Forza Horizon 4 was confirmed last night during Microsoft's E3 presser and after the grand unveiling of the game, which will take players around the UK when it hits PC and Xbox One on October 2, we caught up with Turn 10's Jon Knoles who had plenty to tell us about the game-changing additions coming to this entry in the series.
Naturally, the shared-world nature of the game was part of the discussion, with the cars you see on the road being driven by other players (you can play single-player if you prefer), but it was the weather changes and the impact they'll have on the environment that will be most impactful.
"Seasons change everything," Knoles told us in LA. "They change how the world looks from one season to the next. It changes how the cars drive one season to the next. You have different driving mechanics, you're driving on snow or ice in the winter, you're driving on mud in the spring, and in the summer you get nice hard-packed fields."
"Everything changes, a field that was full of tall grass in the summertime gets harvested in the fall (or autumn depending on what you like to call it) and they become giant obstacles you have to get around because there are big hay bails everywhere [...] A lake freezes over and you can get to an island that you might not have found before."
There are going to be new in-game events whenever the seasons change and the difference they make to the experience will be "fundamental," with the environmental changes rolling around roughly every week. That said, the seasons will be different each time with new content landing with new winters, for example.
Knoles also mentioned that we won't be riding around on motorcycles in the game (despite them appearing the trailer), and added that Horizon 4 has been "designed from the ground-up for Xbox One X" and will also support 4K visuals at 30 frames-per-second, and 1080p ("probably") and 60 frames-per-second. If they can hit that level of performance it'll certainly be impressive considering the open-world and shared-online experience being promised by the studio.