Playground Video games has grown.
Once I first visited the studio in 2014 for Forza Horizon 2, the crew nonetheless shared their constructing with a wide range of different companies. In 2018, after I once more flew over to the UK for an early peek at Forza Horizon 4, there was an entire wing of the constructing stuffed with builders beavering away on one thing totally secret and apparently unrelated to Forza Horizon. Remaining none the wiser, I used to be escorted previous this space with a coy grin from Playground Video games co-founder Ralph Fulton – now the director of this yr’s extremely anticipated Fable.
Right now, in 2026, a lot has modified. Since my final time as a visitor, Playground Video games now operates in three separate buildings round Leamington Spa, all inside strolling distance of one another. The group now not shares its unique constructing with anybody else, both. With Fable being developed throughout city, each a part of Playground Video games’ unique Rossmore Home facility is now dedicated to Forza Horizon. The rooms I’m toured by really feel acquainted to me – filled with desks, dev kits, and diecast automobiles – however now there are merely extra rooms.
Make no mistake: Playground Video games is greater than ever.
So, as it occurs, is Forza Horizon 6.
We’ve recognized for a while that Forza Horizon 6’s Japan is Playground Video games’ largest and densest map to this point. We’ve recognized, too, that Playground Video games’ model of Tokyo City is about to be the most important city house the group has ever made, and 5 occasions bigger than Forza Horizon 5’s Guanajuato.
Seeing it in individual, nonetheless, is one thing else – and clearly extraordinarily thrilling. My first showcase of the sport in motion incorporates a beaming crimson GR GT – the duvet automotive for Forza Horizon 6 – threading its approach from the map’s southern finish to the north, up by the outskirts of Tokyo City and onwards to Japan’s Alps. For some stretches I watch because the group drives, and for others they defer to Forza Horizon 6’s new auto-drive accessibility characteristic. It’s a characteristic that happened so as to assist gamers with finite power they need to save for racing and occasions; power they might be hesitant to exhaust by driving throughout the map to achieve them (though artwork director Don Arceta jokingly concedes he’s discovered himself utilizing it to eat snacks at occasions).
As with all earlier Forza Horizon maps, this isn’t a 1:1 facsimile of any particular chunk of Japan; it is a biggest hits tour that captures the look and spirit of areas from all around the nation, all bundled right into a single racing sandbox. From the angle of somebody who has solely ever skilled Japan as an occasional customer, it is immediately convincing. As somebody who loves the power of video video games to authentically place me someplace on the planet, I’m instantly transported. The color palette. The highway markings. The recognisable bridges. The distinct vegetation. The group has the season set to spring for my very first glimpse of the sport in motion, which ends up in zipping previous clumps of iconic blossom timber. Within the sliver of the map we toured by they appeared satisfyingly often, that means they remained a novelty after they did so. That is, Playground Video games has not turned springtime Japan into an unrelenting and inauthentic sea of continuous pink – even when pink is the longtime hero color of the Horizon Competition.
My common curiosity in Japan itself doesn’t dwarf my curiosity in different places all over the world well-known for his or her scenic driving alternatives, and I ought to in all probability make clear that I’m not the type of individual whose admiration for Japan and its tradition is the core defining a part of my persona. Sure, I like ’90s JDM automobiles, Godzilla films, and Japan’s massively reasonably priced konbini beers after I go to. Nonetheless, I don’t watch anime, I bounce off JRPGs, and… I hate uncooked fish and chilly rice. I’m additionally approach too tall for Japanese public transport, and I’ve a scar on my head due to it.
I do, nonetheless, firmly imagine that Japan is a fully glorious setting for a Forza Horizon recreation.
“It’s one of many first selections we make and it’s traditionally one of many hardest selections to make as a result of, as you say, it informs every little thing,” says design director Torben Ellert. “And there are various parts to it that we’ve spoken about at size, however Japan has been a location we’ve needed to do and it’s been on our shortlist for quite a few video games. However I feel this was the primary time that we felt that we may take a shot at it; that the concern was wholesome quite than an precise panic response.”
“Every location provides new challenges, and clearly new gameplay and new experiences, however, for this one, Japan had plenty of challenges that we had to determine and strategy and attempt to remedy,” provides Arceta. “And that was one of many issues that, at the least for myself, intrigued me to sort out Japan as a location.”
One vital rule that the Playground group took particular care to abide by was the truth that merely transplanting the Horizon Competition to Japan and dusting their fingers couldn’t be sufficient. As extremely desired as the situation was, it may by no means be the solely factor Forza Horizon 6 delivered to the desk. Fortunately, Ellert factors out that the situation does, in actual fact, give the group plenty of scope to make new options – which is one thing he cares deeply about.
