Forza Horizon 5: Rally Adventure takes the game off-road, trading in smooth highways for skids across the dirt, offering ten new cars and three new factions as part of a narrative extension to a racing title that just keeps on getting slicker. With Forza Motorsport coming out later this year, Horizon 5 is turning off the afterburners and driving off into the sunset in style. The pack adds a nice texture to the game, giving us the rough with the smooth, while keeping the cinematic flair of the base game intact. Though the new road surfaces can take some getting used to, especially after all those times I've accidentally swerved off-road and bounced off the bumpy terrain of fields, Rally Adventure has enough juice in it to tempt Forza fans back for one more lap.
Ahead of the pack's launch, I spoke to Chris Phillips, the game's vehicle director, and Kelly Boyle, the senior game designer. Forza Horizon 5 is already noted for its depth, and so adding more depth through a whole new racing style seemed like a challenge. To hear Phillips tell it, the challenge was one the team relished.
"[The base game] gave us a really cool creative space to work in," he says. "When we design our base game map, it's all about creating a fun, yet accessible environment. That makes us make certain decisions that don't allow for incredibly technical driving. Whereas with rally, we've been allowed to turn up the technicality of our road network. And that's given us this absolutely incredible place for the driving experience."
When the base game begins, players take control of a car that drives out of an aeroplane in mid-air, and the game retains that flair for the dramatic throughout. It's a highly cinematic experience, and while the cars look realistic and move in realistic ways, there's an intrepid spirit to the whole thing, which Boyle is keen to keep in this expansion. "One thing that I love about this expansion in particular is how alive the world feels," she says. "You jump in, you've got the helicopter following you, you have the person on the start grid going 'three, two, one', and then running off to the side. I think this pack in particular, the world feels really alive, you've got loads of dust kick-up. I think all of that really adds to a sense of adventure, because you feel like there's more stuff going on around you. There's more stuff to explore."
That helicopter, Phillips explains, came about initially because of the need for realism, although it quickly expanded into the typical cinematic style of Forza Horizon 5. "We have a helicopter and that came about from two parts. One is in rallying there is often a helicopter filming you. But the other is we have a really interesting problem with Horizon with our car list. We have nearly 700 cars now, not all of them have passenger seats. So you can't actually physically have a co-driver next to you doing the call, so we decided 'let's move it into the helicopter'. It's a thing that's very visual for rally, and also adds a really cool, to use your word, cinematic element where you have this helicopter following you. It even plays into the gameplay at night where there's a spotlight that shines down in front of you to aid visibility. There's a lot of little things like that in rally that just add that drama."
All of this off-road action is built around a fresh story, and Boyle explains how this folds into the world. "Players pick and choose what they learn [as they] work through the different teams. They get through reputation challenges to a big boss finale fight, against all of them. I think the campaign is going to be really good to work through the routes, to get to experience the world, and get loads of different styles of racing under your belt."
Forza Horizon 5 Rally Adventure is out now.