Forza Horizon 6 takes players to the exotic and breathtaking lands of Japan with a map that’s confirmed by the devs as their “most dense and vertical map yet.” The premier arcade racer also feature the authentic Japanese car culture with a staggering 550 plus real world cars including “classics, featuring cutting-edge engine audio and updated steering animations with up to 540 degrees of wheel rotation.” Players can explore and drive around a vivid and almost photorealistic version of Tokyo featuring everything that you can expect from one of the most unique and vibrant cities in the world, all throughout different seasons and all the changes and challenges they bring.
But throughout the road, the yet-to-be-released Forza Horizon 6 has also paid respects to the Japanese culture and iconography by making all the iconic cherry trees, Shrines and Temples completely indestructible. In a recent interview with The Guardian, Forza Horizon 6 design director Torben Ellert has revealed some of the design choices they’ve made to make sure that the cultural heritage and significance of Japan is preserved in the open world racer.
“Almost all trees in the game are smashable to ensure that traversing the world map is both fun and rewarding,” Ellert explains. “However, several tree types are not — for example, the cherry blossom trees — because they’re an iconic element of Japanese culture. Certain temples or other cultural elements are also excluded so that players aren’t tempted to drive through shrines or locations of cultural importance.”
The devs also talked about some of the approaches they had for portraying the land of Japan as realistically and authentically as possible:
“There was a lot of reference photography, a lot of scans, trips out there to capture the vibe and all the nuances that make Japan so special. [In previous games] we’d drive out with a Go-Pro on the dashboard, but this time we did the reference photography with 360-degree cameras which allowed us to capture the whole environment in both 2D and 3D – it was like our own version of Google maps. That helped us generate how we set dressed the world, but we also had proper scale and dimension – it really gave a sense of the space.”
Forza Horizon 6 is speeding it’s way to the PC and Xbox Series X|S on May 19th and is expected to launch on the Playstation 5 later this year.
