With slightly more than a month to go before Forza Horizon 6 hits the shelves, Playground Games has revealed the full map overview for the title in its new location of Japan.
While the Japan setting was pretty much the worst-kept secret in gaming, titles in the Forza Horizon series don’t use a straightforward 1:1 map that replicates road and scenery exactly as it is in the real world. Its interpretative approach means that we’ve not truly known what the game world will look like up until now.
A post from the official Forza Horizon social media account though has revealed the broad overview of the region, allowing us to get a glimpse of the relative geography of the reimagined map that’ll bring players to Japan for the next few years.
Unusually, Playground Games has gone with a more Insta-friendly portrait orientation for the sixth game, positioning Tokyo — the first capital of a sovereign state to feature in a Horizon title — towards the bottom and the Japanese Alps, which start with the Akaishi Mountains to Tokyo’s west, at the top.
It’s a slightly weird orientation that should put the iconic Mount Fuji over to the left side somewhere, and as it’s not on there we’d very firmly suspect it’s off-map in the lower-left corner given the initial screenshot that revealed the location beyond a lake back in September.
Size comparisons to Forza Horizon 5 are a little on the awkward side as there’s not a great deal of scale information, although we do know that Tokyo is supposed to be five times larger than Guanajuato. Overlaying the FH5 map so that the easternmost of what appears to be three separate airstrips in FH6 matches the Aerodromo gives us about that sort of scaling and presents a map that’s about 20-30% larger with a broadly comparable road density.
Some other things jump out right away too, including what looks like a continuous highway loop around the entire bottom two-thirds of the map and through Tokyo itself, as well as a smaller one around Tokyo which could replicate the C1 Loop. Like FH5, the game features a stadium that’ll probably be used for various car-based tag/flag games, while the new Estate appears to be just left of centre.
The mountains look to have myriad routes through them, while the mooted spaceport appears to be towards the very bottom of the map near some touge-friendly switchbacks. Legends Island, which is set to be the endgame reward for snagging that gold wristband, appears to be the lower-right extremity.
We know that more FH4-like seasons will be coming to the title too, so it’s well worth noting that this preview is only of the “summer” season. While seasons won’t change the roads, the overall map aesthetic was significantly different in FH4 when the seasons changed and we’re looking forward to seeing this replicated here.
It’s likely that the next month will pass pretty swiftly for fans anticipating the game’s release, with a veritable flurry of information coming from Playground Games to fill the gap, so keep an eye on us for all the latest as we get it.