forza motorsport 3 Forza 3: Career Mode Preview [IGN Preview Final Update 01/8]

[Camel]

Forza Motorsport 3 might end up twice as good as its predecessor. It's certainly twice as big. The Career Mode has been completely redesigned in an effort to make the experience accessible to Forza's hardcore fans but also casual racing game players. As developer Turn 10 admits, the Career Mode in Forza 2 was too broad and too easy to get lost in if you weren't a core gamer. Over the next three days, we're taking you in-depth with Forza 3's spankin' new Career Mode. Why three days? There's just that much going on.

 

We're kicking things off with the basics. What follows are the nuts and bolts of Forza 3's Career Mode. Tomorrow, we'll dig deeper and look at tuning, the progression of your career and more. For today, let's just stick to what you can expect in your first season.

 

Your time in Career Mode is guided by a voice over from your British mentor. It's somewhat like how Travis Pastrana talked people through Codemaster's Dirt, only there's a little more hand holding here. Don't worry experienced racers, none of this has to slow you down from powering through the menus to get into a race. But what Turn 10 has done is put the entire Career Mode on a single button. If you don't know what to do first (or ever) just press A. It will always get you into the next recommended race. You don't have to read menus, search for the right race, worry about tuning or even figure out which car to use. You can always press A to launch into the action. Sure, there's plenty to do if you want to scan the menu, which we'll talk about tomorrow, but the entire career can be boiled down to that single button. Press it and go.

 

The first season is more linear than what you'll experience as you go further in the Career Mode. Things begin with a simple question: What kind of racer are you? Currently, Career Mode has three choices (Casual, Regular and Serious), but Turn 10 is considering adding another choice between Regular and Serious. The choice you make is in no way final -- you can alter your selection before any race. What you select determines your default settings and adjusts the AI from easy to medium to hard. You'll know if you've chosen correctly right off the bat. Before you get into Career Mode, Forza 3 places you behind the wheel of the new Audi R8. Before you even touch the surface of the new Forza, you get to test out some mid-level content, giving a taste of what can be yours for playing the Career Mode.

 

Your first race should, hopefully, give you the thrill of victory. Sadly, the Audi R8 won't be making it into your garage right away. It's just a tease. What comes next is perhaps the most important decision you'll make in your career. Seven "gift" cars are offered. You're not only choosing the car with which to launch your career, but you're telling the AI what you like to race. Though the cars aren't on the high end, there are some nice options. The Ford Fiesta is actually a good little racer and won't make you feel as if you're driving in slow motion. None of these initial cars will prove unwieldy and really, you don't have to know anything about cars to make a proper choice. Choose what seems to suit you and let the new adaptive Career Mode do the rest.

 

These seven cars offer seven paths to the start of your first season. Forza's Career Mode is dynamic, changing week-to-week based on what cars you own, what types of races you like to drive and how you drive. But in the first season, the calendar's AI is still getting to know you. So most of the dynamic elements in season one come from your initial choice. The car you select determines not only the first set of races available to you, but begins to shape the rest of your season. It also has an impact on the cars gifted to you as you progress through your career.

 

Did someone say gifts? Hell yes. Forza 3 showers you with presents. Like the previous Forza, racing rewards you with Driver experience and XP for the car you race. Your Driver level is the sum whole of everything you've ever done in Forza, while your car level is specific to that vehicle and earns you discounts on parts and more. The main difference from Forza 2 to Forza 3 is that with each of the first 50 levels achieved as a Driver, you're given a free car.

 

There are no set cars given to players. That is to say, not everyone gets the same car at level 2, 3, 4 or even 50. Remember, your first gift car comes at the start of the Career Mode when you pick from seven options. The calendar fills up with events based on the cars you own and your preferences and that same type of logic helps determine the cars you're gifted. Each level has its own behind-the-scenes performance ranking and pricing index for what can be given, but that still leaves plenty of variety.

 

If you're worried that picking a European car at the outset means you're only gifted European cars for the rest of your career, relax. One thing Turn 10 wants is to entice gamers to try new types of cars. So while a lot of gifted cars may be in line with what you've gravitated towards in your races, there are still going to be some free cars meant to give you a brand new sensation. Even if you hate your gift car, you can always sell it back. And if there's a car in the showroom you really want, go ahead and buy it. None of the gifted cars are "exclusive" as presents. Anything given to a racer can also be purchased from the showroom if you have the cash.

