When pre-E3 speculation suggested we’d see Forza Horizon 3 unveiled this week, it certainly got the racer inside me excited. What I certainly wasn’t expecting was a very Australian element to the launch trailer and that’s a stunning panning shot that follows three Australian kangaroos jumping across a very outback landscape.
While the Forza franchise focuses on racing simulation and keeping things on the tarmac, Horizon is a breath of fresh air, with a very clear encouragement (as if we needed any) to explore off-road as well. In the Horizon 3 trailer, its clear we’re getting off-road buggies to really get stuck into the racing on different surfaces like through the jungle, over the beach and flying across sand dunes. This just looks like all-round, good time fun and that is what the Horizon franchise is all about.
There’s never been a Forza without a gorgeous cover car and Horizon 3 called on Lamborghini for the 2017 Centenario, which not only looks the business, but will put a smile on your face, just with the sound of the thing, if that doesn’t do it, the crazy performance will, great choice guys.
The trailer is tagged with ‘all in-game footage’ which is always appreciated, considering much of what we see at E3 is trailers jam packed with full motion video, we know videos can look amazing, but its the in-game engine that counts for gameplay. Judging from the trailer, the game looks fantastic, with amazingly detailed environments, terrific lighting and of course, the stars of the show are those cars which look brilliantly reproduced.
We know a new console generation takes developers a few years to really extract the maximum potential from the hardware and it seems racer’s are about to reap the rewards of that hard work.
Forza Horizon 3 is arriving worldwide on September 27th, exclusively on Xbox One and for the first time, Windows 10 as one of Microsoft’s new Xbox Play Anywhere titles. This means you buy it once and can play on both platforms. This will allow the graphics to dynamically scale based on the hardware available, so its possible when Project Scorpio ships next year, Horizon 3 will actually look even better. If you want to unlock the best graphics in 2016, it will be on a PC with a recent GPU.
Now you’ve heard the detail, its time to sit back and enjoy the very Australian trailer for Forza Horizon 3.
Update
Aussie gaming site Stevivor has a brilliant post on the “Australian” map in Forza Horizon 3, that shows the US-based developers perhaps needed a geography lesson before creating the game. Given how far we are from game release, it is possible we’ll see the locations updated before release, otherwise, this will be nothing short of embarrassing.
