‘Forza Horizon 5’ is introducing a new progression system

Developer Playground Games has revealed that a new Player versus Player (PvP) progression system is coming to Forza Horizon 5 on March 29, along with a plethora of other fixes and improvements that are all part of a bigger update.

The official Forza support blog (thanks, Eurogamer) details the update, saying “Horizon Open has been updated with a new progression system including Badges which can be unlocked through gameplay”.

Horizon Open is the PvP racing part of Forza Horizon 5, allowing players to jump in and out of any of the race types and play until they’ve had enough. The March 29 update has also “Added Custom Racing to Horizon Open, which will allow players to find races for their chosen race discipline and PI class”.

As you’d expect, there’s also plenty of stability fixes and performance improvements. Notable additional changes include the following:

• Added low-res mesh under the world to improve the visuals when world chunks dropped out at high altitudes such as when using the new Gravity Action in EventLab (Series X/S and PC only)
• Updated Seasonal Event map pins to match the Seasonal PR Stunt pin
• Added HUD for cars with Race Mode type functionality to support the new Drivetrain swap mode on the Ford Mustang Mach-E
• Fixed some scenarios where the player could be left waiting longer than necessary in the post-race flow

There has also been a number of improvements to specific cars such as the Jaguar XJS220s, and the Gallardo LP570-4 Spyder Performante. Some of the changes to these cars are clearly smaller, such as the brake callipers on the 2014 VW Golf R being incorrectly offset, which is something few players would notice.

Forza Horizon 5 has done incredibly well for Xbox Game Studios and Playground Games, and earlier in the month it picked up an award at the BandLab NME Awards 2022, for Best Audio In A Video Game. It also recently added support for both American Sign Language (ASL) and British Sign Language (BSL), and brought in over 15million players just two months after release.

In other news, Returnal director Harry Krueger recently spoke at GDC 2022, where he described the “leap of faith” developer Housemarque took to create the studio’s first 3D game.