Forza Horizon 3 has to be one of the best open worlds I’ve experienced.
The team has kept a major focus on the driving mechanics while also creating and providing an incredibly detailed and immersive world, Many people will only notice the driving aspect as that is the main feature of the game, But if you take your time and have a slow drive through the areas in the game you’ll notice what I mean.
Many driving based games fail at keeping a balance of a detailed and immersive world + Good vehicle physics, The Crew is a good example of this. The map in the crew is very large scale, But many of the areas are entirely devoid of life and lack a good selection of vehicles or good vehicle mechanics.
Opposed to Forza Horizon 3. Forza has always kept very smooth driving mechanics as well as very detailed and immersive open worlds and a very fair selection vehicles to choose from.
I’m not a real game developer though, I just make small worlds for games like fallout, etc. And if possible, I would like to know what some of the design process of the world is.
How do you decide what the location is going to be?
How do you decide what the size is going to be?
How/When do you decide what the layout of the map is going to be?
I just have alot of questions about the process of making the world.
In short though, I would like to thank the dev team for making such an amazing game!
No, no, no. Those mandatory drives to the next couple of events killed that game. The campaign was despicable. FH3 is incredible in all parts except the special events. There were a lot more in Forza Horizon 1. Horizon 2 had no variety and no memorable tracks except the southern route. FH3>FH1>>>>FH2
YES
Those road trips over and over and over… on top of pretty much doing the same championships over and over.
Shortening the championships, removing the single player road trips was the best thing they did, on top of you know making your own.
I agree with OP about the world, amazing. With the sky, weather pattern changes, different things happening its always great to just look at and take pics.
How does that kill the game? If anything, its just a chance to enjoy your car and take in the scenery as you casually cruise to the next location. The Euro setting was far more interesting, immersive and beautiful IMO.
Wish we’d have more street and road racing than jungles, deserts and beaches.
You won’t get answers to those questions (developers rarely comment on these forums) but I agree that this is a fun environment to drive through.
On a related note the race routes seem much more refined than what was available in Forza Horizon 2; they favour power/acceleration a bit too much but other than that they provide a good challenge.
In this video interview from 2014 (minute :30 to 1:40), Ralph Fulton discusses their criteria approach to choosing the location, which includes diversity as a high value.
I love all the Horizon games (except the mess that was FH2 on the 360) but I still think FH1 is my favourite overall purely because of how much it blew me away on the old 360. The twisty roads up the canyons were immense fun to race, cruise or drift up and down for hours on end! Also the 1000 club and rally add ons were brilliant. Would be amazing to see both of these reappear in future Horizons.
Indeed it is a very well rounded package, and while the gameplay is rock solid, the world we drive in is quite detailed and is a huge part of the draw.