B-Wald's blog, July 30 2012: FH SPECULATION

Hey folks, welcome to my blog! In this 1st installment, I'm going to touch on a few of the features people (including myself) have been speculating about.

An awful lot of the stuff out there about this game is simply wild conjecture. There used to be quite a few intelligent discussions on the official forza site, but these days it's mostly car wish lists, people posting in the wrong forum, or people who do absolutely no research before posting garbled questions that either have no answers, or were answered long ago.

Some of the speculation, however, is quite engaging. First up, Developer Ralph Fulton has mentioned interesting "events and challenges" to be found in the game, but only gives one example: racing a Mustang (car) vs. a Mustang (WW2 plane). We could end up doing just about anything! Now, the much-hyped "Top Gear" content in FM4 was a bit lacklustre- knocking over pins was fun, but got old pretty quick, Clarkson's autovista bits were nice, but few, and Car Soccer is also fun, but kinda dumb. Moderator Trey convinced me to play a match, and while I had fun, this was more due to "novelty factor" (I'd never played) and the fact I had Trey to chat with. Were I by myself, I'd probably have quit after 1 or 2 goals.

Hopefully, the things we'll be doing in FH will be more zany, or at least real-world and exciting. Some ideas I've read (pure conjecture, of course) include a dragstrip where we can race "funnycars" and dragsters, demolition derbies, maybe even car shows.

On to tuning. Now, I apologise if I go off on a bit of a tangent here, but do read on. Apparently, hand-tuning is out. Sorry. Many, many people are quite upset, and I fully understand why.

I'm just not one.

This is a personal thing, of course (although there are plenty of Forzanauts like me), but I really don't care for tuning. I'll take a car, test drive it, then apply upgrades to balance the car's shortcomings. For example, I'll put better tires on a 911, wider rears, apply some minor engine upgrades, and leave it at that. I'll upgrade most cars to the top of their class, B:500 for example. The result: A car you might ACTUALLY see on the road, or at a track day.

Now don't get me wrong, Forza is about driving your dreams, right? That being said, it kinda irks me that whenever I race F-class, the top positions are dominated by tricked-out Chevy Sparks and Toyota Aygos with giant rear wings and hideous paintjobs, which you'd not likely see in real life configured so. I have a mean little F-class VW Scirocco. It's based on the car I actually had in my later high school years and for a time therafter. It can beat most CONVENTIONAL F-class cars (even some low E-classes on the right track), but it stands no chance against a tiny, wheeled egg that has 130 bhp, wings, and the mass of a fishbowl.

In short, the leaderboard car must die. I do have a couple of them, but I typically only use them in rivals mode.

If you can't hand-tune in FH, it will come down to who's a better driver of REAL cars, not who can build the best go-kart. I, for one, welcome this. A couple last thoughts on this whole tuning thing: It's pure speculation on my part, but what if there were a tuning SHOP, not a tuning GARAGE?

What I mean is this: a location in-game, either at the festival or out on the map, where you take your cars in and buy tuning setups, like a storefront. There would be 2 or 3 setups for each car (easier to do due to lower car count), and T10 could uplaoad tune setups for popular cars every now and again. Think of it this way: In the FM games, you're some billionaire playboy with your own 2-million-car-garage and giant workshop, where you can do anything you want to a car. In FH, you 're not at home, so to change setups, you have to take it to "a man".

The last thing: while you may not be able to adjust spring rates, alignment, tire pressure et cetera, I suspect you'll still be able to adjust ride height and camber angle for stylistic, "stanceing" purposes. Being Forza, however, they'd still affect handling.

The last thing I want to touch on here is weather. After E3, it seemed pretty clear that the game would not have changing weather. While myself and many others still believe this to be the case, a German game magazine claimed to have got their hot little hands on a full playtest of the finished game. They made some fairly outrageous claims, like getting stuck in the desert when it started to rain, turning the ground to mud, and described rain misting off the road after a shower.

They offered no proof, no photos, screenshots or sources. Nonetheless, it got the rumor mills churning. The horrendously-mangled english translation of the article is posted elsewhere on this site, give it a read. It's good for a laugh anyway (note: I'm not mocking the actual author of the article, I'm sure it makes perfect sense, when read in its original language. My amusement comes from the annihilation of grammar, owing to word-for-word translation). The article goes on to talk about No2 kits and underbody neon, but that's a topic for another blog.

Whether or not it's true, weather effects would be a mixed bag in FH. I know our fearless leader, Stig, likes drifting on wet roads in the rain. He has a valid point there, it's easier to slide and your tires last longer. On the other hand, who wants to go explore the map only to get stuck in the mud somewhere? How would you deal with that in-game? Personally, I'm not a big fan of rain in driving games. If you want a drift-enhancing precipitation type, do it right and go with snow. On that note, snow has been confirmed NOT to be in the game.

Anyway, that's enough for tonight. Check back every couple weeks for more! until the game actually comes out (or at least a demo), nothin' ta do but talk about our hopes and expectations for this highly-anticipated game!

-B Wald