Forza Horizon 5 Tech Analysis: An Xbox Series X Masterpiece

What a beautifully optimized game. Why can’t all games run like this? Almost 100% locked and very slight resolution dips. What an amazing technical achievement.

This is how game devs should release a product. Well optimized, highly polished game. Not the broken, patch later bullshit that companies continue to make a modern trend for game development. I hope Playground Games carries this level quality over to Fable.

The fact that this game is included on Game Pass is tremendously good.

What the devs have achieved here is simply astounding.

Looking at those environments, can you imagine what Fable will be like from Playground games! Great video from John, which was a celebration of driving games, not just a technical analysis. I always appreciate John's enthusiasm, whom along with Richard, are the heart of DF.

Fable is going to at least look stunning that’s for sure!

All the developers involved in this game should hold their head high at this technical achievement. Truly masterclass.

Put 10 hours into it today. It's phenomenal. Performance mode does have some pop in but it's the only way to play for me personally.

Now, remember the fact Playground is developing Fable. Holy Sh*t Fable is going to look insane

This is basically the quality of Flight Sim on Series S/X and PC. Game Pass is truly starting to provide amazing options. The future looks so bright for Microsoft.

As a Playstation fan FH5 is absolutely stunning. Well done Microsoft and Playground.

Holy smokes the level of detail on the ground surfaces look incredible and the textures on the rocks and vegetation are almost photo realistic and I even saw a Xoloitzcuintli (Mexican Hairless) dog in one of the scenes running around awesome looking game can’t wait to play it.

This game is gorgeous. One of, if not the best looking games of this generation. Hats off to Playground Games for pulling off this masterpiece!

This games looks absolutely stunning. Playground Games is easily one of Xbox’s best studios. Can’t wait to play this on my Series X

I've been flying around in drone mode on Series X and the detail in every inch of the ground and environment is so high it's actually obscene. I can't remember the last time I was so blown away by a game's technical grandeur.

This game is absolutely bananas, the fact that you can hop onto photo mode on the spot and angle up any car and it looks f'ing incredible is a testament to the incredible achievement that playground achieved. It's f'ing CRAZY. The graphics, the details, the sound, holy shit it's awe inspiring.

Horizon has developed into an obsession of mine. I set it separate from games I love as works of art as single player experiences. Games like Bloodborne, BOTW, Hollow Knight, etc. I love those games, I could talk about them for hours. But as for what takes up the majority of my gaming time? There's no contest, it's Horizon. Playground really have turned Horizon into a gaming playground for me. I don't even like online gaming, but Horizon implements it in such a carefree, no-friction kind of way that I play Horizon 4 daily, to this day, three years after it first came out. Just finding someone, joining their convoy, and drifting across the map in a tune of my own creation(Racing The Tide my Xbox handle btw :) ). It's approachable while being incredibly deep. Insanely deep. You could(and I regularly do) lose yourself entirely in single aspects of it; like drifting, without ever even getting seriously into grip racing, livery designing, rally racing, event creation, etc. etc. I believe it is pretty much the most perfectly balanced simcade handling model of all-time(I'm not going to get into an argument about how you define simcade, so please, don't bother), in that it is obviously circumscribed when compared with something like BeamNG or Assetto, or even Forza Motorsport, yet its physics model is still extraordinarily deep and emergent, and its 'competitors' like NFS Heat and The Crew are not in the same galaxy. It is the handling and physics model that really underpins everything about this game. The best way to get across how great this series is is to describe myself in 2016, before I ever bought Horizon 3. I had no interest in cars, and the only car games I played were Burnout. If you had to use the brakes at any point I considered that too much like hard work. Then I played Horizon 3...and quite quickly I became obsessed with it. I fell in love with cars. I started playing other racing games. Then all of them. I bought a Fanatec wheel, pedals, shifter, handbrake, and bought a gaming PC specifically so I could get into sim-racing and Assetto modding. I now watch car youtube channels, something I would have thought was the most boring thing on earth back before Horizon. None of that would have happened if it wasn't for Horizon. When they said they wanted to 'turn gamers into car lovers and car lovers into gamers' I can say with certainty that they did so with me.

the way forza does music for their events and openings always give me chills, its amazing

He's right about the sound! I'm really impressed with how I can hear cars pulling up behind me, along with the usage of the height channels that are often ignored in games with Atmos.

2021 has been a surprising year for me -- my top three games are Psychonauts 2, Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart, and Guardians of the Galaxy -- three games I had no intention of playing or even enjoying. This, however, is the one game I've been waiting for since it was announced and I'm so happy it looks like it won't disappoint.