Can You Free Roam In Forza Horizon 4 Demo
Julia Heaslet
The open world has been beautifully crafted and everything from the smallest detail right up to the largest expanse of sky anyone has ever seen, will delight from the first moment to the last. With a great split between the hustle and bustle of city roads, beachcombing avenues and the wide open craggy outback, no matter what type of racing you want to get involved in, there is seemingly something for all. Rain and overcast weather is well realised too, and the demo has given a great insight into how the world will evolve as we are racing.
The cars that steal the show may currently be limited in numbers, but that is the very nature of a demo and what has been included is good enough for now. Each vehicle handles differently from the next and allows for hardcore racers, newcomers and arcade fans to get involved. The star car, the 2017 Lamborghini Centenario, is stunning and handles with a glorious arcade-like feel without it ever feeling too fake, and combined with the off-road delights of the Monster Energy Trophy Truck, kicks the action of brilliantly. The same goes for the other four cars that are on display and fans of BMW, Nissan, Ford and HSV will be excited to get behind the wheel of the very finest M4 Coupe, Silva Spec-R, Shelby GT350R and Limited Edition Gen-F GTS Maloo respectively.
Forza Horizon has not just delivered a superb single player experience over the years, but the online component, including the open-to-anything free roam that has seen players flock, has emerged to ensure that no other racing title comes close to beating it.
And so the chance to mess around online in the included demo free roam is just as appreciated. It could have all quite easily been restricted to a much smaller area, just a car or two and nothing more than a few single player events, but thankfully Turn10 have included enough content to show how much faith they have in their ability to deliver.
Obviously, there's only a small portion of the events available in the full game. Interestingly, though, when you're done with all of them you'll be able to keep roaming in an online free-roam session across the Forza Horizon 3 PC demo map.
Microsoft also updated the Xbox One demo of the game, adding HDR support for the benefit of those gamers who own both an Xbox One S and an HDR compatible display. In case you're curious about the PC requirements (which are the same of the full game save for the fact that the demo takes way less space of your hard drive), take a look at them below.
According to our Forza Horizon 3 review by Chris Wray, Playground made one of the best racing games available on the market. The first car pack just released, by the way, and the developer also teased a winter-themed expansion.
Perhaps not one of the biggest, but one of the most pleasant surprises of E3 2021 was the unveiling of Forza Horizon 5 in a relatively substantial gameplay demo during the Xbox showcase - with a November 2021 release date to boot. It was a given that this enormously polished and entertaining open-word driving series by Playground Games would return, but we didn't know when; for its first four entries it had been on a strict biennial schedule, but the UK-set Forza Horizon 4 has now been entertaining people for almost three years with little sign of flagging, thanks to a well-judged and assiduously maintained weekly and monthly update schedule, as well as easy accessibility on Game Pass on both Xbox and PC.
It was to be expected that Horizon 4 might break the rhythm. While still emphasising beautiful and optimistic open-world driving fun and esoteric car collection, 4 brought a cautious but deliberate shift in emphasis towards 'live' gaming, with its constant updates and its living map populated by default with other players. It was more successful in some areas than others; the game is constantly rewarding to dip into, but (as with many previous Forza Horizons) it has struggled to make its rather chaotic online multiplayer offering as sticky as its solo challenges.
This is where Forza Horizon 5 enters the scene. Moving the action from Playground's home turf of Britain to the deserts, cities and rainforests of Mexico, Horizon 5 looks set to be another technically refined and thoughtfully put-together diversion from the master craftsmen at Playground. Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to talk to creative director Mike Brown - who presented the E3 demo - about the game, and Playground's hopes for it.
Mike Brown: So, whenever we're starting a new Horizon game, the location is the decision we start thinking about first, and it's the one that we always spend the longest thinking about. Right from the beginning we had an objective that we wanted Horizon 5 to be the biggest Horizon yet. And then it doesn't take that long from thinking about that objective until you realise that there's not any point being bigger if it's more of the same. So, therefore, it has to be diverse as well.
