Forza Horizon 3

to a destination. Forza Horizon 3 is a racing game set in an open world environment based in a fictional representation of Australia. The gameplay world is about twice the size of Forza Horizon 2, and the game contains locales and regions based upon their real-life Australian counterparts. While previous Forza Horizon games have depicted the player as being one of the racers of the Horizon Festival, the player is now the director of the festival, and their role is to expand it throughout Australia by completing races, challenges, and stunts to earn fans. If enough fans are earned at a certain threshold, the player can set up new festival locations and unlock more events. Three types of racing modes are available in the game: Exhibition, Championship, and Rivals. Exhibition is a single race at one location, whereas Championship contains multiple races dispersed throughout the gameplay world. Rivals is a versus race against the player and an AI opponent, where the player has to compete in a time trial to beat the time set by the opponent. Added in Forza Horizon 2, the player can also participate in Bucket List Challenges, where they are given a task to complete with a specific vehicle. The newly introduced Horizon Blueprint feature lets the player customise races and Bucket List Challenges. As the player progresses through the game, they can receive rumours of barn finds to uncover and restore. When performing stunts with a vehicle, the player is awarded "skill points". If enough skill points are acquired, they can be used to purchase perks that may award cars, experience points, in-game currency, and driving advantages, among other benefits. The player may participate in Forzathon competitions, which provide weekly challenges and give awards once completed. Returning from previous Forza games, Forza Horizon 3 features a vehicle AI called Drivatars, which learns and mimics the driving abilities of Forza players. Drivatars are found throughout the gameplay world, and they appear in races as opponents, where they can be adjusted by game difficulty via the player. The player can upgrade and tune individual parts of their vehicles, with body kits being available as well. Additionally, the game includes a vehicle customisation option called "Upgrade Heroes", which utilises both tuning and body kits to alter both a vehicle's performance and appearance, although the customisation preset is limited to a certain number of vehicles. The colour of vehicles and their collective parts can be changed, and the player can also design liveries for vehicles. A total of 350 vehicles were available at the game's launch. == Development ==

Forza Horizon 3 was developed by UK-based Playground Games, the creators behind previous Forza Horizon titles. Additional work was provided by Turn 10 Studios, who made the Forza Motorsport series. The game was designed using the ForzaTech game engine, which is used for most other Forza games. The development team started conceptualizing the creation of Forza Horizon 3 in 2014 initially after Forza Horizon 2 was released. The team desired to give players more freedom in Forza Horizon 3 compared to its predecessor. They also aimed for the game to be of better quality, therefore they sought to optimise more gameplay and graphical aspects over the previous title. One of these changes was minimizing the amount of loading screen time, as it could damage the game's impression of being persistently high quality. Mike Brown, a game designer at Playground Games, thought that the team made the correct decision to select Australia as the setting, describing the country's diverse scenery as "perfect". A significant amount of work was put into simulating landmarks of the country, such as the Twelve Apostles. Playground Games stated that they explored and represented every ecologically distinct part of the country in Forza Horizon 3; the gameplay world consists of six distinct regions. According to Brown, the explanation for this inconsistency was to create a better gameplay experience for the player. Design High-dynamic-range (HDR) played a key role in the visuals of Forza Horizon 3. Originally, there was not any thought of incorporating HDR into the game during development, but due to the development team discovering the HDR output of the Xbox One S, it was decided to start programming the feature. ForzaTech was found to be a good match for HDR, as the light rendering of the game engine was adequately set up the incorporate the brightness gamut of HDR. Multiple televisions were then bought for investigation of the feature. The development team later discovered that the televisions displayed HDR variously, which added more difficulty to the process of adding the feature to the game. The shooting process took place through various weather conditions and times of day to resemble a "dynamic weather system" in the game. This further meant that camera exposures and filters had to be changed frequently to adjust to each time of day. The footage of the sky was then imported into the game. Ralph Fulton explained that "humans form their first impressions incredibly quickly", elaborating that the first few minutes of playing a video game can drastically change how a player thinks of it. Playground Games later conducting a study of first impressions before developing Forza Horizon 3. Two groups of test subjects both played the same Forza game for the same amount of time, except one group played in a sports car and the other played in a regular car. When asked about their experiences playing the game, the group that played in the sports car rated the game generally better. As a result, Playground Games spent a large part of their development cycle (about eighteen months) developing and curating the first few scenes of the game. In February 2015, it was decided that the first few scenes would be split between the opening drive and the first of the game's events, with the decided route for the opening drive being finalised a month later. By June 2015, the route was being tested and concept art was drawn for the scenery that the player would see during the opening drive, although some concepts had to be adjusted or removed, such as the rainforest being made less dense. Problems also emerged with the car that the player would be driving in during the opening sequence, the Centenario. The Centenario resulted in being too fast for the player to observe the scenery as intended, requiring changes in the route and terrain. As the opening drive also went off-road, a cutscene had to be instituted to switch the Centenario to a buggy to accompany the harsher terrain. Additionally, the first event after the opening drive had to be pushed back for further improvement, prompting modifications to be made to the opponent vehicle. During the development process of the four-player cooperative campaign, the goal was to enable all players to play with "as little friction as possible", with the development team then generating a list of goals for an organised campaign. After assessing the campaign layout, the team created a list of problems that could negatively influence the gameplay and came to the conclusion that there four major issues that could affect gameplay the most. With each issue, the team brainstormed a list of possible solutions, picking the solution that produced the least conflict between players. The first issue, where players could be hours apart in campaign progress, made a screen appear that informs the player of how many fans they earned, and the festivals they can upgrade or open whenever they leave a cooperative session. If players also completed races in a cooperative session that have not yet been unlocked in their single-player session, the race will appear as "completed" on the user interface in single-player. The second issue was that races could have specific requirements for cars based on the restrictions the session leader has created, players with fewer cars may not reach those specifications. The solution was considered more straightforward, which introduced a rental feature that allowed players to borrow the session leader's car during a race. For the third issue, where players with less skill may finish races in lower positions, every race was converted into a team race between the players and the AI opponents. A point system was then added for every opponent beaten. This created a structure that let inexperienced players to contribute to the campaign even if they beat only one opponent. Although the fourth issue wasn't part of the team's original goals, it did come up often during testing phases, which was that the leader of the session had to guide other players through the game, even if there was not any sort of communication between players. To resolve the problem, a feature was implemented that notified the session leader's actions to all other players whenever the leader did something, such as starting an event. == Release ==

