We know that Forza Horizon 6 will arrive with 550 cars on day one, which is the largest number of cars at launch for any previous Forza Horizon game. That number will obviously only continue to grow over the next several years. After all, Forza Horizon 5 arrived with just over 500, and now sports around 900. Whether it’s something brand new to the series, or a previously-seen car cleared for a return appearance, Forza Horizon 6 will no doubt grow weekly. As we’ve learnt in the past, the Forza team is never not building cars.
However, moving forward from the Xbox One and Xbox One X generation of consoles has given Playground Games the opportunity to finally pull the trigger on a number of improvements to vehicles; improvements which touch every single car.
“So there’s work we’ve done across our whole suite of vehicles in carrying them forward,” explains production director Mike Bennett. “So, for example, if you look at our headlights and taillights, we’ve got a new refraction-based shader on them, which gives them this really authentic look of depth and feel.
“Also, with things like where you have the more polycarbonate-style headlights, there’s a sort of rainbow refraction effect that you get through there, like an iridescence as the light is cast through it. We’ve also reworked our materials used across the library of vehicles as well. So we’ve done some basic stuff like that outside of customisation.
“Some of the coolest things I think we’ve done are where we’ve made investments that touch the entire library. So there are new vehicles that we have in the game – and those vehicles have their own unique, bespoke parts which are exclusive to that car – but then I think probably the biggest areas, some of the areas we’re most excited about, are things like Forza aero and window decals.”
The ability to place decals on windows has been something that’s been requested ever since the influential livery editor was first introduced to the Forza series in 2007’s Forza Motorsport 2. It’s been spoken about previously, but Bennett reiterates it’s something the team has wanted to do for a very long time.
“That requires a massive investment,” he says. “You have to go back and do work to every single car in order to support that. So we’re really thrilled that we’ve been able to bring that to players, and that allows everything from doing huge ornate designs that span across the windows – wrap all the way around the car – to simpler stuff like having a sun strip in the windscreen. Or even just smaller, low key things like having window stickers that you can go and place on there.
“And that’s kind of a fun one as well, because we link that into the campaign as you progress. You’ll unlock little graphics you can go in and proudly display in there as well.”
With these changes, the team has confirmed that full livery support from Forza Horizon 5 is not supported. However, Playground is actively testing solutions to allow players to import their livery vinyls, and can confirm that this feature will ship when Forza Horizon 6 launches.
Also, before you ask: yes, you can cover your whole windscreen with stickers if you choose.
Ka-chow.
“When a player applies liveries or decals to their windows, they can tune their opacity level,” explains Bennett. “This means they can set them to [be] fully opaque or highly transparent, so yes – if a player really wanted to, they could completely block their visibility through the windows if that’s what they choose! Rather than making that decision for the players, we thought it was better to allow them to make that choice.”
Another noticeable improvement that touches on each of the hundreds of cars in the game has been to the series own-brand Forza aero – the adjustable, unbranded splitters and wings players apply to their cars in order to unlock aero tuning. Dedicated car builders have become increasingly critical of the one-size-fits-all approach of the all-purpose Forza aero parts available in Forza games. However, Forza Horizon 6 will feature front splitters tailored to the individual car, and modern spoilers with separate paintable elements.
“So we’ve redone the front end and the rear wing for Forza aero,” explains vehicle handling designer James Leech. “So the new front splitter is completely bespoke to each car. Where before we had one piece that would just go onto the front of the car, now each can tailor itself to the design of the actual vehicle.
Leech showcases the new Forza aero on a Toyota GR86, explaining how the front splitters in particular won’t simply look the same on the GR86 as they do on everything else.
“It looks more natural, especially with the canards as well,” he says. “It follows the body lines a lot better. And we have a new tow hook, which has the feature of being able to be paintable. So, for people that like the smaller customisation, it means you can make the look more cohesive and instead of a red blob on the front of the car, you can actually make it look complete.”
“I think just the fact that the kit – the Forza aero pieces themselves – every single one of them has been somewhat reworked and somewhat retouched to work with the profile of that vehicle,” adds Bennett. “That’s the biggest uplift.