And Mexico as a country - it's almost like the whole world in one country, because you have volcanoes, snowy mountains, canyons, jungles, rolling hills, ancient cities, like really modern beachfront hotels, various different flavors of desert. And all that comes together to create an open world that is just so much fun to explore - every area you go into, you're seeing new things, experiencing new things. Then you add on top of this incredible, diverse open world the fact that Mexico has this culture that's known and loved all over the world: the art, the music, the people. I think we ended up in a place where there just couldn't have been a more exciting option for the Horizon festival.
On that point - a part of the spirit of Forza Horizon is providing recognisable virtual tourism to people, right? But you also want to avoid falling into stereotypes - which is easy enough to do when you're portraying the UK, you live here. But when you're tackling a culture like Mexico's, how do you get that balance right?
Mike Brown: It's a great question, and I think there's an answer that will touch on a few different areas of Mexican culture. The answer is - we're a UK developer, a predominantly British team, and so we need to work with people from Mexico. From the very start, on our research trips we were working with locals who were from Mexico, who were actually photographers, but they really knew their local areas, they knew the sights, they knew the things that were the most beautiful things in their region of Mexico, and they were able to act as something of a tour guide for us and help us to explore and find all these amazing things. That helps us explore the world and make sure we're representing it, and make sure that the things that Mexicans would want the world to see, we're putting in the game.
As well as that, though, as I touched on, there's this really broad and beautiful culture of Mexico. So we've worked with Mexican artists as well - we saw one of the murals in the gameplay demo during the E3 showcase. There's quite a few of those all over the world, and all of them have been created for us by various Mexican artists. We've worked with Mexican musicians, so we've got some original compositions by Mexican artists on the soundtrack. We've also licensed some existing Mexican music as well so that each of the radio stations has some Mexican music on there to give it a really strong flavor. And finally, we've worked with Mexican scriptwriters and Mexican voice actors so that we can be sure that all of our Mexican characters don't sound stereotyped and sound really authentic.
One of the things I've always loved about Forza Horizon is the way that it portrays car culture. As a classic car nerd, I've always felt pretty well served by your car selections! I also really enjoyed, in 3, the focus on Australian car culture. Are you doing something similar for Mexican car culture in 5?
Mike Brown: Unfortunately I can't talk specifics about the car list at the moment. But it is a thing that we pride ourselves on - that we get really invested in the car culture of whichever location we happen to be visiting. This time, it's Mexico. Obviously, Mexico doesn't have as many of its own car manufacturers as, perhaps, the UK or Australia, but it does still have a really rich car culture. There is this really rich and vibrant car culture in Mexico that I think actually is very endearing. Unfortunately, I can't talk about the specifics of it right now. But I think when it comes to finding out what's there, that people will really love it.
Mike Brown: Yeah, so you'll take part in a number of Expeditions throughout the campaign. Each one of them is kind of a - I'd call it a high point in the campaign. So it's like one of those events that you'll build up towards, and then you'll get the opportunity to take part in an Expedition, which will see you head out and explore a new area of the world which you probably haven't seen yet. They're led by a character that we saw in the demo yesterday - his name is Ramiro, or Rami. And he is Mexican, he loves Mexico, he acts as something of a tour guide while we're there. His character is really enthusiastic that the Horizon festival has arrived in Mexico,and he's going to show us all the amazing things that there are to see.
So the Expeditions act as almost a curated experience through the world where you'll have a character who really excitedly calls out all the cool things you can see. And they also offer us an opportunity to showcase some of our new technology. There's one where, as you're on the Expedition, a tropical storm rolls in and it's really dramatic. There's another one that goes up the volcano and, wouldn't you know it, the volcano's active at the time, because of course it is. They offer us an opportunity to showcase a lot of the really exciting things that the game has to offer in a curated, story-driven experience. A lot of those things can and will happen in free-roam just naturally, while you're exploring, but this gives a more curated way to do it. At the end of each Expedition, you open up a new Horizon festival site, and with that opens up a load of new races.
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