14 DAY TRIAL // One of the leading developers working on the Forza series of racing games has revealed that, when the series was first conceived, one of the core inspirations was the Pokemon franchise from Nintendo, emphasizing collection and use of various monsters at the right time.
Dan Greenawalt, the creative director working at Turn 10, tells SPOnG that, “I knew that I wanted this car-collecting element to be implemented into the game. What game, especially back in 2002, had inspired collecting more than Pokémon? It did collecting using a rarity system – through different coloured versions – with a sense that everything felt very natural. And actually, there’s a really natural sense of rarity in cars.”
He adds, “So in Forza 1, the cars had a rarity meter, and you had to pick your region – much like choosing Pokémon Sapphire or Ruby – and that made certain cars more or less rare in the game. That was directly inspired by Pokémon.”
Forza is a racing game at its core, but many players are less interested in playing the game in order to demonstrate their mastery of racing lines and break opportunities than in making sure that they get all the cars the game has to offer in their garage.
At the moment developer Turn 10 is working on a new game in the series called Forza Horizon, which is set to use a full open-world structure.
The entire game experience is based around a fictional Horizon racing festival and will challenge players to obtain a number of Wristbands as signs of their success after beating other racers and destroying property.
The game will offer a lot of opportunities for emergent racing against drivers the player meets in the game world.
Forza Horizon will be launched on October 23 and will be exclusively available on the Xbox 360 home console from Microsoft.