[0:08] I just saw an hour of clutch from
[0:10] Maverick Games at Summer GameFest. These
[0:12] are some of the former developers from
[0:15] Playground Games, the Welcome to Forza
[0:16] Horizon series. And these are my three
[0:19] biggest takeaways. So, my biggest
[0:21] takeaway is how much it just looks like
[0:24] Fortza. And that is both the Forza
[0:26] Horizon series and the Fortza
[0:28] Motorsports series. While it looks like
[0:30] the Forza games, they are trying to make
[0:32] it feel a bit different. It is very
[0:35] familiar apparently for people that have
[0:37] played those Fortza titles, but they've
[0:39] tried to make how the cars feel like a a
[0:43] bit more different than you might
[0:44] experience in a Forza game. In a Ford
[0:46] game, you've got hundreds of cars, so
[0:48] they exist over a really wide spectrum
[0:51] with little nuances between each of the
[0:53] vehicles. Whereas in this game, you're
[0:56] not driving as many cars. So, they want
[0:58] all of them to feel really different.
[1:00] And that's that's going to be the
[1:01] biggest difference between this and the
[1:03] Forza series. And then another big
[1:05] difference from the Forza series is you
[1:07] can actually walk around and get out of
[1:09] the car. These are going to be very
[1:11] limited segments. You can walk around
[1:13] like car meets and showrooms. Some of
[1:15] the missions have you walking around a
[1:17] specific location. You can't walk around
[1:20] the whole open world map. You can walk
[1:22] around back at the villa. There's mini
[1:24] games to play in there. They have an
[1:25] arcade cabinet and that is where you
[1:28] fine-tune and can customize the cars as
[1:30] well. So, there is actually some on foot
[1:33] sections, but they are very minimal. But
[1:34] something we haven't seen in the for
[1:36] series. In the game, you play as Theo
[1:39] and Cass, two racing siblings. And not
[1:42] only do they compete in a tournament
[1:45] with actual track racing, but they also
[1:48] compete in street racing as well. So,
[1:50] there is a big open world. It's set in
[1:52] the French Riviera with a recreation of
[1:55] Monaco and some other locations in that
[1:58] part of the world. The Monaco section is
[2:00] really interesting. Every landmark and
[2:03] every road is represented in the game.
[2:06] However, it's a bit bigger than the
[2:08] actual real life Monaco, and that was
[2:11] because they had to design it so you
[2:12] could actually race around it. Monaco is
[2:15] a really dense city, and they tried to
[2:17] balance that out while also making it
[2:19] fun to drive around and not a huge pain
[2:22] to get around this incredible city that
[2:25] has such a tie to racing culture. But
[2:28] beyond that, yes, you have this big open
[2:29] world. As they were driving around, we
[2:32] got notifications of, oh, there's a
[2:34] clutch cache over here. There's tons of
[2:36] things to see and do like in a Forza
[2:38] Horizon game, but then you also have
[2:41] these track races that you compete in
[2:43] like motorsport.
[2:45] The competition that they're a part of
[2:47] is just a part of the story. And the
[2:50] story actually will change depending on
[2:52] how you perform in that tournament. You
[2:55] can win the tournament and in the end of
[2:58] the game there will be a certain story
[3:00] that plays out because you won it. If
[3:02] you come in third, that's going to
[3:04] change up how all of that plays out. So,
[3:07] it's a critical part to the story, but
[3:08] it's not the main focus. My second
[3:10] biggest takeaway is how it also kind of
[3:12] looks like Need for Speed Hot Pursuit.
[3:15] So, there's a mission where Theo has to
[3:17] steal a car. Funnily enough, it's the
[3:20] Aston Martin Valhalla, which is also
[3:22] featured in 007 First Light recently.
[3:25] So, I was surprised that I recognized
[3:27] the car cuz I know nothing about cars.
[3:29] But, uh the Valhalla is in the game.
[3:32] This one has a harpoon attached to the
[3:34] end of it. And uh you get in a street
[3:36] and you're trying to escape the cops and
[3:38] you can actually use the harpoon to make
[3:40] tight turns. You can use it to screw up
[3:43] the cops and make them mess up. And uh
[3:45] yeah, it had this Need for Speed Hop
[3:48] Pursuit vibe mixed with like a Fast and
[3:51] Furious game. Like they are I think
[3:53] trying to touch every form of racing
[3:56] that we experience in media with this.
[3:58] And from what I've seen, they're doing a
[4:00] really great job so far. And finally, my
[4:02] third biggest takeaway is I'm actually
[4:04] really excited to see what the
[4:06] multiplayer of this game looks like. We
[4:08] didn't get to see that today. They're
[4:10] really trying to focus on the narrative
[4:11] on the single player campaign, but there
[4:13] are a whole host of multiplayer options
[4:16] here. You can compete in street races.
[4:18] You can compete in track races with
[4:20] other players online. You can also
[4:23] actually play the story in co-op with
[4:25] one person controlling steering and one
[4:28] person controlling gas and brakes. It's
[4:30] online only. It isn't local, so that's
[4:34] something I'm a little disappointed in.
[4:35] I would love to have that experience
[4:36] locally, but they said it's a really,
[4:38] really interesting way to experience the
[4:41] game. And then beyond that, you can be
[4:43] in the open world map with up to 16
[4:46] other players at one time. And then they
[4:48] described an interesting PvPVE mode
[4:51] which I thought was fascinating for a
[4:54] racing game. And basically in that you
[4:58] and a bunch of other players are tasked
[5:00] with stealing the same car. So you're
[5:03] trying to go out and steal this car, but
[5:06] you're also trying to steal it from
[5:08] under the nose of other players as well.
[5:10] So this goes beyond the multiplayer
[5:12] options in both the motorsport and the
[5:14] Horizon games. I'm really excited to see
[5:17] more from that aspect of the game, but
[5:19] I'm also thinking that this single
[5:21] player story looks pretty neat, too. For
[5:22] more on Clutch and everything else we've
[5:25] seen at Summer GameFest, stay right here
[5:28] on GameSpot.