in 2016, showcasing a Ford Mustang Forza Horizon 3 was announced on 13 June 2016 during Microsoft's E3 press conference, where Ralph Fulton displayed a gameplay demo during the briefing. The game was released on 27 September 2016. Players were able to purchase three different editions of the game: the Standard, Deluxe, or Ultimate editions. The Deluxe and Ultimate editions gave players several downloadable content car packs and other exclusive content, while players that pre-ordered the Ultimate Edition were also able to earn early access to the game on 23 September. Forza Horizon 3 supports cross-platform play and is part of the Xbox Play Anywhere program, allowing the game to be playable both on Xbox and Windows if purchased digitally. Initially after the game was released, there were various in-game performance problems that occurred concerning the game's compatibility with Windows. An issue also arose involving the game's wheelspin feature, an award system that offers the chance for players to earn a new car or a certain amount of in-game currency, which may sometimes give players the maximum amount of currency that could be acquired in the game. These issues were later addressed and promptly fixed by Playground Games. Some players had also claimed that they were falsely banned after Playground Games issued bans to players using hacking clients. A Microsoft spokesperson later stated that players who felt that they were falsely punished can email them for investigation and removal of the bans. In January 2017, an update had the potential to corrupt the game for Windows users. The corrupted update was later removed by Playground Games. In January 2018, Forza Horizon 3 was ported to the Xbox One X, enabling the graphics of the game to be changed on the console, including adding 4K resolution, higher polygon models, increasing sample quality, and enhancing other graphical features. The game made use of Groove Music to play custom soundtracks, however, the ability to stream music to the game was stopped on 31 March 2019, after Groove Music was discontinued, limiting players to the in-game soundtrack as with the other Forza Horizon games. On 27 September 2020, the game and all its downloadable content were removed from the Microsoft Store after reaching end-of-life status. Downloadable content Several downloadable content (DLC) car packs were released periodically. While most packs featured a small collection of cars, some packs had themes, such as being type specific or manufacturer specific. Examples include the "Motorsport All-Stars Pack", which includes several racing cars, and the "Porsche Car Pack", consisting of cars made by vehicle manufacturer Porsche. In addition, the "Hoonigan Car Pack" includes in-game versions of cars that were used by the Hoonigan Racing Division. On 13 December 2016, the expansion pack Blizzard Mountain was released. The pack added a new location to the game, characterised by a mountainous landscape and having harsh, snowy weather conditions. The severe weather conditions added a challenging feature to driving, as aspects like icy roads and whiteout affected the ability of the player to control the vehicle. Instead of accumulating fans, as is synonymous in the Australian location, players had the goal of collecting stars instead. Similar to earning fans, acquiring certain amounts of stars unlocks more events around the region. On 9 May 2017, in collaboration with Mattel's Hot Wheels, Playground Games released a second expansion pack titled Forza Horizon 3: Hot Wheels. Like Blizzard Mountain, the pack added a new area to the game, portrayed as an archipelago connected by real-world scale Hot Wheels stunt track pieces instead of regular roads. The game's track acts similarly to an actual Hot Wheels course, illustrated by different kinds of stunt sections, such as vertical loops and half-pipes. Races can be customised with the Horizon Blueprint feature, where individual pieces of track are able to be swapped with other pieces. Continuing from Blizzard Mountain, stars have to be earned in races to unlock more events, and players were given a car pack with the purchase of the expansion, of which some of the vehicles are life-scale Hot Wheels cars. There have been two crossovers between Forza Horizon 3 and other video game franchises. During the game's release, players were able to obtain Halos fictitious Warthog if they played either Halo 5 or The Master Chief Collection on the Xbox One. Players may also win the car by completing challenges in the game. On 1 August 2017, Forza Horizon 3 players received the Quartz Regalia from Final Fantasy XV through the in-game message system, while Final Fantasy XV players received an Xbox Live message with a code to redeem the car. The DLC was free for those who have played Forza Horizon 3 on Windows or either game on Xbox prior to that date. It took about 1,500 hours to program the Regalia into the game, since there was no real-world data that the game designers could take reference from. == Reception ==

Forza Horizon 3 received "universal acclaim" from critics for the Xbox One version, while the Windows version received "generally favorable" reviews, according to review aggregator website Metacritic. In the same year, it was the ninth best-selling on the Xbox One in the United States. More than 2.5 million copies of Forza Horizon 3 were sold in February 2017, effectively bringing the Forza series to amassing $1 billion in sales. In September 2018, the game surpassed 10 million players. Awards and nominations ==Notes==