2012’s Forza Horizon is a deep and enjoyable open world driving/racing title that you never got to play because you owned a PlayStation, instead of one of Microsoft’s gaming systems.

It put players at the wheel of more or less the same diversity of cars as regular Forza games, but it gave them all of (shrunken down) Colorado to roam through, make clubs and have meet-ups with friends in shady parking lots… Forza Horizon 2 has just been announced, and it promises more of the same basics, but with a dash of new weather system, all set in “southern Europe,” whatever that means.

The biggest source of intrigue is the location. It’s not one of the mainstream ones usually chosen by game developers, and it therefore, should be very interesting to see digitally recreated. Like the first Horizon, this second one will be centered around a music festival too.

Two distinct versions are being worked on. The first is the one for Xbox360, which will be handled by Sumo Digital and use the same graphics engine as the game it succeeds. The second will be the fully fledged new game, rebuilt from the ground up on the new Forza engine (used in Forza 5), and it will bear the signature of studio Playground Games.

Apparently, everybody’s getting riled up about the new weather system, but in all fairness, it’s kind of late to the party on that one; there are plenty of games who do weather really well and make it look realistic. They’ll have to work extra hard to impress the fans who’ve already seen what other games have to offer.

The learning, adapting AI driver system called Drivatar will make its Horizon debut, as well.

Development work on the game is reportedly quite advanced, and we should start to see screenshots and videos flood the web in the coming days/weeks. It’s due to be released sometime this fall. They’re calling it “the biggest racing game of the year.”

By Andrei Nedelea

Story References: IGN

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