As much as I love theForza Horizongames, something about them has always left me a little uneasy. Each game takes place in a big, beautiful open world, packed with stunning vistas, races, and challenges. It’s everything a petrol-head could possibly want, which is maybe why it ends up feelingtooperfect. There’s a surreal, dream-like quality to each Horizon game, and the more you think about it, the creepier it gets.
It all started when I had a sudden epiphany while cruising around the Cotswolds in my souped-up 918 Spyder; everyone on Earth who isn’t mad about motorsport appears to have been vaporized. The only other humans you encounter are either organizing the festival, other racers, or cheering you from the stands during a race. Even driving through the city, the lack of pedestrians is immediately apparent. Sure there are other cars on the road, but god only knows what’s behind the wheel. From their blank stares and the way they never react to being rammed off the road by a speeding supercar, it’s could just be some kind of humanoid automaton.
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Even buying a house is done without any human contact of any kind. You simply roar up to the front gate, plonk down the cash, and roar away again. I’ve always imagined getting onto the property ladder being a more involved process somehow. Buying and maintaining your cars works exactly the same way. You open up a catalog, pick out a car you like from anextensive listand that’s that. It just materializes in front of you.
What humans that are around aren’t much better. Every single one of them is totally obsessed with “The Festival” and will never talk to you about anything else. I accidentally wandered into a Scientology centre once, and frankly, these Horizon guys give off a very similar vibe. They are all relentlessly upbeat and do everything they can to try and get you hooked on whatever it is they’re raving about.
Just to bring us back to the subject of real estate, near the beginning of each game, one person will always hand you the keys to a really lovely house, no strings attached. I dread to think what became of the previous owners. Probably best not to look in the basement, or your car trunk.
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It’s not just houses either, the festival people are only too eager to hand out cars, cash, and all kinds of other comforts all day long. They’re all so wildly sycophantic that it starts to get suspicious. I get that the Horizon games are all about wish fulfillment and fantasy, but sometimes, it’s all too much. Maybe I just don’t know a good thing when I have it, but being constantly showered with priceless sports cars and designer jeans sets off alarm bells in my mind.
It’s the festival’s insidious influence on the landscape that really unsettles me though, particularly in Forza Horizon 4 (check out our review), which is set in a scaled-down version of Britain. As a Brit myself, seeing the familiar rolling green hills and sleepy little villages drained of life and twisted into raceways covered in tire tracks and whooping spectators was uncanny, to say the least. The depiction of Edinburgh, the Athens of the north, was particularly disturbing.
I know Edinburgh as a bustling city with a beautiful skyline, full of important cultural and historical places, people, and things. In Horizon, Edinburgh has been frozen eerily still, carved up by some unseen power into a number of convenient racetracks.
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What really threw me was that Edinburgh Castle, a witness to almost 1000 years of human history, is up for sale as yet another house for your custom protagonist to Hoover up and fill with their vast collection of cars. The seat of king David I, reduced to little more than a big garage. When the opportunity arose, I couldn’t bring myself to make the purchase - it just felt sowrong.
Playing a Horizon game, I’m often reminded of therecently resurrected Skate series, specifically Port Carverton from Skate 3, a town that “embraces” skaters. I say “embraces” because a townoverrunby skaters is probably more accurate. Just like in the Forza games, almost everyone who doesn’t know a pop-shove-it from a reverse-ollie has disappeared, and the whole town is basically one big skate park. Nothing but abandoned construction sites and improvised ramps as far as the eye can see.
Perhaps that’s the answer. The Horizon games are actually some kind of purgatory for people who don’t know anything about cars. All your old haunts are now racetracks, and the only people left alive are the ones hollering at you from the stands as you power slide by for their amusement.
Fortunately, I do like cars, so I’m perfectly content to while away the hours in any one of the Horizon games. They’re packed with things to do, their almost photo-realistic, and the sense of speed is just right in a way I can’t really put into words. There’s nothing quite like a Forza playground for blowing off a little steam. They may have a slightly dystopian air, but it never spoils the fun!
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