“I feel plenty of the discussions that we had all the way in which again in idea for this venture had been round, ‘Is it simply Japan? Is it a earlier recreation that’s on a brand new map?’ says Ellert. “And our video games are by no means like that. We all the time iterate, all the time innovate. We all the time introduce new options and push the sport ahead.”
“So, actually from a design viewpoint, we had been very cautious and very conscious of the truth that we wanted to consider this as a recreation that was set in Japan, quite than that being virtually like a core a part of what the sport could be. We could not rely on it being Japan. We needed this to be probably the most progressive Forza recreation that we’ve made; probably the most thrilling recreation. The sport the place we push on a bunch of various axes and generate these new options that gamers could be actually enthusiastic about. And it’s additionally in Japan.”
“Japan comes with so many expectations and everybody has their thought of what Japan is,” provides Arceta. “So, clearly, we had to have a look at these issues, like Tokyo City and what they count on – and clearly mountainous roads, which each provide enormous challenges for our group technically and gameplay-wise.”
“However it’s additionally looking for the issues that can shock and delight gamers, and issues that folks don’t instantly consider Japan after they say it. And I feel, as with all Horizon video games, we all the time search for these in each location that we select. For Japan, it’s no totally different. We now have these good surprises, and we’ve seen it with the footage we have shared to date. Persons are, like, ‘Does that exist? Is this for actual?’ And it does exist in Japan, which is actually thrilling.”
Not too far into the tour, the GR GT reaches Forza Horizon 6’s model of the real-life Kawazu Nanadaru Loop Bridge – a singular, two-story construction that winds into the sky like an enormous Scorching Wheels monitor.
“You in all probability noticed this in, I feel it was in, the [Developer_Direct] trailer,” grins manufacturing director Mike Bennett. “Like, you simply know the quantity of drift movies we’re gonna get on this highway, and I’m so trying ahead to it.”
A while after negotiating the bridge, the primary trace of the Tokyo City skyline seems within the distance.
“This circulation into town right here is a part of how we thought of defining this Tokyo City as a set of experiences,” explains Ellert. “You see it within the distance, on the horizon. You strategy it. You drive by suburbs and skirt across the center of it. You progress up onto the freeways and, if I used to be to show left, you go down by downtown and the centre of town.”
“Slightly than attempt to 1:1 rebuild a spot we create the person components of the expertise of driving to a spot.”
Getting into Tokyo City I’m bowled over by simply how vastly totally different it is to earlier Horizon recreation city areas. That is spectacularly totally different from Guanajuato, and Edinburgh, however that’s not essentially the pleasantly shocking half. Forza Horizon 3’s trendy and vertical Surfer’s Paradise is the closest comparability, however the scale of Tokyo City is immensely extra grand. Even skimming across the fringe of town’s coronary heart and escaping by way of the raised freeway, it’s clear there’s a lot extra to this tackle Tokyo City than has been typical of Horizon video games.
“The headline is it’s our largest ever, in comparison with Guanajuato; 5 occasions larger than that final city house,” says Bennett. “But additionally simply the range of it in comparison with earlier video games is fairly huge as nicely.”
“I feel a criticism that might have been leveled at among the earlier video games, inside Guanajuato we did have totally different areas inside it – we did have totally different constructing types, and they had been actually vibrant – however possibly it was a bit one-note as you had been transferring round. There wasn’t enormous quantities to separate one space from one other.
“Whereas, I feel with our model of Tokyo it’s very various. You’ve obtained the tall skyscrapers within the central space. You’ve obtained the suburban areas with the great homes as you’re heading in. That is in all probability the craziest characteristic, truly, we’ve by no means completed something like it; simply the multiplayered, multi-level highway infrastructure that we’ve obtained going by the center. Like, we needed to exit and construct new tooling to permit us to do that, leveraging what we’d realized by Scorching Wheels.”
The range of Tokyo City stems from the truth that even town itself, which is considered a biome of its personal when it comes to the general map, is additional divided into 4 subsections – or districts, as Arceta describes them.
First, there are the suburbs – which Arceta regards because the crust of town. These are quiet and peaceable areas, filled with all of the appeal of a clear however cluttered, densely populated Japanese city space. The roads, coated in bike lanes and college markings, stretch out beneath a spaghetti of chaotic cabling.
