No doubt FH6 (if there is one) won’t see the crazy “launch success” this game had. All the paid off youtubers and review sites pushing this game as the best thing ever just so people get it has backfired IMO. This game has died out way quicker than FH4 for dedicated Forza players, while most casuals of course downloaded the game, played for a few hours total and never went on again.
The loading times and waiting vs actual gameplay is a real problem.
Horizon’s formula desperately needs a change. Whitelight mentioned something like this in Horizon 4 review and its coming true. The best example to follow is Project Gotham Racing. What currency you got and how to use it as well as how you unlocked cars and approached events constantly changed from game to game. It stayed true to its identity while being different each time.
Forzas current formula is: (b + u) + (g + s)
I think its far more simple than OP’s analysis: The formula is stale because the modern Forza Horizon formula was conceived with Forza Horizon 2 in 2014, and “perfected” in Horizon 3 in 2016.
Everything we like and everything we don’t stems from those two games, and even a cursory glance under the hood proves how much everything is built on those two games. From the game modes and progression, through to AH behaviour and garage management (or lack of) and other Quality of Life elements. Hell even the bug that has you spawn too far in front of the Yarra Valley festival in FH3 is present in FH5.
4 and 5 are almost just UI and graphical updates from those two games, with no thorough introspection as to what makes a Horizon game a, well… Horizon game. They are heavily derivative, and I believe the current leaders of the dev team don’t understand Horizon, or have been mandated to move it in a specific direction. There has been a steady decline in the festival and car culture elements (Car Meets, Lobbies, Clubs) and emphasis on non Festival elements like Eliminator, Super7/High Stakes.
I think its fair to say many of us fell in love with the idea of a Horizon Festival, the car culture that would be celebrated in it, and the type of social connections it entails. The Horizon franchise as it stands though, has moved past that and wants to promote design principles that have nothing to do with cars and festivals per se, and is looking to other parts of the game industry that drive artificial engagement, rather than engagement just because its a cool car game about a cool car festival. Hence a bunch of irrelevant collectibles, expanding series requirements and other FOMO elements to help drive Game Pass subscription, or - dare I say - new Halo micro transactions.
I think its fair to say that by the time FH6 is releasing, it would have broken away from the original roots enough that there’ll be some attempt at a “spiritual successor” to FH3 by some dev shop that comprises old hands from PGG. But history tells us that there’s probably an 80% chance it will not work out, and we’ll be left pining for the “good old days”. Happened to Battlefield, happened to Burnout. It’ll happen to Horizon.