 

Expect to get quite a few cars in the first season. Some possibilities over your first few levels are the 2010 Fiat 500, Abarth SS, the 2009 Alfa Romeo Brera Ti, the 2008 Volkswagen Scirocco GT, and the Mazda MX Roadster. Also, if you're a fan of Achievements, expect to bathe in them over your first season as well. It's like hitting a win streak in Vegas. You keep playing and the Achievements keep piling up.

 

As you progress through your first season, you'll find a selection of new events offered. Typically there are three from which to select. There's no possibility of having an event you can't enter, because the dynamic calendar only offers those you qualify to race. There are some simple tags at the bottom of each event offering advice on which to choose. It might say one is perfect for your current car or that another is if you want a bit of a challenge. Or you can just hit the A button a few times and let the game decide.

 

Your first season consists of five events. Each event is two weeks long and can have quite a range of races. In the first year, you can expect most events to be three races long, with a few having upwards of six races. At the end of every other weekend, there's a Weekend Championship. These are the backbone of the calendar and the one part of Forza 3 Career Mode that doesn't dynamically change. It's in these weekend events that you truly measure your skill as a driver and the progress of your career.

 

At the end of the season, you're given a cash bonus and a stat tally for the year. You'll see your total cash winnings for the season, experience earned and a few other nitty-gritty stats. As you progress further into your career, the seasons get longer as do the events. There are 220 total events in Forza 3, each made up of multiple races. That's more than double what was in Forza 2. There are more than 400 cars to collect, tuning to perfect, multiplayer to test out and an advanced livery editor. We'll discuss those in more depth over the following two days.

 

Forza Motorsport 3 ships in North America on October 27 and in Europe on October 23 (lucky people).

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I'll continue to update this thread as more information is revealed.

[CarMadMike]

Sounds great :)

[Tool831]

Good read on IGN. :) Sounds excellent and exactly what i want done really. Forza 3 is most likely my dream game cause so far everything has been what ive been dreaming. No joke either.

[Camel]

Career Mode P2/3

 

Forza Motorsport 3 is coming to a store shelf near you in late October. Along with improved physics, better graphics, more cars and tracks, Forza also sports a brand new Career Mode. Yesterday we went through the basics of Forza 3's Career Mode, but we left out quite a lot of details. Today we dig deeper into tuning, multiplayer, the new leaderboard system and more.

 

Once you've finished the first season in your career, you might be thinking it's time to go a bit deeper with Turn 10's sim. Where Forza 2 was a hardcore sim only, this time around Turn 10 has split the audience. They've created two ways to play Forza. The casual crowd can ignore tuning altogether if they like or follow up on some friendly tuning options. At any time, you can select a car from your garage, select the level you want it upgraded to, and let the AI do the hard work. Have a C-class car you want in the A class? Choose it and the AI will automatically spend your cash, buy the parts and tune your car accordingly. You can check what was added in case you want to learn how to upgrade a car, but you don't have to ever get grease on your hands.

 

This may be a wise option for many, because the alternative is a tuning set so hardcore it may frighten some casual gamers. Tuning has been made about as deep as possible. Where Forza 2 never really punished you for poorly tuning your car, that's not the case in Forza 3. You can, in fact, tune your car incorrectly for the track you're racing. The more you fiddle, the deeper you go into the tuning, the more you're going to need to know about cars. There are plenty of helpful hints along the way, but in order to allow master tuners the joy of rigging out a car to its optimal settings, consequences had to be added.

 

This doesn't mean that the average gamer can't tune their car. Just be aware that with up to 175 upgrades (about 50% more than Forza 2) and more tuning options than anyone's ever seen in a racing game before, it's easy to get overwhelmed. The good news is that at the start of any race, you can auto-tune your car for the current track. This offers a general calibration to ensure that any harmful work you might have done for a different track isn't going to slow you down.

 

The depth and the risk/reward nature of tuning in Forza 3 ties directly into one of Turn 10's major objectives. They wanted to create a new type of skill and put tuners on par with the bad-ass painters that grew out of Forza 2. Just as master painters became famous in the community, so too will virtuoso tuners. And helping that along is the all new system supporting user-generated content.

 

User-generated content is separated across six different scoreboards. Among those are picture and video scoreboards which anyone can easily dominate. Only true experts can hope to get atop the tuner and livery scoreboards. These scoreboards are leaderboards for certain skill types and are linked directly to files uploaded through Forza 3. Since only the best tuners will get high ratings (and downloads), it's going to be easy to know who to trust. You can even mark users as favorites and follow them to see when they post new items. This works for those who themselves are great tuners as they can track their rivals.

