British developer Playground Games has set its latest open-world driving sim, Forza Horizon 6, in Japan after years of considering the country. Design director Torben Ellert said Japan had been on the shortlist for several games, but the team did not feel ready to take on the challenge until now. The game aims to capture the authenticity of Japan's landscapes and car culture, a task made more difficult by the strong preconceptions gamers have from other media.
To avoid clichés, Playground hired cultural consultant Kyoko Yamashita, who worked with the team for three years advising on details such as the traditional colours of store signs. They also collaborated with Kyoto-based bodyshop Rocket Bunny and car culture photographer Larry Chen. Ellert noted that because Japanese culture is widely seen, there is a temptation to think you know it better than you do, so the team sought course corrections when needed.
The game features iconic Japanese street-racing elements, including drift and wangan cars like the Nissan Skyline, Toyota Supra, and Mazda RX-7, as well as narrow mountain roads for touge racing. Ellert explained that while everyone has a different definition of a touge experience, the team imposed class restrictions and delivered iconic roads such as Hakone Nanamagari and Mount Haruna, offering their own take on the experience.
As with previous instalments, the Forza Horizon 6 map is a curated amalgam of scenic types, but it is the largest yet. Art director Don Arceta said the team looked at iconic roads, landmarks, car culture, and interesting biomes. This time, they used 360-degree cameras for reference photography, capturing the whole environment in 2D and 3D, which helped with scale and dimension. The landscape includes bamboo forests, rice fields, railway tracks with bullet trains, and details like roadside temples and pristine vending machines.