“There were some cars in the past where maybe it just didn’t sit super well against that vehicle. So yeah, you got a performance uplift, you got a visual change, but maybe it didn’t quite look as cohesive as you wanted it to. But now, genuinely, I think it looks so much stronger aesthetically. The new materials on it, the supporting struts that we have.
“The new design for the rear wing – the kind of swan neck-style wing – is much more modern looking than what we had in the past. You can customise the end plates; a bright colour complimentary to the car, or again you could throw on one of our new carbon materials and just provide something really, really subtle there. I’m really hoping, and I think we really believe, that the Forza aero work that we’ve done has been really, really valuable to our car roster. And like I say, it’s almost all of our cars that I think we have Forza aero pieces for, so a really big investment there.”
There have also been improvements to the paint shop, both with material types and through quality-of-life options that will cut down menu shuffling for prolific painters.
“So within our advanced materials, we reworked our metallics, we’ve got a new heavy metal flake material in there,” begins Bennett. “We have a candy paint.
“And one of the nicest things, honestly, is we’ve removed a lot of the friction that you used to experience when you navigate through the paint. So, in the past if you wanted to choose a metallic, you would have to go into the paint shop, you’d have to tab through to advance, you’d have to navigate down, you’d then have to click into metallics, and then you’d be tuning multiple values to get the right hue.
“And it was a lot of clicks, is probably the best way to put it. And it was kind of hidden. So there was a bit of a barrier to entry there where, if you were more like a power user, you were experienced from the previous games, you knew how to get there. But I think for somebody who’s less experienced with the games, it was kind of hard to find. So now when you go to the paints menu, you open it up, you go to the standard paints; you can just simply click the right trigger and you’ll swap in between gloss, semi-gloss, matte, metallics, and then you can dive in from there to the advanced paint menu and make those adjustments.
“You can also favourite paints from there, which we think should be a really powerful feature for people who use our livery editor. Those guys do incredible things and they’re working with often hundreds of layers. So I think being able to quickly assemble a palette of favourite colours that they can go and swap between when they’re applying different graphics should be something really valuable for them as well.”
On top of this, there will be over 100 new rims, and the ability to choose different rims on the front and rear.
“The reason people actually want this is because in a lot of tuning culture, especially like grass roots time attack and track racing, you’ll run different specs front and rear – so we’ll just swap different wheels on,” says Leech. “Or drifters, they go through so many sets of rear tyres that you’re normally just throwing on whatever you have. It’s really cool that players will actually be able to use this feature and make builds to replicate what they want to see and what they’re into.”
“We kind of teased this a little bit in the past; not as a deliberate tease, but there have been cars that we’ve brought out that have been pre-modified – like the Hoonigan cars and that kind of stuff – and they’re had different rims on the front and rear,” adds Bennett. “So people like me are looking at this thing thinking, ‘Oh come on! Please allow me to make that choice for myself on my builds.’ It’s a small thing but I think, to the people that are into cars and like to spend a lot of time in the Auto Show doing builds, they’re gonna love that.”
There are also some fun new options for kei cars, and Leech brings out a Honda Beat to experiment with.
“It’s a small car, right? You can’t fit big engines in these things, but they are perfect for engine swaps from a different type of vehicle,” teases Bennett. “Throw a motorbike swap into that thing.”
“Yeah, now it’s gonna redline at, like, 15-grand,” smiles Leech.
“So we’ve got a few new motorbike engine swaps that all have some great audio, and they also rev to silly numbers,” says Bennett. “I’m really excited for those.”
Bennett also confirms kei cars will feature appropriate number plates with correct number classifications in game; in Japan, kei cars have yellow number plates with black lettering.
While these improvements to car customisation will no doubt result in an overall improvement in the kind of builds players can create, Playground has been going a bit nuts with its own completely custom cars in the meantime.
In Forza Horizon 6, Forza Edition cars are being injected with entirely custom fabrication you can’t recreate by manually applying upgrades in the Auto Show. The team explains they began to experiment with this a little later in Forza Horizon 5’s lifespan.
“So there’s two examples of this,” says Bennett. “One was the Horizon Edition Dodge Viper that we added to the game, where that had a really unique carbon fibre aero kit that we added for it, and we also put a sun strip in the windscreen. So really kind of separated it from what you could get with the standard Viper. You couldn’t just modify one to make it look like that.