 

The scoreboards are tied into the brand new Storefront. The Auction House from Forza 2 still exists, but it's for selling single versions of cars. The Storefront is more like Amazon.com. You set the price for your file and you determine how many to sell. Re-created the Mona Lisa on a car? Maybe you only want one person in the entire world to own it. So only sell one. You can try to sell it for a million credits if you like and if no one buys it, you can always lower the price. Or maybe you just want to help people tune their Audi R8 for the Nurburgring? Sell 1000 for 50 credits. It's up to you. This is a free market economy, baby!

 

It should be noted that all sales on the Storefront are for in-game credits. No one will get rich in real life, but they can amass in-game wealth if they're talented.

 

Turn 10 admits that they really aren't sure what's going to happen when Forza 3 is first released. It's going to take a bit of time for the great tuners to be sorted out on the scoreboard. Unfortunately, you can't test a tuning file before buying it, which is going to make the first week on the Storefront a bit like the Wild West. After that, expect things to settle down and for the great tuners and artists to rise to the top. The fakers will get bad ratings and quickly disappear from the scoreboards.

 

If you're currently devising a master plan to sell your Penis-Mobile for 100,000 credits a pop, think again. All user-generated content is policed by other users. Anyone can file a complaint and a moderator looks into each potential issue. Users who make valid complaints get what you might call a Police Ranking. As they become more trusted, their opinion takes greater merit among the moderators and their Police Ranking increases. If you go around complaining about all of your friends' files just to be a jerk, you'll soon find that your opinion gets ignored. Sorry, no Penis-Mobile.

 

Now that you have paid some credits for the perfectly tuned car and a Mario and Princess Peach wedding mural livery, you're ready to plow through the full Career Mode.

 

As we told you yesterday, your season calendar fills in dynamically, but there are a series of weekend races that don't change. There are six "standard seasons" in Forza 3, meaning that there are six full seasons with these specific weekend championships. Each season gets longer and harder as, hopefully, you also get better. By the end of the six season, you'll have completed 55 events (some with more than 10 races!), reached level 50, earned all of your gift cars and spent about 60 hours racing. But it's not over. There are still more than 150 unique events to race. And though the weekend championships won't be any different, there's hundreds of hours left if you want to truly complete Forza 3.

 

Remember that the AI, which looks at the cars you owned, the cars you drive and the tracks you race, determines the majority of events in your first six seasons. If you ignore Drag Racing events, eventually they go away. After all, why offer something you don't want to race? If you stuck with American cars the entire time, there are going to be a number of European and Japanese racing challenges ahead of you once you finish your sixth season. Though you might have mastered all the championships, by the end of season six, you're only a third of the way through Forza 3.

 

At any time, you can ignore the season calendar and bring up a master grid of all 220 events. This grid is very similar to the career mode in Forza 2. It lists every open race and, at any time, you can race those. These also feed into the dynamic calendar, because, after all, they are races you're choosing. Never worry that you're going to miss something in Forza 3. There is always an option to break free of the dynamic calendar and race any event for which you're qualified.

 

Finishing every event isn't the only goal in Forza. This is still a game about collecting cars. Sure, you get 50 gift cars, but there are more than 400 total in the game. Most you will have to buy. Here's the crazy part -- all 400+ are unlocked from the beginning. If you have the credits, you can buy any car in the game at any time. Of course, you start off fairly broke and must work your way along, but none of the cars are locked based on your experience level.

 

Unlike Forza 2, which had an unrealistic pricing model for high-end cars, Forza 3 is fairly accurate. You want a Lamborghini? It's going to cost you. However, you could probably buy a Corvette early on and still get decent performance. It's a trade off. If you want, you can save cash to get a high-end luxury car earlier than you might normally acquire one. And owning that would change the events that appear in your calendar. A Ferrari GT vs. Lamborghini GT event sounds good to us.

 

This is where the Storefront can make a real difference. You could be in your first season of Career Mode and be rich thanks to your awesome livery artwork. Or you can try and earn money faster with your driving skill. Post-race, your finishing place, difficulty settings and damage determine your earnings. Turn off all assists and you can earn double the cash. Just be warned: turning off all assists can be mercilessly difficult.

 

In Forza 3, you're always earning money no matter where you race. That includes multiplayer. While Turn 10 isn't fully ready to blow the lid off multiplayer, we have some first details that should make the three-month wait just a little more unbearable.

