Forza Gaia - Race The World

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Hi Everyone!

In the last year I bought my first Xbox (a series X) and am currently playing Horizon 2 thru 5. I’m a fair way through 5 and maybe a third of the way through the others and I’m loving them.

However, I’d love to see the scale and ambition of the series reach new heights and was thinking of ways the game could be expanded through a new framework and creativity tools for players.

So, please see below a pitch for Forza Gaia - my idea of that the future of Forza Horizon and Forza Motorsport could be…

Before you go any further - please be aware that this is quite a long post! It’s a full pitch document I was preparing for Turn10 and Playground Games, but as there isn’t an official contact point, this forum is the place for it. This pitch is only the surface of my ideas for the games and I’m always up for any feedback. I’m also interested in getting into the games industry, as I’m a technology educator looking for some more creative outlets… and I love fun racing games!

Forza Gaia: Forza Horizon and Forza Motorsport embrace a planetary scale experience.

Race the World.

Forza Horizon and Forza Motorsport are the premier racing experiences for Xbox and PC. Forza Gaia seeks to expand these experiences to a new level of depth and participation never before available.

Forza Gaia forms a framework around Forza releases:

  • a game map of truly global proportions with the integration of previous and future Forza titles into the Gaia world system with location contextual placement
  • a new location linking system facilitating travel between maps in real time
  • greater levels of player participation, creation, and community through Forza Creator
  • deepening environmental realness with WeatherSync and TimeSync
  • leveraging cloud technologies to enable remote hosting and delivery of assets created in Forza Creator

Future game releases in the Horizon and Motorsport franchises are added to the Gaia map over the coming years, encouraging player retention across both game series. Neither franchise is dependent on the other - players can either ignore one, dip in and out of both, or play both. It’s up to them.

However, special bonuses, rewards, and recognition will be available for players who consistently make achievements across Forza Gaia by playing tracks within both Forza Horizon and Forza Motorsport.

Maps and Locations:

  • Forza Gaia enables location maps from all games in the Horizon and Motorsport games to be displayed on a global map.
  • Linking tracks between the established maps will allow playing a global enduro race - The Ultimate Goliath. In order to play The Ultimate Goliath, players will need to complete a series of Showcase Events - each one unlocking a linking track, which eventually forms The Ultimate Goliath.
  • The Ultimate Goliath is not a static event - as more country and local maps are added to Forza Gaia, the event will get larger over time - with new additions to the event being unlocked and becoming playable. This ensures the event is one players will return to conquer again and again.
  • Maps made in Forza Creator are overlaid on the global map as selectable layers.
  • The addition/refinement of city centers is an echo of Metropolis Street Racer. Cities could include North America - New York, Washington DC, San Francisco (plus a Canadian city or two). Australia - Perth, Melbourne, Sydney. Europe - London, Paris, Berlin. North Asia - Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo.
  • Perth is highly recommended as a location. The CBD contains a variety of height and environmental differences (from Kings Park, on an elevated location to the west of the CBD, to Optus Stadium, located by the Swan River on the eastern edge of the city) which make for interesting tracks. The freeways around the city are long, gently curving, and almost seemed designed for a racing game. Perth is a drivers city.
  • Special environmental race series - for various climates (eg an Antarctic speed runway, desert dune buggy racing in the Sahara). EG: Desert Destruction - complete all events in desert zones across the Gaia map.

DLC and Special Maps:

  • Forza Space - tracks on the Moon and Mars - with appropriate or adjustable gravity! In the Mars finale showcase, race Tesla Cybertrucks around the first human colony under construction. Feel the heat or the chill as you race across the surface of Mercury. Explore special tracks, then in a nail-biting showcase, escape the crush of the atmosphere on Venus as you race to meet the rescue craft sent to collect you.
  • Forza History - use the Forza TimeEngine to go back in time create Festival sites in historical locations and race the Old West, 1950’s London, and Imperial Rome…(opportunities here for additional Story content).
  • Sea Racer - tracks on pontoons, floating platforms, cargo, and aircraft carriers. Race across Sydney Harbour, up and down the Hudson River with the Statue of Liberty at your side, and turn the water into your race track.
  • Fantasy Fest - tracks, locations, and vehicles from major entertainment franchises across film, tv, comics, and literature. EG Star Trek: Starfleet Academy terrestrial vehicles test track. Doctor Who: Bessie and the Whomobile race through the UNIT UK base and the Valiant airborne aircraft carrier. HALO: Race the Ring - actually race around a ringworld in a dedicated HALO racing map!

Forza Creator:

A creation tool for Forza Gaia. Forza Creator is a standalone paid DLC that enables Forza players to be the designers of their Forza experience and to share or sell their creations to the rest of the Forza community.

Forza Creator consists of two tools - Forza Map Creator and Forza Vehicle Creator.