“And then we pushed that even further with the Jordan Luka collaboration, where we basically did a full resto mod on the car. So we took the Camaro, it was widened, it had unique wheels on it. I think it had a unique tyre design. The whole interior was reworked. We kind of riffed on the design of the trainer. The body was really heavily modified, the lights were changed. It was such a cool car, but we had a ton of fun working on it, and we think our players really, really loved this thing that we’d created. And so you can consider that. And then also, if you look at shows like SEMA or Tokyo Auto Salon – or even when you consider our location of Japan, and the incredible builds you see coming out of these tiny workshops dotted around the country – we’re like, ‘Look, there’s something to this. How do we go and move Forza Editions forward for the next game?’
“And so what we’ve tried to do is take as many of those elements as possible and feed those into the Forza Editions that we feature in the game. And personally, I think these are some of our most exciting cars. So again, they’re very rare; you can’t just go and buy these through the Auto Show. They come either through rare wheel spins or, interestingly, a few of these will be available as aftermarket cars. So, as you’re out exploring the world, some of these might pop up for sale as aftermarket cars on driveways, giving you a nice reason to go out and cruise and explore the world, make some fun discovery moments there.”
The thing that makes Forza Editions special this time around is how unique they are – and that goes far beyond their special, glow-in-the-dark, commemorative-style Mount Fuji number plates.
“The thing that, for me, really separates them is just the level of detail we’ve gone to in terms of differentiating them from a stock car modified with the parts available to you through the Auto Show normally,” says Bennett. “So they still have unique perks. Some of those unique perks will be tied to the new gameplay we have as well. So open-world time attack, additional link skills – that kind of thing. But yeah, really it’s the level of attention we put into the visuals of those cars. We really let our vehicle artists off the leash and show what they can do.”
“I know that players have seen a lot of that Miata from the reveal, the pretty crazy one,” says Leech. “Yeah, that’s got a V10, with the turbos for headlights. I think it’s one of the first things people saw. They were like, ‘What is that?’ And then you can see from the front end it’s even got the tow hook coming out the front end, like it’s the little tongue, which I think is quite funny.
“I think the amount of detail that’s gone into just the Forza Editions in general, we’ve even gone down to the point where how would these cars actually work? So, for example, if you look inside in the passenger footwell, the firewall’s actually been expanded, and you can see where the welds of where they’ve put more metal to even fit the engine to begin with. We would’ve never gone to those lengths previously for some of those cars.
“There’s the roll cage,” adds Bennett. “We’ve got working dials attached to the roll cage as well. We’ve ripped out the seat, so it’s now a single seat with a harness; more like a race seat design style in there.
“If you look around the car, we’ve even reworked the brightwork. So where you’ve got the rivets on the arches, the metal for the handles on the doors and the fixings for the hard top on the standard car, those things would be chrome elements. They’ve been given a sort of brass-copper look to knit in with the overall look of the car. So yeah, just that level of detail, like cutting and modifying the bodywork, like exposing an engine coming up through the bonnet, twin turbochargers; they just look so different compared to what you could build through the Auto Show, and I think that makes them really, really cool.”
Leech notes you can still do a little more customisation to the Forza Edition MX-5 to make it your own, if you wish.
“There is a bit more customisation you can do with that Forza Edition,” he says. “I guess the spec, out of the box, is this kind of drag car. It’s got the drag wheels, it’s got drag slicks, it’s got this low, drag look. But you can put Forza aero in the front, and it’s got this custom rear wing, and then you can put slicks on it, and then you can turn it into basically a little time attack car. So I think that’s something that we haven’t done before, where you can actually make a twist on the Forza Edition itself, and then turn it into something that’s capable of something completely different.”
Speaking of different, Forza Horizon 6’s Forza Edition S-Cargo is about as different as you can get, turning Nissan’s quirky, 70-odd horsepower, snail-shaped, mini cargo van from 1989 into an insane, rear-engine banshee full of custom engineering and a new, central driving position.
“The S-Cargo started off as a joke from one of our vehicle artists,” says Leech. “When they were working it up for Forza Horizon 5, they noticed that the dials were in the middle of the car, and they were, like, ‘You sit on the right, why don’t they sit in the middle? Then the dials actually make sense.’ And then I guess they just spun up the idea of this crazy, time attack, space frame S-Cargo, just from a simple joke.