 

Forza 3 multiplayer can be summed up quite simply: you make the rules so go do whatever the hell you want.

 

There are about 60 rules you can set for a multiplayer match that allow you to create just about any game type you could want. Instead of having a gentleman's agreement at the start of the race to play Cat & Mouse, you can now make someone the mouse. You want capture the flag? You can make it happen. With so many options, the only limit is your own ingenuity.

 

You can force teams of any size (all against one, three-on-three, whatever you want), give one person the "heavy" car and the others faster vehicles. You can force specific camera modes if you want everyone to play from the dashboard view and even require the use of manual transmission with the clutch (Left Bumper).

 

No more guessing at scores of games you had to make up in your head. Now you can create rules that are tracked by the game with relevant points. These sets can be saved, of course. For those who hate setting all these options, Turn 10 will create its own set of game modes for parties to hop into. Thanks to the magic of Xbox Live, Turn 10 can keep track of which options are used most, what game types are the favorite and then adjust the official hoppers to suit the community.

 

Now if only we could convince them to set a match type of King of the Hill with all Penis-Mobiles.

 

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[Baldy]

Fantastic reading :)

[Camel]

Over the past few days, you've been given a look at Forza 3's Career Mode. First, IGN schooled you on the basics, then we drove home details on tuning, multiplayer and the end of your racing career. Everything you need to know about career mode is in those two articles. Today, I'm going to talk about my experience playing Forza 3's Career Mode. After all, you can add all kinds of cool features, but that doesn't mean they work.

 

The Career Mode is as advertised. It's easy to get into and there's never a moment where I wondered what to do next. Though I was guided along what Turn 10 calls the "Yellow Brick Road," at any time I was able to jump off and explore on my own. I did an auto-upgrade on my Ford Fiesta to get a sense for how well it worked. For anyone who wants to race and not worry about parts and tuning, the options are there to streamline the entire experience. I'm a little obsessive about doing things myself, though. While the AI did a fine job handling the upgrade for me, I'd rather do it myself. That option still exists.

 

You can just as easily pick parts and upgrade your car manually. It's easy and works similarly to Forza 2. I avoided getting too deep into tuning because, well, Turn 10 kind of scared me off of it. The idea that I might do harm to my car's performance without realizing it seems like a bit of a roadblock for people who aren't hardcore into tuning but want to feel like they are being proactive with their car. Maybe when I have a build of Forza 3 to call my own, I'll go a little deeper and try to learn how to tune like a pro.

 

Knowing that the calendar dynamically populates, I paid special attention to my event options as I played. In your first season, you gain Driver levels (and Achievements) quickly. I had a handful of free cars in an hour's time and it was already obvious how obtaining these vehicles (custom-gifted to match my style of racing) opened new paths someone else might never experience in their career.

 

The AI is always learning from you at pretty much every instant you have Forza 3 in your Xbox 360. The adaptive Drivatar AI system from Forza 2 is back and working just as well on the road. But even after a race is finished, the AI continues to learn about you. My first couple of cars were modest vehicles that were easy to handle. And perhaps if that's all I ever acquired, Forza 3's AI would think I liked to maintain control and drive a very smooth racing line. But the minute I was gifted a Mazda Roadster, the AI learned something new about me -- I love getting squirrelly. For me, there's nothing more enjoyable in a racing game than oversteering and then pulling out of potential disaster. Sure, I lose time, but damn if I don't look cool. I even had one of Turn 10's own leaning left and right as I drove the razor's edge and narrowly kept my car under control. I should note that Forza 3 keeps track of your drifting score in every race, so along with making the best time, you can also race for best style.

 

I didn't have hours to put into Forza's Career Mode, but even in my short time with the Roadster, it seemed the calendar's AI got the hint. I wanted to live on the edge. These were the kind of cars that would keep me playing and races and tracks that tested my drifting skills were going to make me happy. The vast majority of people who play Forza 3 won't even know that the calendar is shifting to meet their preferences. It's handled in a low-key way and it's not in your face with the game constantly explaining how your decisions are altering the calendar. The point is to keep you driving. I think it's going to work.

 

Before journeying to Turn 10 to play Forza 3, I spent a little time playing Forza 2. It's actually not that easy to remember precisely how a racing game controlled two years ago, so going back to the previous game was important. I have to say, after spending an hour with Forza 3's Career Mode, the change is noticeable. Forza's always controlled well and has been at the top of its game in terms of physics, but Forza 3 just feels better. Everything about it, from the subtle differences in handling from one car to the next to the sense of speed to the feeling of a connection with the road. Forza 3 is better. No doubt about it.

