What you need to know
- During Forza Monthly, Turn 10 Studios detailed Forza Motorsport (2023)'s single-player campaign and progression elements.
- Forza Motorsport's single-player campaign has been completely overhauled to focus on your relationship with your cars.
- The new Forza Motorsport loop is "Level, Build, Dominate," with players learning the limits of their car, customizing and improving their cars, and participating in races.
- New per-car progression and revamped car building ties into this new gameplay loop.
There are a lot of exciting games releasing in 2023, and many of them will undoubtedly overshadow anything released in the racing genre. Still, racing games fans are eating well this year, too, as Forza Motorsport (2023) is officially arriving this October for Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC. On Tuesday, we learned more about what the game's single-player campaign will look like.
During an episode of Forza Monthly, Turn 10 Studios detailed the progression elements of the Builders Cup, the overhauled single-player campaign that will dominate Forza players' time whenever they're not racing online. The new Forza Motorsport (2023) campaign addresses a lot of player feedback when it comes to earning your car and building, not buying.
In addition to featuring a ton of gameplay footage running at native 4K and 60FPS on the Xbox Series X, the demo also contains a ton of information on the aforementioned Builders Cup. The single-player campaign will feature a ton of themed series centered around a few unique cars. Players will choose one of those cars and then evolve that one car over the course of the entire racing series, learning about its history in the process.
The Builders Cup will also evolve over time, with new content being dynamically added to it as Turn 10 Studios releases new tracks and cars for the game. There will always be more opportunities to fall in love with new cars and slowly learn their limits, build the best version of them, and dominate in every race. Each event of these racing series is split into an Open Practice to help you learn the track and your car of choice, a Challenge the Grid menu to choose your difficulty level, grid position, and more (which influences your potential cash payout), and a Featured Race, which is, well, a race.
Each of these races will be against Drivatars, which are returning but have been tweaked to now adhere to all of the simulation and physics you do, meaning races are more fair than in previous entries and any loss or win is entirely dependent on your driving skills and your car. Drivatars will also dynamically update with the latest liveries, car builds, and driving skills of your friends, so that it always feels like you're racing against real people even when offline.
Finally, car progression has been overhauled. Each car has an individual level, and you earn XP by beating your best times around corners and continually improving with your car in races. Levels earn you Car Points, which you can invest in performance upgrades to make your car better, acting like skills or talents in other games. At one point, Chris Esaki, the Creative Director on Forza Motorsport, described the new progression system as being like a "Car-PG," as you're not buying upgrades, you're investing your experience with a car into improving its capabilities.
There are a lot of other details contained within the demo and gameplay footage, so it's definitely worth a watch if you're excited for the game. Turn 10 Studios also promises a lot more information ahead of Forza Motorsport's official release later this year.
In case you missed it, the game does have a release date now. Forza Motorsport (2023) releases on Oct. 10, 2023 for Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, Xbox and PC Game Pass, and Xbox Cloud Gaming. Even better, you can preorder it starting right now, and get up to five days early access with the Premium Edition.
It's still a little too early to tell for certain, but Forza Motorsport (2023) has everything it needs to become one of the best Xbox games of the year, and one of the greatest Xbox racing games of all time. At the very least, Turn 10 Studios does appear to be listening to community feedback to improve over previous entries in the franchise.