“But the amount of detail that’s gone into that build. They made this bespoke space frame, but it’s got a front-mounted turbo. Okay, so we need to raise up the space frame so the actual exhaust work to the front turbo makes sense. Yeah, that thing’s absolutely nuts. I can’t wait to show that one off.”
“And the details on that as well; the consideration that goes into it,” adds Bennett. “Okay, we have this huge rear wing; it’s mounted to the space frame. Okay, well, of course, we’ve got to go and model these cutouts in the plexiglass rear window so that the rear door can open without interfering with the rear wing. Yeah, I think that probably exemplifies best what our artists can do when they are fully let off the leash.”
“And the fact that you can take the front clamshell off and you can see the front wishbones, and the intercooler piping and stuff like that,” says Leech. “It’s the one car that I’m, like, ‘I thought it was a real car.’”
The third car the team shows us is the Forza Edition Mazda RX-3, which is a little more sedate than the previous two – but that is intentional.
“Yeah, I love the RX-3,” says Leech. “We’ve drawn a lot of inspiration from car cultures of the ’70s and ’80s, and then some subcultures there. They were inspired by touring car racing at the time, so we have the works-like bubble arches on the car, and we have the small steering reel, the chin spoiler, and front-mount intercooler, and the upswept exhaust. It just looks super period.
“We even have the big, stock, banded steelies, like, the dish wheels. It just looks so cool. And it’s a different driving experience from what the other Forza Editions are. This one’s more grounded. It’s still a super highly strung, naturally aspirated rotary, but it’s more about just cruising, making cool noises.”
Bennett confirms the level of car passion in the studio has meant there is no need to handhold their car team through the building of these wild but otherwise convincing builds.
“Our studio is incredible because we’ve got so many people here who love elements of our game which are broader than cars, and they bring a really unique perspective there,” he says. “But then also it’s incredibly important for us that we’ve got people who are really, really into cars, and within our vehicle team – whether it’s our handling team or our art team – we’ve got people who are really, really, really passionate about cars.
“And there’s so much expertise that you can go and leverage there. So when it comes to a build like the MX-5, it’s not as if you have to really handhold somebody’s hand through that process. They instinctively know that, ‘Okay, well if I’m going to go and put a V10 in the bonnet of this thing, it’s not just going to fit in that engine bay.’
“And they’re poring over and being inspired by builds they see at SEMA, and videos of people building these cars at home. So they’re kind of acting out the fantasy that they have of building these cars in the virtual world. And I think that’s one of the most exciting things; the consideration of the details, like, ‘Oh wow, you’ve added a grab hook to get in and out of that vehicle. Well, yeah, I guess of course you would do that, because it’s going to be a challenge to get in over that tubular space frame that you fabricated into that vehicle otherwise.’ So yeah, I think really the knowledge and the expertise, it is just kind of born out of the passion of the team. It’s not a thing that has to be, I guess, dictated or instilled. It is thriving. And if it wasn’t, we probably wouldn’t have arrived at the place that we have with our Forza Editions on this game.”
“I don’t think you can instruct passion,” says Leech “I think that’s one of those things you either have it or you don’t. And I think we have a lot of passion.”
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Of course, in Forza Horizon 6, you won’t just be restricted to customising your cars – you’ll also be able to customise the garages you store them in. There are eight houses in Forza Horizon 6 that players will be able to buy, and each one has a garage. Each garage can be customised differently. When you pull up to houses you will load into the garage, so no more painting your cars on the driveway. As you progress through the campaign and buy more houses, you’ll unlock the ability to store multiple cars in your garage – one of which will be your current car, with full Forzavista functionality, and the others will be static display models drawn from your garage. Garages will support a main car and up to three additional display cars.
I’m immediately taken by how much they remind me of digital versions of diecast car dioramas, and the team explains they were inspired by things players had begun doing with Forza Horizon 5’s creator tools, building backdrops to show off their cars in certain ways. Players will be able to build typical, private garages, or put down asphalt and build a parking basement, or any number of crazy, creative ideas.
