Post Script
Creative director Mike Brown on how Forza Horizon 5 puts its best foot forward
Playground Games draws out its racing game from over 100 square kilometres of digital terrain. Forza Horizon 5 creative director Mike Brown (right) explains the art of crafting the studio’s tracks, and the game’s iconic opening setpiece.
The Horizon games are famous for their opening drives – how do you discover those set-pieces in your landscape?
It’s something we’re already working on while we’re still in concept and pre-production phase. We try to have an idea of what route to take and what things we want to see on it really early, and build that into the environment design. The route you take down the side of the volcano was built because we knew we wanted to do it two minutes into the game. Similarly, the bit in the jungle – the reveal of the Agua Azul waterfalls with the flamingos – we knew that was going to be in the first few minutes, so we built the tree tunnel where it closes you in and gives you that big reveal of the waterfall.