“We weren’t in a position to do that visible in earlier video games; we needed to go and spend money on our telegraph wire tech for our artists to have extra of those on display, and join them with the chaos we see,” notes Bennett, chuckling on the specificity of the phrase ‘telegraph wire tech’ and the idiosyncratic hurdles recreation builders encounter of their professions. “It’s such a small factor however, as quickly as it’s there, it’s gluing collectively all of these components in the way in which that you simply count on issues to look.”
“It’s wonderful,” provides Ellert. “It’s one in every of these items the place, in pre-production, you have a look at it and say, ‘Okay, there’s no approach we are able to do this.’ After which some actually sensible individuals go away and they fiddle with some issues, and it’s, ‘Wait, what? I assumed that was not possible!”
“It’s a quintessential factor, all through all of Japan: the cabling,” says Arceta, earlier than he describes the second space: the dockyard.
Tokyo City’s dockyard, which guarantees to be an especially in style vacation spot for Occasion Lab creators, is a big space that seems primarily stuffed with containers – although the group guarantees they’ve positioned ramps and elevated pathways round to facilitate the over-the-top driving and stunts we usually affiliate with Forza Horizon video games.
“All of your fantasies you’ve of driving and drifting across the docks,” says Arceta.
“Relive the Horizon 2 days,” provides Bennett, referencing the modestly sized dockyard that shaped part of Forza Horizon 2.
“Relive your favorite film,” Arceta continues. “That is the place you do it.”
The third district of Tokyo City is the commercial space, which is on its personal island – reached by crossing the long-lasting Rainbow Bridge. The commercial district can also be dwelling to Forza Horizon 6’s ode to the well-known Daikoku parking space, the real-life 24-hour freeway relaxation cease that draws and hosts an everyday stream of the good automobiles in Japan, and has grow to be considered the very best automotive park on the planet.
I joke in regards to the nonsensical period of time I spent doing donuts within the automotive park that was tucked inside Forza Horizon 3’s Surfer’s Paradise, and the group are nicely conscious of the facility of getting these kinds of areas in a Horizon recreation. Automotive parks and petrol stations aren’t simply wise, automotive adjoining infrastructure to have across the map; they let gamers pause and admire their environment, cease and meet mates, and do their very own storytelling. There are much more of those coming in Forza Horizon 6.
“There are plenty of automotive parks and, yeah, there’s not all the time a characteristic tied to them, however visually it simply makes the world really feel extra wealthy,” says Arceta.
The ultimate district of Forza Horizon 6’s Tokyo City is the downtown space, which incorporates not solely the distinct, neon components of Shibuya and Akihabara, but additionally a clear and crisp industrial and banking space. Even inside this single district there will probably be a number of totally different aesthetics.
It’s within the downtown space that Arceta notes you’ll additionally see extra in-world Horizon Competition branding presence, impressed by the kinds of banners and signage a real-world metropolis would grasp and show in sure methods if it had been internet hosting an occasion like, say, the Olympic Video games. This truly goes additional than simply serving to the Horizon Competition really feel like a extra genuine international occasion that has, in actual fact, descended upon Tokyo City and its environment – it helps in sudden methods, too.
“You may think about that one of many challenges we have now is, you understand, automobiles can drive in all places in our recreation,” says Bennett. “And, while you’re constructing a metropolis, one of many issues that you simply count on to see is individuals.”
“We’re not GTA, and we’re not attempting to be GTA, so automobiles and individuals don’t all the time play good. So we all the time have this problem of, ‘So, how can we combine individuals into the scene whereas nonetheless holding them protected from automobiles?’ And the great factor about having the Horizon infrastructure ever current inside the metropolis, is that we are able to create areas inside the metropolis with Horizon Competition branding, and we are able to hold individuals in there, protected from automobiles, and you’ll be able to nonetheless see a populated metropolis as you’re driving round. So that fiction actually helps us tie that in and remedy a type of challenges.”
Arceta explains that, for the primary time in a Forza Horizon recreation, the group constructing the world itself has been break up into two: one for Tokyo City, and one for the rest of the map.
“We now have a group making our metropolis particularly, and plenty of that’s: it’s our largest metropolis we’ve ever made,” says Arceta. “It’s so layered and so detailed – way more than something we have completed previously.”
“To make Tokyo City for Forza Horizon, we actually want a devoted group. It covers every little thing from roads, buildings, foliage, terrain; Tokyo has all of it. It’s simply such an enormous biome that it simply warranted its personal group.”
