I’ve seen some negative comments about the career mode in reviews and forums stating the career is linear and a step backwards etc.
Having now completed the 5th Ultimate series I can confirm after that the career opens up completely and you can freely choose the car classes and race series you desire. Best of luck to anyone who completes them all, there is a huge roster once again.
That’s good news, roughly how many races would you say are available after the 5th series?
I miss the old Forza 4 grid of races which seemed to go on forever!
But you can 're run any series as you progress anyway. The main concern is whether you can choose individual races rather than series.
I think many people don’t realise that you can rerun any series and then also choose which class of cars to use because they keep going to the prominent and big “continue” rectangle instead of choosing the smaller one. Not being able to select a specific race is an issue though.
Exactly - you can go back to any volume and run any series and any class at any time once you have opened the volume as you progress. Unless you can choose a specific race at end of career it’s no different to what you can do whilst progressing.
isn’t “free play” here to fix that “issue” tho?
I mean, you get xp and credit just like in career races, but you get to choose class, cars etc…
or is there something I’m not getting maybe?
No because unlike career free play only lets you select series and car class - it doesn’t allow you to specify open wheel or hot hatch for example so you can’t run the same competition as in career.
If you could it would be fine. Plus you race against boring old fashioned AI in free play and not the more dynamic drivatars.
oh I didn’t pay attention to those details, so thanks for pointing it out.
how about (and I agree, even if this works, it’s still a setback for those who are only XBL silver) creating a custom online lobby with AI?
I didn’t try (and I’m at work right now, or else I would have 
) but in previous forza’s there were some really deep options for online private lobbies.
nonetheless, it would be nice to have series in free play, I believe FH2 was very nice in that regard.
anyway, thanks for the clarification.
now I believe we can all agree
Unfortunately online public lobby is limited to 5 drivatars per real human participant so this avenue doesn’t work either.
Free play allows you not to choose the series like in career mode. You only can drive the tracks from the career mode but not the car fields. Thats a big big issue. So every free play races is with random carfields not like in career mode 
Please tell me that once i’ve finished all 5 series I don’t have to continue with this new opener in order to unlock another achievement…
The list in Forza 4 took aaaaaages and I never finished it and got the achievement for it.
Dude soory to tell you that but that there’s an achievement were you must drive all the races
Which Achievement is that then? “One for the history books”?
So I’m presuming the car divisions are what open up once you finish all series…?
As said above the car divisions for each volume open up as soon as you open the volume - you dont have to finish all five volumes first. As soon as any volume opens and you have unlocked all 3 series in that volume you can choose any car division you like at any time. What you can’t do is choose a specific single race.
Correct, however, the divisions are already all open without finishing all series.