Forza Horizons opens for the player as an epic experience. The first one is still cool and I will not hear words against it. I love them still.
This time in Japan and it’s set around Mount Fuji. So many places around it and jumping out of a plane has been done. Space rocket?
I’m just an old man, but bombastic video games give me life. Please Forza Horizon, do your magic.
I’m going to be extremely boring, because I really want the developers to tone things down a little bit this time. Just have the screen fade in, give us a brief view of the Japanese countryside before panning over to us driving the cover car. Have us go for a little drive, see more of the landscape until we pass a lone Toyota Crown Comfort TRD GT-Z on the side of the road.
That Crown Comfort is your first starter car. On the slow side, but not unbearably so. Also extremely rare, less than 60 made, and also very Japanese, as the standard Crown Comfort was a common Taxi in Japan and various other countries in Asia. Your next mission, drive to the Horizon Festival as quick as you can.
Is it a ripoff of the first game? Yes, it is. But you know why I’m suggesting it? Because it worked extremely well the first time.
Maybe start with something seemingly boring, but turn it into anti-Shenmue and make something like AE86 tofu run opening. FH is not about being slow.
Sure, but I desperately want these games gain a solid sense of progression back. You can have your taste of power in the first half of the Initial Drive, which is why I mentioned the cover car. You can work your way up to power gradually from there. The sandbox element has simultaneously elevated and hindered this series, and Horizon 6 desperately needs to try something new, or in this case, something it hasn’t tried to do again in over 10 years to avoid suffering from Horizon 5’s missteps. Horizon 5’s biggest misstep by far, to me at least, was being way too similar in structure to Horizon 4. Horizon 6 will be suffer in the long run if it repeats that mistake.
I want to have a scale back on progression, don’t get me wrong. I want an explosive start but don’t give me supercars right at the beginning. Make me work for them and force me to learn. Not too stupidly hard, but not too easy either.
Honestly, it really doesn’t matter how the game starts. They will probably do it super over the top again, just because it’s better PR to show an insane initial drive. I just hope they are going to put some effort into a good story line, personally I’d find it a bit more fitting if the cover car is driven by the final boss who then gives it to you after you beat them, so that it feels more special. I even think that makes it more interesting, because in previous Horizons I always found it so strange to drive the coolest cars immediately even if it’s just for a few seconds it’s kinda like the game plays all its cards in the first round, instead of spreading the content out to keep you engaged.
I really liked how FH2 did it, where you would just deliver the cover car to the festival and then choose your first car. Then at some point when you made a bit of money, you could actually buy the cover car for yourself.
Space rocket?
The cover car would have to be a Tesla Roadster, for that to work 
Or the way FM2 did it: No initial drive at all, just choose a continent, select a starter car from that continent, and get going.
If we do end up with the starter cars format again, I hope it’s an actual choice instead of all the starter cars being added to your garage regardless of what car you pick. What could be an interesting touch is if the race events had their own themes, that way your starter car had an impact on which order you do the races in. Any cars you buy from the autoshow or win as prizes will open up more events, creating more branching paths and in turn you experience much more of the car list.
I mean not that shifty-eye twitchy moving guy’s cars, no. Just something movie-like flashy stuff.
I also really miss how previous Horizons would slowly unlock new events bit by bit, FH5 kinda just slapped everything in your face. In FH2 you would choose a tour and then drive to three locations to have a championship in each, or in FH3 where you’d unlock the different outposts and it would take a while to unlock the next one. In FH5 it was basically the same, but the progression was so insanely fast just to get you into the multiplayer as fast as possible, you couldn’t even slow the progression down by just exploring the world and not doing any events, because the game would reward you for literally just driving around, which is just strange, there was no real way to just take a break from progressing.
I really hope that FH6 kinda “locks” you into a path that you can choose at the start with your starter car and then you can drive restricted events with it and eventually buy new cars to unlock everything else bit by bit and no stress. And the multiplayer therefore would also unlock bit by bit, and hopefully they finally get rid of the Festivalplaylist’s FOMO and just design it so you can get reward cars at any point for doing tasks and events.