I’m a passenger at this level, and we don’t spend very lengthy cruising by town itself, nor discover it totally. For his half, nonetheless, Ellert is especially keen on how immersive Tokyo City is proving to be, and how the geometry of its highway community is altering the way in which he assaults it – and even the automobiles through which he does so.
“Driving round in Tokyo City, what strikes me is simply how immersed I really feel in a spot,” he says. “That’s true of lots of our biomes due to the way in which that your traces of sight are constricted however, as a result of it’s town, it feels radically totally different.
“I feel one of many issues that excited me after we had the primary white field variations of town that we may drive round in, was simply how it modified the way in which I drove round these white field roads. You end up doing much more technical driving; much more hard-90 turns. You’re driving lots within the B and A category of automobiles, which is sort of a special expertise to driving round the remainder of the world.
“So while you enter Tokyo City, until you’re simply binning by it on one of many motorway hyperlinks, your driving expertise gears down, and you want to work together with the marginally broader foremost roads and the fairly slim, as a result of we have some actually slim alleys by town. It’s a fully totally different driving expertise.”
For Arceta, it’s his favorite place on the map.
“It’s superior simply being there, he says. “The group’s completed an incredible job. That is our first actual, I assume, metropolis that we’ve ever completed, and it seems like it. Additionally, I like structure, so it’s straightforward to simply say that’s my favorite.”
Exterior of Tokyo City, Forza Horizon 6’s Japan is made up of 5 additional biomes: the Japan Alps, the highlands, low mountains, plains, and the coast.
The Alps are the best level on the map, and they’re an space of everlasting snow that jogs my memory plenty of Forza Horizon 3’s Blizzard Mountain enlargement. The realm features a ski resort with working chair lifts, and an interpretation of the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route and its towering hall of snow partitions. Sure, you’ll be able to bounce over it; we requested, and the Playground Video games group immediately obliged. Tokyo City appears tiny within the distance from the Alps, which appears fabulous for the sense of scale right here.
The highlands is the following step down, which Arceta factors out took plenty of inspiration from the Venus Line (or Veena Skyline as it’s generally referred to as; one of the vital scenic driving roads in Japan).
“It’s so open so it’s the very best place to understand the skies,” he says.
These rolling hills seem draped in a sea of susuki grass, which guarantees to be vivid inexperienced in the summertime earlier than yellowing for autumn. We’re additionally promised cows, however we don’t get to identify any at this time.
Subsequent are the low mountains, which Arceta describes because the transitory biome between all locations, stitching the map collectively. This would be the dwelling of touge racing by dense tree corridors and tunnels.
“I feel there are extra timber on this map than in all probability a number of video games mixed!” laughs Arceta. “As a result of we’re not transport on Xbox One X anymore, that simply gave us the headroom to realize the density you see.”
Forza Horizon 6’s timber are rendered deep into the gap, which the group state is essential to reaching the aesthetic of Japan, however couldn’t be completed earlier than.
Lastly, there’s the coast, with its picturesque rock formations and ocean, and the plains, that are parts of rural Japan. We’re proven a quaint shrine perched in the course of a soggy subject. On this case it’s loomed over by a stretch of raised Shinkansen monitor, prepared for a bullet practice to blaze over. The juxtaposition between the normal and trendy worlds is an fascinating one.
It’s essential to notice, nonetheless, that the map itself will not be merely damaged up into Tokyo City and 5 different zones. This time round biomes are elevation-based, which Arceta explains is a very totally different strategy from previous video games, which usually sliced the atmosphere into separate chunks. That is, desert right here, rainforest there, and so on.
“I feel it makes this map tremendous distinctive,” says Arceta. “As you talked about, previous biomes in previous video games had been fairly area locked, or separated.
“I imply, [Forza Horizon 6 still has] a number of areas that exist in sure areas. So we have now our Alps up within the north and then we have now our Tokyo City down within the south. However all of the biomes that stay together with these are altitude-based, and it actually adjustments the way you expertise the map. And we may solely do it this manner as a result of our map is so vertical. It’s so elevated. Once we had been doing our analysis on Japan and that elevation, the biomes simply modified that approach.”
In response to Arceta, mixing parts of the totally different biomes all around the map additionally made them extra acutely aware about introducing delicate variations to outline areas which in any other case sit below the identical biome umbrella.
“So we have now plains, for instance, and these are dotted round all around the map,” says Arceta. “However it additionally obtained us pondering, ‘Properly, how can we modify these plains up in every location?’ Certain, it’s the identical biome, however it simply led us to all these micro-nuanced adjustments inside biomes.
