After years of rumors and persistent fan requests, it’s finally official: the Horizon Festival is heading to the Land of the Rising Sun. Forza Horizon 6 arrives next year, as Xbox announced at the Tokyo Games Show, and it will be set in Japan. Players have been requesting this destination for a very long time, and it’s hard to imagine another location generating as much excitement. Japanese car culture is unique. However, according to some developers at Playground Games, there are reasons why Horizon has waited until now to go there.
Ambition Made Possible by Technology
Last week, I had the privilege of speaking with Don Arceta, art director of Forza Horizon 6, and Kyoko Yamashita, cultural consultant. Our conversation, although very pleasant, was unfortunately quite limited; at this stage, Playground is only communicating about the location of the action. I tried to get more information about the types of environments, the map size, and its impact on traditional gameplay. The answers were quite evasive, but one thing became clear: the diversity of this world, an area where FH6 seems to want to surpass all its predecessors.
“To be honest, whenever we chose our locations, Japan was always on the list,” said Arceta when asked why Playground decided now was the right time. “Through each game, there has been a lot of learning from the first Horizon games up to 5 and now 6. I think that with all this learning, technically, we are capable of building this game and doing it justice, but it’s also related to the evolution of the game since [Forza Horizon] 1.”
Tokyo, the Most Ambitious City in the Series
Naturally, the city of Tokyo will be represented in Horizon 6, and Arceta described this part of the map as “the largest and most complex area we have ever created in a Horizon game. It has incredible depth, with elevated roads and varied road sizes.” The technology that enabled this density comes from a somewhat unexpected source.
“A lot of our technology, in terms of tools for building our open worlds, has really progressed since FH1,” explained Arceta. “One example would be Hot Wheels. In the Hot Wheels expansion for Forza Horizon 5, we developed technology to create our orange tracks in a different way than in Forza Horizon 3. It was a new way to iterate quickly, achieve higher quality, and get a really fun result. And we adapted that technology, for example, for our Tokyo city. It’s not covered in Hot Wheels tracks, but we used it to develop our elevated roads, of which there are many levels in Tokyo.”
Urban environments have always seemed somewhat neglected in previous Horizon games, but density is essential to convey the feel of an authentic Tokyo. Arceta claimed that not only is Tokyo the largest city in Horizon to date, but overall, FH6 has “our largest map to date” and “probably the richest map as well – there is an enormous amount to do there.”
Authenticity and Adaptation to Gameplay
As fans would expect, the regions on the map will not be exact digital replicas of their real-world counterparts. When I mentioned Japan’s notoriously narrow streets, Arceta clarified that “we don’t do copy-paste, which we never do in Horizon games. We try to capture the authenticity, the feeling, and the spirit of the place, as in past projects, but also because we want to match the gameplay for which the franchise is known.” Beyond the city limits, the Japan of FH6 will include coastal regions, mountain roads (Mount Fuji is glimpsed in the trailer), and open countryside.
Seasons, a Key Dimension
This world will also be transformed by seasons, like the UK and Mexico versions in Horizon. The addition of seasons in FH4 profoundly enriched the sense of place. As Yamashita explained to me, the way seasons affect specific areas of the country influenced the choice of locations representing the “best-of” Japan in FH6.
“You don’t need to be Japanese, but if you were born and raised, or have spent a lot of time in Japan, your body begins to adapt to the seasons, literally and figuratively,” said Yamashita. “Technically, we even have a word in Japan that says there are something like 72 micro-seasons in a year. People are used to saying we have four seasons, but it shows how many transitions there are.” Yamashita highlighted the diversity of Japan’s climates, over an area roughly equivalent to the length of California and part of Oregon combined.
“When you think about this area having such a distinct and unique character across the four seasons, which touches every level of daily, weekly, monthly life – from the food to the colors you wear, to the colors you see while commuting – it’s so natural for Japanese people, but also, I think, so elegant and unique for a foreigner or visitor,” she added. “With Don and his team, we talked about so many different personalities that we want to try to extract and bring to life in Horizon.”
Exploring Japanese Car Culture
One of those images is certainly that of cherry blossoms in spring, which is seen in the teaser trailer. Exploration has always been at the heart of Horizon. Just think of the potential of a Forza Horizon in Japan to imagine meeting up with friends in a recreation of the Daikoku Parking Area. How will these iconic meeting places manifest in FH6?
Discussing the legendary Japanese car culture, Arceta mentioned all the places “where you can imagine people meeting up, forming convoys, taking photos, and hanging out together. I think by being authentic to the locations we’ve chosen, these areas appear naturally on the map. So, yes – without revealing too much – we are offering that opportunity to players.”
A Gradual Reveal
For every question answered in this interview, I had twenty more. However, it’s clear that the reveal of FH6 will happen at a different pace than its predecessors. In the last two games, we immediately got rich two-minute trailers. This time, Playground couldn’t even tell me on which platforms the game will release, nor the specific date next year. Undoubtedly, they are letting this game breathe because they know how important this moment is for everyone following this franchise.
“I feel like Japan has been discovered,” said Yamashita, “because of how I’ve seen Japan evolve, especially in the video game space, but also in entertainment broadly, the artistic community in general, and everything we love – electronics, from the 80s to today’s Japan. But I think if you had asked this question 20 or 30 years ago, when I started in this industry, it wasn’t as accessible and approachable for a foreigner. Now that there is more awareness, I think the average understanding of the culture will make this installment of Horizon more welcoming and approachable.”
“For me, it’s as if Horizon has finally landed in Japan, and it deserves to have this moment in Japan,” Yamashita summarized. Something tells me the fans will agree.
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