There’s not much in Forza Motorsport that hasn’t been ripped out, redesigned and revamped. Graphics, physics, multiplayer, player rating and car building have all been revamped in the next-gen reboot of Turn 10’s long-running racing sim. , which seems to be the part the development team is focusing on the most.

“You don’t buy your car as much as you build it,” said game director Chris Esaki. So what does he mean by that? For starters, Car Points (CP) are the currency you buy cars and parts with, but when you spend them, they don’t disappear; instead, the coins retain their value. In other words, Turn 10 encourages repeated tinkering and modification so you can tailor your car to a particular race or track by letting you get your CP back when you remove a part. So you won’t be constantly running through races just to continually gain CP to get the next upgrade on your wishlist.

I also really like the new ways to earn CP. Winning races certainly helps, of course, but now you can choose your starting grid position. The further back you go in the peloton, the more CP you will earn by getting on the podium at the end of the race. Turn 10 has also redesigned the way they treat your clean ride. “Think of corners as monsters or enemies” in a non-racing game, Esaki said. This means that you will now be graded on a per-corner basis, so as you exit each corner, the top right corner of the UI will tell you how close you are to the limit, so you know how close you are. you improve remains to be done there on the next turn.

Open Practice mode lets you take your builds to the track to test them out before heading into a real race. Practice laps will let you know if you’ve tuned the car the way you want or if you need to go back to the garage and tweak one of Forza Motorsport’s many categories: I’ve seen Fuel and Air, Engine, Flat- shape and handling, tires and rims, drivetrain, aero and appearance, all on the menu, and there may be more hiding places in there.

Meanwhile, as you’d expect in the sim-focused Forza Motorsport, you can change all difficulty settings, including rules and regulations. You can switch between cosmetic damage or real damage, tire realism, simulated fuel, etc. Many of them are not new to motorsport, but they are nice to see. And when you step out onto the track, the actual race is populated by your friends’ Drivatars, even in single-player Career mode. And on a related note, the AI ​​has been completely rewritten. AI pilots are now as fast as the fastest pilots in the real world, and Turn 10 says they won’t pull off shenanigans like rubber band.

Oh, and the tire pattern has been totally rewritten. What was a single point of contact on each tire in previous Motorsport games is now eight. This data is updated six times more frequently, promising a more realistic instant experience. The team also redid the suspension, weight and aero modeling, with Turn 10 saying (because they weren’t letting me play for myself yet) that the cars feel super authentic and very connected to the tracks. The new dynamic day/night cycle ensures that, as Esaki said, “no round is ever played the same way, [and] no two towers are ever alike. I had a demonstration of that and it was indeed quite impressive.