 

Perhaps the most controversial addition is the AI pressure system. One of the big problems with racing sims (Forza included) has been that AI drivers are too perfect. This is most notable in the Gran Turismo series, where every driver seems programmed on a specific line and follows it every time. Forza 2 changed that to some degree with the Drivatar system, but not enough to feel like you were racing against other people. So Turn 10 added the pressure system, which attempts to make the AI drivers more human. Get on the tail of another driver and they may make a mistake. Perhaps they go into a turn hotter than they would normally, or hug the shoulder more than they'd like. The lower your difficulty level, the more likely the pressure will get to the AI.

 

This is definitely not going to sit well with some players, who simply want to be tested against the AI's "set pattern." You can always pump up the difficulty to see far fewer mistakes, but be aware that the drivers are more aggressive at higher difficulties to better simulate a real race.

 

I played on all three of the preset difficulties on a build that was about six weeks from final. I'm hoping Turn 10 adds more layers of presets. The Casual setting is just that. Hold down the gas and go. The game brakes for you. All you need to worry about is trying to stay along the green line. It's not much fun for even a modest gamer, but it's not meant for us. This is for your mom or your youngest sibling. If they want Mario Kart, they can have Mario Kart.

 

Regular difficulty requires you to handle your own brakes, but most of the assists are on. I imagine the majority of folks who pick up Forza 3 will select this difficulty first. I found it too easy after a few races. And I am not some kind of racing master. I play a lot of racing games, but am nowhere near an elite player. For a few races, Regular was fine, but over an entire Career? It's probably too easy for anyone who has played through Forza 2.

 

The Serious setting is not as impossible as you might think. Turn 10 has likely adjusted this some over the past few weeks, but when I played, it left the guide lines on the road and several of the assists were still on. The AI is definitely much tougher and winning races is by no means easy. That said, there wasn't a race I couldn't finish. This was about the right challenge level for me personally, which is great to have as a preset. I'm just a little surprised there wasn't a higher option for the insane.

 

Keep in mind that these are just presets. You can go into any of these and individually adjust all of the assists and the AI to create your own level of challenge.

 

One thing that can make any of these difficulties manageable is the rewind function. There is no penalty for rewind no matter what your difficulty level. There's no monetary reward for not using it (though there are "pure" leaderboards). You don't ever have to use it or you can use it 200 times in a race. Each press of the rewind button (the Back Button) zips time back roughly five seconds. You can keep hitting this as much as you like, erasing entire laps if you feel the need.

 

Rewind is the future of racing games, according to Turn 10, as is a "no punishment" philosophy. I have to say that I miss the tension in a tight race, worrying about not screwing up. This was always particularly sharp for me when I had a lead -- just don't blow it. With rewind, I don't have to worry about blowing it. I always have an out if I want to use it. And while I do feel something is lost with rewind, I also don't have to instantly hit "restart race" if I make a mistake and spin out. I didn't use rewind to assure myself the lead, I used it when I did something that completely knocked me out of a race. It kept me driving, which is the entire reason behind the device. I can see it as a great teaching tool. If you have a corner that keeps giving you problems, you can rewind again and again to get an understanding of the proper speed for the turn. In a way, rewind is just an evolution of the guide lines just about everyone used in Forza 2.

 

There's one other addition that only the hardest of hardcore will attempt. Turn 10 added a clutch to the regular controller. It's located on the Left Bumper and is an option for those who really want to perfect a lap. You can still drive manually with an auto clutch, but you will never achieve the best possible lap. You can manually shift gears with the clutch faster than when done automatically. There is a much larger gap between shifting if you let the AI handle the clutch. That doesn't mean you won't win races, but the people dominating the leaderboard will be those using the clutch.

 

Though I only had a chance to play Forza 3's Career Mode for an hour, I can already tell it's going to be a big hit among racing fans. Gran Turismo developer Polyphony Digital should pay attention. Turn 10 is doing some great things with Forza 3. Like releasing it.

 

My fingers are crossed for a preview build of Forza 3 to arrive in my mailbox sometime in August. Once I have a few dozen hours put into Career Mode, expect an update. It will be interesting to see how it plays out over several seasons.

 

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[TimBud]

cool, it just gets better and better. GT5 eat your heart out! ;)