FH6, first reveal

I’m just repeating what I’ve seen via various sources. Feel free to say, “You have nothing new to say, you dribbling git.”

Release date confirmed. All right, I’ve bought it. The whole thing. Well, best to do it while I’m feeling rich. Well, not too indigent. The price is exactly what I predicted it’d be, although I feel that I ought to get a discount for buying all the Horizon 5 dlc. In due course, watch me be unimpressed by the expansions.

Progression will mean something to the old lags who were around back in the day. I was never there, but I was an old lag anyway. Players will start the game as a tourist (shades of FH5 difficulty settings) and need to qualify to enter the Festival. Wristbands, which sort of made a vague appearance in FH4 if I remember correctly, are back. We’ll need to do some showcase to complete a tier to go up to the next wristband, with gold wristband granting access to Legend Island, where there’s meant to be a bunch of stuff to do.

The question is how grindy wristbands will be, and how onerous, but I predict that for the sake of game pass players, probably not excessively bothersome. I expect the try-hards will complain that it’s not sufficiently demanding.

The map. Allegedly dense and diverse. It certainly looks pretty, but so did FM8’s map in the promo footage, which then proved to be a false dawn. Tokyo is 5x bigger than any previous city in the game and broken down into districts. The inner city itself looked a little lifeless, but can’t be stuffed full of traffic for practical reasons or (probably; technical issues) pedestrians.

There will be open world car meets. Shrug.

There’s also going to be a time attack mode. New sort of PR stunt or just speed zones by a different name or something like a tollbooth challenge? This appears to be a multiplayer mode, and may be limited to convoys. Nothing to do with me, squire. Move along.

Cars. Toyota GR GT. Yum. The Toyota Landcruiser is also a thing (and not, it seems, some special offer only available in someone else’s region; another leak). New Honda Civic. Various other vehicles could be seen as well, but how many will never make it into the game?

However, the MC 20 will finally be in a Horizon game. (I happened to see a list of 96 cars on Facebook released by the developers; Alfa Romeo and Lancia will be back; the Nissan S-Cargo will be an FE car [derisive snort]; so will the Lexus LFA; the only-its-mum-could-love-it Ferrari F80 is in the Italian Passion Pack.)

Visual tyre wear. Is this purely cosmetic or will it also affect the driving experience (and by how much)? How can this be fixed? Do we now have to buy new tyres? Or will we have to pit during races and change tyres? (Doubt it, but it’d be an interesting game mechanic in some races.)

The PI system has been retuned to better classify cars and rebalance them. What does this mean? No more 1,000hp cars in D class? Less of a range within classes? We’ll also have an R class for racing cars. I hope this means the GT3 cars will be returning (with the addition of GT4 cars, perhaps), but hope that it’ll exclude track toys and extreme track toys. I never thought that the GT3 cars ought to have been in races against such overpowered hypercars.

Forza aero has finally been replaced, although we’ve only seen the hatchback version. I also spotted some different aero on the back of a blue Honda Civic (?), which had me wondering whether we might have a range of aero options or different sorts of wings and end plates.

Window decals are a thing, but no details. Are they going to be restricted to manufacturer logos or will players be able to slap vinyls all over windscreens? How quickly will such things become a nuisance when installing liveries? How will they affect cockpit view?

FE Mazda MX-5 with monster-sized engine. Looks mad, and probably handles like a Vestal virgin in a bikini careening down a mud slide. I hope I’m pleasant disabused. About the car, that is. Actually, that’s one of the FE cars that’s been revealed so far.

The estate where you can build things sounds like a repeat screening of Lego Valley in FH4, but on a grander scale and, probably, with a lot more licence. Is it going to be tied to accolades or achievements of some sort?

Eventlab is back with the option of collaboration. As you can create such events wherever, it seems Eventlab Island has been consigned to the dustbin of gaming history. Good, as travelling off map in FH4 or 5 was always a pain as a new map loaded.

Houses are back (natch), but with customisable garages. This is something I wanted because it’s a pain to have to toddle off to a Festival site in FH5 to paint a car at night. Also, what will I do with all those pics of Liz Hurley in a bikini? I mean, pious female saints. I’m sure that’s what I said.

But there’s still the rest. Will we still have the meaningless prestige system alongside the wristbands? What about kudos, which is also meaningless? Will we still have to endure car gifting and an endless stream of Porsche Taycans? Assuming the Festival playlist survives, what’s in and what’s out? What about painting and vinyl tools? Same sort of thing again, but rotated another 90°? Are we going to have a bunch of tiresome accolades hanging over us? What about the practical stuff such as car handling?

We’ll just have to wait for more info.

In the meantime, my usual inane observations about the current week of the Festival playlist tomorrow, although I may start doing some of it this evening.