Starting from Scratch: Building Forza 5’s New Car Roster

Why Turn 10’s philosophy begins with your three most important cars.

“We’ve said there’s three important cars in the game to every player; the first car you ever owned, the car you drive right now, and the car you hope to own someday,” says Turn 10 content director John Wendl, while weaving a Hazard Yellow HSV GTS through The Esses in Forza Motorsport 5’s newly-added Mount Panorama circuit. “And that’s different for everybody, obviously, so we’ve trying to find that right blend for the most people in the world, so that we’re going to have those three cars in there for them.”
It’s an interesting philosophy and one that has clearly driven the curation of Forza Motorsport’s vehicle line-up to date. It certainly peaked with the broad, eclectic, global, and car culture savvy Forza Motorsport 4, which covered everything from old-school British sportscars, cult American performance pick-ups, classic German super saloons, and everything in between.

But the dawn of a new era of console hardware has demanded a fresh start for the Forza series; simply porting Forza 4’s cars to Forza 5 wasn’t an option. The cars needed to be rebuilt, which meant the car list had to be reassessed.
“There were definitely tough discussions around that,” says Wendl. “It’s always tough discussions; even on Forza 4 there were hundreds of cars and it’s always tough which ones make the cut and which ones don’t.”
But if your favourites from Forza 4 haven’t made the cut for Forza 5, keep in mind it may only be a temporary setback.

Our car production engine has not shut off since 2006.

“Fortunately we have a reputation now; our car production engine has not shut off since 2006, on Forza 3,” says Wendl. “We built cars for Forza 3; we built cars for Forza 3 downloadable content. We built cars for Forza 4, for Forza 4 downloadable content. For Forza Horizon, for Forza Horizon downloadable content. Now for Forza 5. We are always building cars. That machine never shuts off.
“And people know that. So if there’s a car that doesn’t make this, it’ll make downloadable content. If not in December, then January. If not in January, then by next April. And if it doesn’t make it in Forza 5, maybe it’ll make it into the next version of the game. So yeah, there’s controversy, but we treat this as a long term franchise and, if the car’s important, we’ll get it in the game.
It’s a balancing act, by the sounds of things, between a diverse range of true icons and cult favourites delivered alongside today’s cutting-edge autos.
“And there’s always new ones coming up as well, right? We try to make sure that we have the relevant cars in there. And certain cars become stale. You don’t necessarily need every version of the Mustang, for example, in the game. Some of them aren’t that great. Some of them are really iconic and you need to have those in there, but if you’ve got the most current one from Forza 4, from 2011, then it gets replaced with a new one for 2014, do you really still need that 2011 one? We needed it then because it was new, but now maybe it turns out that it wasn’t that well-received and the new one’s all that; we may get rid of that 2011 then because who’s gonna want it? They’re gonna want that ’14. Unless it rose to that status of one of those iconic cars that people love forever; unless it’s frozen in time.”

Going back to the bright yellow Antipodean super-sedan now flat chat down Bathurst’s famous Conrod Straight, Wendl explains what it was about it in particular that saw it make the cut.
“Honestly because of its heritage in V8 Supercars and the audience in Australia,” he says. “But the cool thing about Bathurst and V8 supercars, while people are crazy about it here, it has international appeal too.”
“So that’s what bubbles things like that up. It’s wherever people are most passionate, [like the] Ford and Holden rivalry; those are the ones we wanna capture, because people are going to polarise around those. They’re gonna be passionate around it, have that kind of discussion, create those online match-ups when they’re playing multiplayer online. It’s the cars that people care about and have a lot of passion for; Holden is one of those brands and the car is one of those cars.
“When we talk about the fact we want people to be able to play the game in the cars they care about, it’s picking those cars that people are going to resonate with.”
See the Forza Motorsport 5 Showroom here for the most recently announced cars in Forza Motorsport 5 and a list of the 100+ cars announced so far.

Forza Motorsport 5

Published by: Microsoft

Developed by: Turn 10 Studios

Genre: Racing

Release Date:

United States: November 22, 2013

Australia: November 22, 2013

UK: November 22, 2013

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