![]() For Forza 3, the team developed a method of using 4K 360 degree cameras and time-lapse photography to capture realistic sky and cloud data – they sat out in the desert for weeks, pointing cameras up at the heavens. To capture the look and feel of Britain through the year, the Playground art team spent months travelling the country, taking photographs and videos of each location and capturing seasonal variance. You start out in glorious sunshine, but after a few days of play, the nights draw in and the skies become cloudy, then snowy. But in Forza 4, the game world goes through a complete seasonal year every real-time week. The best you can hope for is a day-night cycle. Most open-world games, especially those with multiplayer online components, are stuck in meteorological stasis – it’s always sunny or snowy. ![]() Then, in the early days of Horizon 4, the programmers achieved a technical advance that made the choice more logical: dynamic seasons. However, there were passionate advocates on the team who kept pitching Britain every time a new project started. Forza Horizon 4 is set in an idealised Britain that, while not precisely based on real places (apart from a scaled version of Edinburgh), takes the geography, architecture, flora and fauna of each location and replicates them in gorgeous detail. This time, however, the team brought the game home. The setup is always the same: players take part in a festival where they drive dozens of beautiful cars through a vast backdrop, getting involved in a range of races and challenges, but mostly just drinking in the exotic locales. The first was in Colorado, the second was southern France and northern Italy, the third, Australia. Since the arrival of the first title in the series six years ago, each Horizon has featured a densely detailed, near photo-realistic reproduction of real-world geography. ![]() ![]() In this way, Forza Horizon 4, the latest open-world driving sim from Leamington Spa-based developer Playground Games, may be the most emotional racing game I’ve ever played. It is very strange to play a modern big-budget video game and to be taken back to childhood memories, to places that feel somehow imprinted on the psyche. Skeletal oak trees lining starkly frozen meadows. Sheep running across the road in the Scottish Highlands. The golden autumn sun glinting from the windows of Cotswold cottages. ![]()
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