F1 25 Hands-on Preview: Braking Point is back and better than ever

I've already written two previews about F1 25, focusing on the Career and My Team improvements and then the year-on-year changes too, but frankly it's this one that I've been really dying to tell you all about. While improved driving is important and a handful of tweaks to the campaign sides of the game is worth noting, Braking Point has pretty much become the place to be and the thing to talk about in new F1 games. Why is that? Because typically speaking, it's the part of the game that changes the most each time it arrives. For F1 25, this is absolutely the case, and is on track to being the best Braking Point chapter to date.

For anyone that is wondering why Braking Point comes around when it does, the narrative chapter of the series is tied to odd-yearly instalments and helmed by creative lead Gavin Cooper. This is why it wasn't present in F1 24 and likely won't be in F1 26 when we get to that point either. But the good news is that the space in between new Braking Point chapters does mean that when it returns it usually has interesting stuff to chat about, and this is precisely the case again.

This year's story, known as Braking Point 3, builds on the last chapter by seeing Konnersport further moving up the grid and now taking its place among the best in the F1 world. The first story was about competing near the back of the pack in a weaker team, the second saw them battling in the middle of the pack, and now they have a very capable car, one that can challenge Red Bull for the title. And that's what this story is about, Konnersport mounting its title hopes while simultaneously managing the challenge that comes with two talented drivers looking to stamp their name into F1 history.

Once antagonist Devon Butler is now more of a coaching presence, while Aiden Jackson operates as a Konnersport driver alongside rising talent Callie Mayer. Casper Akkerman remains as the team's principal, and as the player you have to jump between the two drivers and Akkerman, filling various responsibilities along the way. This might be more business and team-centric, such as accepting or dealing with sponsorship opportunities as Akkerman, while protecting your team from the whims of the new owner. As Jackson and Mayer, the idea is to prove your mettle on the track, and while that is sometimes linear and scripted - asking you to win a race as Mayer, for example - sometimes you have to choose who you want to drive as now, and this leads the Braking Point story down a branching path towards one of several endings. It's an interesting dynamic that enables the player to put more of their own impression on the story and I simply commend that.

As per the actual gameplay, this is very much the same as prior. You'll be handed control of a car several laps into a race and told to win or reach a certain position before the chequered flag is shown. Anything less than success and you'll need to retry this chapter. One of the main differences builds on what I alluded to in my first preview, in that the pre and post-race activities are now more immersive and less peculiar, with interviews feeling less awkward and forced for one.

The area however that I noticed the biggest change was in the actual cutscenes, as leaving behind PS4 and Xbox One means that Codemasters has been able to utilise Nvidia's facial improvement technology, like audio2face, which more accurately generates facial expressions depending on the audio and dialogue of a character. What this presents in effect are cutscenes that are frankly stunning and some of the best I've seen in a long while. They're of such better quality that when the game shifts to characters in-gameplay, i.e. in aforementioned interviews, the characters do appear as ghastly and a little frightening. They're not really any different than before, but compared to the Braking Point cutscenes, well... It's night and day.

When you consider that Braking Point can now directly feed into the Career Mode, enabling you to continue your journey with Konnersport for 10 more seasons of fast-paced action, there's really not much else to say about this mode than that it should be your first stop when booting up F1 25 in late May, and that it will likely be the part of the game that sticks with you the most in the time that follows. Perhaps Codemasters should put more of its eggs into Braking Point's basket...?