, with 17 minutes worth of gameplay.
This covers what the Forza games have called the “Initial Drive” (the intro sequence), as well as one race weekend in the Builder’s Cup.
The intro sees you driving a practice lap around the Maple Valley circuit in on of the game’s cover car: the Chevrolet Corvette E-Ray (which despite what the name seems to imply, is a hybrid and not full electric). There’s full traffic which you must negotiate with as you make good use of the lap to nail each turn.
Then, it passes forward into the final few laps of a night race in another fictional track, Hakone, this time driving the other cover car: the No.01 Cadillac Racing V-Series.R. Right after a pit stop you have fresh tyres to push and see if you can get P1, which you can as seen in the video.
The next bit of gameplay introduces the Builders Cup, the career mode of Forza Motorsport. After selecting one of three starter cars (2019 Subaru STI S209, 2018 Honda Civic Type R and 2018 Ford Mustang GT), the gameplay video jumps to a practice session on another new fictional track, Grand Oak Club Circuit.
The choice of introducing the world of Forza Motorsport through fictional circuits first is a choice one. So that every player is on the same level learning how to grasp the racing game’s physics and handling without the advantage of circuit knowledge. But there are real-world circuits in the game.
Once the practice session ends, you see a race in a full grid of 24 (24!) cars racing. All taking on differing lines on the first turn, which makes for a sight to behold.
Forza Motorsport is dropping all the numbers (the previous game was Forza Motorsport 7) as this entry marks a new era for the series, as it pivots from a “car-collecting” game into a “car-progression” game. The gameplay design insists you get to know and put in time in the cars you want by having upgrades tied to a car mastery level. This goes against the design of most racing games, but we’ll have to see if the change resonates with the racing game fans or not.
Forza Motorsport (2023) releases on October 10 for Xbox Series X|S and PC (Steam, Microsoft Store). It will be available on Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass day-1 of launch.