Forza 4 Feature Article, Preview Tour With Dan Greenwalt
Event : Dan GreenWalt Forza 4 Preview Tour
Developer Turn 10
Publisher Microsoft
The voice you hear when you boot up Forza 4’s career mode is that of Mr. Jeremy Clarkson, as he recites a passionate defence of people obsessed with everything automobile over the opening video sequence. It’s an idea that’s core to the Forza spirit, and one frequently repeated by developer Turn 10’s creative director Dan Greenwalt: this, he claims, is a game that tries to capture people’s ‘love affair with cars’ and with the admirable goal of turning ‘car-lovers into gamers and gamers into car-lovers.’ In their attempts to achieve that, they have created something new in the process: the first true gaming example of automobile pornography.
If cars could be exploited, Forza 4 would be arrested on obscenity charges. Everything about this game is obsessed with the shape, the feel, the look and the sound of driving. The centrefold in this particular case is the much-hyped Autovista mode. And it’s certainly pretty. Away from the distraction of actual racing, Autovista lets you examine every nook and cranny of your chosen car. Pull open the hood or the boot, check out the engine, or even get into the car and see what the dashboard lights up like when you turn on the ignition. The cars are meticulously modelled and look absolutely fantastic; easily one of the most technically impressive features of recent times. In the build we played, the choice of Autovista cars seemed to be locked to some of the rare, more expensive cars. They’re unlocked for viewing by completing various car specific tasks – simple, enjoyable challenges like passing ‘x’ amount of cars. Keeping Autovista separate from the career mode ensures even the most casual players will get to ogle the prettiest models Forza 4 has to offer.
But Forza 4 isn’t all about the supercars. Indeed, Greenwalt introduces the game with a short anecdote about his first car, a Toyota Corolla. This is a game about player choice: giving them the freedom to choose whatever car they want. This, unfortunately, doesn’t include Porsche due to some EA licensing shenanigans (Greenwalt describes his feelings on that particular matter here). However, he assures us ‘outside of that, every car we went after we got’. So while many players will surely go straight for the Ferraris, the option is there to choose almost any car you want, even, bizarrely, the Halo Warthog. The career mode will, impressively, adapt to your chosen ride: as Greenwalt says, you will ‘feel like this whole game was made for “insert car you love”’. Expect brand and car specific races to dominate the career mode.
Accessibility is a key concern of Turn 10 fourth time around, but the hardcore needn’t worry. Greenwalt is at pains to emphasise that arcade racing and simulation racing need not be separate entities: ‘The idea that there is arcade racing and simulation racing… our goal has been to prove that that is an outdated way to think about car games. [Forza has] rock-solid physics engine with layers of assists on top to make it so that a six year old can play it… my kids can play my game but they can’t play arcade games.’ Our time with the game gave us a chance to check out the assists. Returning features like the racing line are invaluable to beginners; beautifully training you to get the most out the tracks and your brakes (hot off the drifty Hot Pursuit, this writer experienced a cruel crash course in physics here). Brake assist is a more extreme learning tool, and one that will likely feel too undemanding for all but the newest racing games converts. All of this, naturally, is entirely optional, so the veterans can jump straight into the hardcore racing.
Another surprising attempt to court the cautious gamer is the involvement of Top Gear. It’s a relationship that goes beyond mere Clarkson commentary (although select the appropriate option in Autovista and the man himself will gladly inform you of his outspoken opinions on the car in question). ‘We could have [just] licensed the Top Gear track’, explains Greenwalt, dismissing the easy way out taken by rival Gran Turismo, ‘But what we realised was there was an incredible synergy between their vision and our vision. And it’s about cars. They really want to be car entertainment. So do we. We share a fear for car culture moving forward. It’s a long-term creative partnership. We tried to have Top Gear throughout the game in ways that feel natural.” Indeed, the game is jam-packed with Top Gear stuff. Community wise, Top Gear Rivals is a valiant attempt to emulate the popular celebrity racing challenges from the TV show, and the Top Gear crew will be able to set online challenges for the community to participate in. The campaign will feature the odd light-hearted gameplay diversion in the form of Top Gear bowling and football. There is, in short, a lot of Top Gear.
A further attempt at accessibility is Kinect integration. With the Turn 10 team having grown to over 300 people, and the developers knowing wheel and joypad controls like the back of their hand, Greenwalt says a Kinect mode was a welcome challenge: ‘You’ve got to come up with 1,000 ideas to have even ten of them worth a damn. Then you’ve got to prototype ten of them and throw nine of them away.’ How does it play? The nicest thing I can say about it is that it, on a basic level, works. Turn your arms left, the car turns left. However, having your arms outstretched gripping an invisible steering wheel isn’t the optimal way to play. Having foolishly chosen to drive the ten-mile long Fuji track, I was left with rather tired arms after twelve minutes. And given that the default Kinect mode is auto-brake on, it wasn’t the most exhilarating twelve minutes either, having easily passed the rest of the racers mere moments into the race. Kinect driving seems a curiosity at best. In Autovista, Kinect gesturing allows you to open up the different parts of the car and use your hands to select the various information nodes. And, again, it works but is far less accurate than using a traditional controller, making you wonder why you didn’t just use the 360 pad in the first place. Potentially more interesting is in-game head-tracking, but unfortunately we didn’t have time to give it a run-through.
Add to this all you’ve come to expect from Forza: a robust community suite, superb physics (Turn 10 have partnered with tyre manufacturer Pirelli to get the most up-to-date tyre data) and countless other bells and whistles. Improvement wise, the AI has been revamped. Difficulty has been changed to allow four distinct levels of difficulty rather than the three of the last game. I’ll let Greenwalt explain the change: ‘People complained the jump from medium to hard was too great, so we didn’t an add an extra hard, we slotted one in between.’ And difficulty has also grown more dynamic. In the career mode, the AI will level up with you. Change to an A-Class vehicle, and the AI will change too. Win a lot of races in a row, and it will begin piling on the pressure. You’d think all this content would be too much for the 360, especially since – like Forza 3 – the game will ship on two discs. Greenwalt disagrees, although does admit that a shift to hard-drive play would be ideal. ‘Greater capacity streams less quickly’ he explains, ‘and streaming is so important. Streaming off DVD is faster than streaming off higher-capacity. We’ve got a game with three hundred cars and every track on disc one. If you’re looking for more… here’s a second disc, it’s like free DLC. If we had to go to a really high capacity disc, the graphics would get worse. Guaranteed.’
All in all, Forza 4 seems like the culmination of Turn 10’s dream of crafting the ultimate ‘car’ game. Not racing. Car. It’s not trying to be needlessly hip or street. The gameplay and interface is entirely in tune with their vision. As Greenwaltconcludes, ‘we’ve evolved into our own character, by having that diversity of car and inheriting that diversity of car cultures. [We don’t] oversimplify it as techno music and guys in sunglasses driving BMWs.’ Indeed, Forza 4 is an equal opportunities racer. It’s a game designed to seem like it’s tailored around you – your car, your decals, your skill. Maybe, just maybe, it is love after all.
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