If you’ve heard a rumour of the forthcoming Forza Horizon, then the leaked trailer embedded below will only increase your anticipation and questions. Crediting both Turn 10 and Playground Games, the ‘Tone Trailer’ has apparently been leaked by the latter company. It appears to have escaped from the recent Xbox Spring Showcase, and looks to be the game formerly rumoured as ‘Forza World’, which was bubbling under for E3 2011 as an open-world game, which was reported as being developed at Playground back in May 2011.
The LinkedIn Details for Playground, which is an independent UK studio formed in 2009, mentions development of a first title in partnership with a major publisher. It’s also made of ex-Codemasters, Bizarre Creations and BigBen employees – and obviously Bizarre and Project Gotham Racing have shared roots with Turn10 and Forza Motorsport since the first Project Gotham game appeared for the Xbox.
So an open-world Forza racing game with loads of cars and modifications (Judging my the modified machinery in the tone trailer), crowds of onlooks and barrelling down desert highways in Lamborghinis?
Two points to note, one of which has escaped the non-racing obsessive games press.
1. Ex-Bizarre/Codies staff gives us some hope, but there’s a worry it could end up turning Forza into Need For Speed: The Run, or Test Drive Unlimited.
2. Did anyone else spot some Porsches in that trailer? Now, it’s only a tone trailer, so we can’t get too excited, but it may mean that the licence to use the brand was obtained before Electronic Arts refused it for Forza Motorsport 4, or they’ve since relented – we can only hope.
No other details have come to light besides a Fall 2012 release date. So this could be a full boxed game, XBLA or the automotive equivalent of Minecraft for all we know! But we’ll be keeping a very close eye on it as either an amazing addition to the Forza franchise, or possibly the moment when it jumps the shark and goes horribly wrong.
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