“We now have our low mountains, which is sort of just like the glue that ties all of the biomes collectively; you’re both transitioning as much as the highlands otherwise you’re taking place to the plains, otherwise you’re going as much as the Alps – however you’re all the time touring by low mountains. And it was one of many issues that we needed to sort out; to simply be certain to offer every space its personal id. So should you’re going up this one touge highway, it feels totally different from the one down south of the map.”
In improbable information, Forza Horizon 6 may also embody a number of everlasting race circuits on the map we are able to go to.
“It’s humorous,” says Bennett. “Like, each recreation we all the time have a little bit of inner pressure of, ‘Ought to we put a race monitor in it?’ And you understand we need to depart some house for our mates on the Motorsport group to do the race circuits.
“And we dipped our toe into the water on the LEGO enlargement [for Forza Horizon 4], LEGO Pace Champions, the place we had a race circuit there – and then on FH5, the place we had some mini circuits and the Baja circuit.
“Once we got here to doing Japan, as somebody who’s actually into automobiles, one of many stuff you love about Japan is all of the little grass roots circuits they’ve obtained dotted round, and it was, like, ‘We will’t not be impressed by a few of these and put them within the recreation world.’ I like the truth that we have now them, and there’s multiple, which is actually cool.”
As an alternative of casual zones based mostly on biomes, this time round Playground has overtly break up the map into named areas, which include a mixture of environments.
“That’s a solution to hold the map somewhat extra manageable,” says Ellert. “Establishing the concept that we have now areas – and the areas have issues you’ll be able to acquire, they’ve an id, they’ve races – simply to make the expertise a bit much less overwhelming. Which, traditionally, will also be a little bit of a problem with Horizon video games, notably should you be part of late.”
“It’s each a great factor and generally a nasty factor is that there’s a lot to search out, a lot to see, but additionally it will be actually overwhelming while you open the map and it’s simply coated in stuff to do,” provides Bennett. “So breaking that down into the areas, hopefully ought to let individuals chip away at issues in a approach that feels extra manageable.”
Playground has additionally utilized a fog of warfare to the map for Forza Horizon 6, with an intention to encourage gamers to discover at their very own tempo and take pleasure in what they uncover as they discover it, quite than instantly swamping their maps with icons.
“Since you use highway discovery to grasp the place you’ve been on the roads, penning this throughout the map as an entire meant that all of a sudden it was, like, ‘Oh, I’ve not been right here; I’m simply going to drive. Oh wow, there was a factor there,’” says Ellert “And that’s completely what it’s meant to be.”
It’s the downhill stretch for the Playground Video games group now, and it received’t be lengthy till all the Forza Horizon group is unleashed upon the brand-new world the crew has crafted. Arceta can’t wait to listen to what gamers from Japan itself consider Forza Horizon 6.
“For myself, and I’ve seen a few of this with footage we’ve launched, it’s when somebody from Japan performs the sport and it’s, like, ‘That appears to be like like simply down the road from me. I’ve been right here,’” he says. “Even when it’s not a landmark – it’s only a common avenue – that makes me tremendous completely happy when individuals reply that approach.”
Ellert is in settlement, however would additionally love to listen to that folks from exterior Japan discover it immersive in their very own methods.
“I’d love it if individuals who would like to go and stay a yr of their life in Japan vicariously have that have by the factor that we’ve made,” he says.
For what it’s value, absorbing each inch of it is what he plans to be doing himself.
“I nonetheless am delighted to search out bits of Horizon 4’s map, although I labored a lot on that recreation,” says Ellert when requested in regards to the components of Horizon 6’s world that he’s most pleased with. “Simply yesterday after I was establishing for us to begin speaking, I discovered somewhat farmhouse surrounded by cherry blossom timber on somewhat raised floor in the course of some paddies, fairly near the stadium. And I used to be simply, like, ‘That is probably the most picturesque, lovely place.’
“Truly, I noticed a screenshot of it on another person’s display and I’d stated, ‘Okay, is that idea artwork?’ They usually stated, ‘No, that’s a spot,’ and I’m, like, ‘That is not a spot.’’ They usually confirmed it to me and I’m, like, ‘Wow.’
“So for me, I’d say it’s the little locations the place artists have clearly frolicked and thought of what they’re going to make there, and I can’t wait to search out all of these and have a look at all of them.”
There’s nonetheless extra to return from IGN on Forza Horizon 6 all through the remainder of March, together with a have a look at the sport’s new customisation choices, plus a dialogue on seasons.
Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN critiques group. You may monitor him down on Bluesky @mrlukereilly to ask him issues about stuff.