“I think the real inspiration goes towards that whole car culture thing of being able to not only build your cars and customise them, but also have somewhere to show them off, as in you would in real life,” explains producer Yazid Tahri. “And I think that was really what we were trying for when we were looking into the design for this, and how we can make that available to the players.
“It was thinking, ‘Okay, we know they have cool cars, they have ways of making the cars look cool; how can we make it so they also have a space, like those diecast, where they can show them in a specific way?’ Play around with themes, play around with looks, and have that ability to update that alongside their vehicles. I think that was the main thing we were trying to think about; it was, like, ‘All right, if I’m the player, what’s the best way to do that? What tools do we have available? What could we create for them to create that space?’
“And it is something that we know players do,” adds design director Torben Ellert. “I mean, we’ve talked about this, the journey that we’ve been on with Horizon 3 and players deciding that certain houses belonged to them. And then in Horizon 4 we implemented the houses feature.
“In Horizon 5, we built Event Lab, we built Event Lab Island. And, as you said, we wanted to deliver on something we know that fans have asked for many times: ‘Customisable houses when?’ So looking to find a way to bring that really powerful, robust tool set that we tested out, that we knew could do all of these things, that we knew players were using to do this in so far as they could. And then actually turning it into a curated building experience with as much freedom as possible, like allowing you to clip things through walls and sink things into the ground and really be as free as possible where you place your car, so you can make something that looks like a garage, or you can make something that looks like a superhero lair if that’s your vibe.
“Speaking fully selfishly, the ability to change my car in a space that I made makes me care about this so much more. It’s not the same interior of the Auto Show that is always perfectly lit and looks a little bit like a hangar, or a sound stage. It is a space that is yours, that is reflective of an aesthetic that you think is cool.”
Garages function like all other user-content in Forza Horizon games, and they’ll be shareable with the community, have share codes, and be able to be browsed and downloaded.
“Yes, I absolutely anticipate that it will be a small number of players who make the wild things that you see in games like this,” explains Ellert. “But then I look at other games that have building mechanics in them, and the creativity it unlocks lifts the community, but it also inspires the community.
“It’s like, ‘Oh wow, I can’t make the inside of a medieval dungeon with my cars in it, or something, but maybe I can mess around with it a little bit. Maybe I can get on that journey to move forward.’ So yes, it’s catering to a specific, very creative group of people, but ultimately I hope that more people will engage with it, more people will try it out.”
“I think we also have to keep in mind that we’ve designed these features and implanted them on a whole side of, ‘We know there is this smaller fraction of players that build, but we also know that there’s still this huge chunk of our players that enjoy and consume the fruit of the creativity of those master builders,’ adds Tahri.
“Sure, I could be a player that loves the idea of that, but not necessarily has the time to sink into building my own layout or familiarising myself with the tool. But due to how the feature is done and how we want it to be, it’s going to be fairly easy to pick up a pretty cool, pretty unique layout.
“You’ll be able to pick what cars you show in there, but that layout would’ve been made by someone else. So you won’t be able to edit it directly, but you’ll be able to pick and place your own cars as if it was your own garage, right? You found a contractor that built it for yourself, and then you just have your cool cars shown in there!”
While the team explains players will be afforded a lot of freedom in terms of placing objects, with clipping and kludging all permitted for people to achieve the precise look they’re after, we won’t be able to place vinyls in the space. However, perfect is the enemy of good, and sometimes compromises need to be made to get new functionality like this completed.
“It was challenging, is the short answer,” says Ellert. “I think we’ve made compromises to the bone on the original ideas that we had. There was a version of it where every house had a different floor plan. There was a version of it where there were windows in it, but we kind of talk about these as next-tier problems. If there’s a window outside, what happens when it’s nighttime? What happens when it’s winter? What happens if a car drives past? All of those become really difficult to answer, and we really wanted these features to ship in the game. So every time we had to make a scoping decision. It was, ‘Can we still keep the core of this?’ Which, for me, it was, ‘Can I have my brutalist architectural living room with a 911 parked next to my sofa? Can I still make that?’ Yes. Okay, we’re still good.”
Tune in next week for a first look at Forza Horizon 6’s new Rush events.
Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN reviews team. You can track him down on Bluesky @mrlukereilly to ask him things about stuff.