Forza Map Creator:

  • Create real or fantasy locations, which can then be imported into the Gaia map as a selectable layer map.
  • 5km x 5km square size. Connectable to other maps created by the same or other users.
  • Import map information such as topographical data, satellite views, and street layouts and auto-generate real-world location maps using AI.
  • Manual creation of maps is possible within Map Creator. Choose a location, use, amend, or create new topography. Then create a track layout. Add environment, foliage, animals, and effects. Add trackside structures such as barriers right up to Forza Festival sites and city buildings. Finish with presets for the time of day, real or fantasy weather events, real-time or fantasy skies, and astronomical events (eg comets, planets, space battles, eclipses).
  • AI-Generated cityscapes and landscapes - use a series of parameters to create landscapes and cityscapes. Create a whole new map or append an existing one. For example, use a road layout of a city center, and then instruct the AI tool to create a sci-fi cityscape, erasing the existing buildings, and inserting new ones, while retaining the road layout.
  • Ideally, the creation should be quick and fun, but with sufficient depth to give options for users to tweak as much as possible, for example by adding famous monuments randomly to a landscape or recreating a movie vista (eg the Statue of Liberty on the beach in Planet of the Apes)

Forza Vehicle Creator:

  • Create a car manually or use AI to generate a vehicle based on your preferences.
  • Create your own vehicle from a series of presets. Build it from the ground up. Chassis, wheels and braking, body, power source, internal layout, seating, fabrics, displays, and much more
  • Creation of custom parts that are stretched and snapped together.
  • Randomise and optimize option - the game creates a car from random parameters and then optimizes the placement of parts using an AI model.
  • Cut and paste - select parts from one vehicle and paste it onto another.
  • Vehicle Auto-Tune - select to Auto-Tune your vehicle for the upcoming event.
  • Leverage the existing car creation and modification tools in Horizon and Motorsport.
  • Use AI as a testing tool for any completed vehicle.

WeatherSync and TimeSync:

  • Weather Sync - Real-time weather in-game. Using data feeds from meteorological services, this mode enables the actual weather at a particular location to be recreated in-game. Cloud formations are correctly approximated volumetrically, and wind, rain, and temperature are correctly replicated.
  • TimeSync - no matter when you play, the time is correctly replicated in the in-game environment. Further to this, players can choose the time at a particular location, play in that time zone with someone online, and race in their local time, your local time, or real-time.

Additional environmental considerations:

  • More visible stars at night. Particularly in rural or isolated settings. Possibility for navigation by the stars challenge - will require the correct display of the sky and constellations at a particular location (eg the sky in the southern hemisphere is different from that in the northern hemisphere and the milky way is the major feature).
  • A broader range of weather and extreme events to randomize and add drama to events. Storms, lightning strikes, tornadoes, earthquakes, landslips, and more.
  • Customise weather events within races - randomize or choose when particular weather events take place and their intensity and duration.

Challenges/Events/Story Mode:

To unlock the connecting Enduro tracks, players must travel between continents/connecting areas using trains or planes as transport where required. This could become another series of Showcase Events.

Connecting Showcase example:

  • Drive into the back of a plane as it taxies down the runway.
  • Switch to the cockpit and take control of the plane becoming the pilot.
  • Taking off and achieving a stable altitude.
  • Activate drop zones on the ground below.
  • Returning to the vehicle and being parachuted down to the drop zone from the plane.
  • These drop zones could be historical or story-based locations etc - the player completes the required races in the zone and then drives into a car carrying platform on a train to exit the zone. The train then moves to the next drop zone.

As these connecting showcase events are completed, the enduro track section is unlocked and a new Exhibition, Rivals, or Championship event becomes available. Additional map areas around the connector are also opened.

Good Driver Challenges:

  • A series of fun Good Driver challenges that aim to improve driving at lower speeds and in possible real world situations. However, these would take a humorous bent.

Challenges could include:

  • Stay Within The Speed Limit
  • Don’t Hit Granny
  • Roundabout Roustabout
  • Merge F*cking Correctly
  • Pull Up To The Bumper
  • This Is How You Parallel Park (on a cold and frosty morning)
  • Overlord Of The Overtaking Lane

A Connected and Expanded Story Mode:

  • What do ancient monuments, explorers, Hollywood stars and stuntmen, aristocrats, an Aussie car expert, aliens at Area 51, and the Horizon festival have in common? A deeper, twisting narrative of love, ambition, murder, and corruption, that plays out across the story mode in Forza Gaia.

DLC Tie-In Opportunities:

  • Where In The Forza Is Carmen San Diego? The legendary crime-solving caper comes to Forza Gaia. Race to find the clues, travel to different countries and battle race to apprehend Carmen San Diego and her various evil gang members.
  • LEGO and Hot Wheels DLC’s return but options for expansion and splitting into Season based levels.
  • Explore more vehicle tie-ins from classic tv shows and movies such as the franchises previously mentioned - including Star Trek, Doctor Who, Star Wars, Back to the Future, Ghostbusters etc.

Achievements, and Festivals:

  • Previous achievements recognized - The game should recognize progress and achievements from previous Forza games and account for these accordingly - either adjusting difficulty levels or allowing access to areas of the map they unlocked when originally playing. This encourages repeat play and the discovery of new items created for Forza Gaia.
  • Upgrading the Festivals - include local dance/club/rock/pop music from each continent.
  • Appropriate national dress on crowds and available in-game.
  • Festival building Architecture that’s location appropriate, yet modernized.
  • A loop track within the festival itself.
  • Animation of or actually, driving into the garages.

Release:

  • The full gold master version of the game is possibly to come on a custom Xbox external storage SSD - consider a customized WD Black.
  • Additional countries/maps cities launch monthly/every few months over the coming 12 months to several years.
  • Use cloud architecture to host the global map.
  • Cloud-based play via Game Pass.