So Forza Horizon 3 is set in Australia. That might be one of the coolest pieces of news to come out of E3 this year.
But man, have you seen what Forza’s version of Australia looks like?
I think Playground Games is a little bit confused about Australia, like from a topographical standpoint.
(Obviously I get that Australia is a big place and Forza sort of needs to stylise this whole thing — just wanted to get that out of the way before I start tearing this to shreds.)
Okay, let’s talk about all the ways this map it totally messed up.
Let’s start with the obvious — Byron Bay is all the way down at the goddamn bottom of this map, despite the fact that both Sydney and Melbourne are below Byron Bay! That pretty much sets a weird ass precedent for all of this map being weird as hell.
[gfycat id=FreeSharpGraysquirrel]
Because…
— Well the Twelve Apostles are somehow wedged inbetween Byron Bay and Surfer’s Paradise! Um… what?
— Yarra Valley is somehow above Byron Bay and just slightly south west of Surfer’s Paradise.
— There is a section of the map that is just RAINFOREST.
— There is a section of the map that is just OUTBACK.
— Kiewa Valley is inexplicably right next to Yarra Valley despite being halfway between Melbourne and Canberra.
I’ve been starting at this map for a while, just trying to understand it. Clearly what Playground is trying to do is shoehorn the best areas of Australia (in terms of driving and scenery) into one playable map. That makes sense — but there isn’t even the slightest attempt to make it hang together in a way that makes any sort of sense compared to the real world.
Take the positioning of Yarra Valley and the Twelve Apostles for example. Here’s where they’re positioned in the real world.
Here’s where they’re positioned in the Forza Horizon 3!
It’s literally the wrong way round. Like a mirror image of what it should be!
Ah well, whatevs. I’m willing to forgive it. It’s pretty cool that Playground has decided to use Australia as a homebase for Forza Horizon 3. Probably best not to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Comments
76 responses to “Forza Horizon 3 Is A Bit Confused About Australia”
I’m pretty keen for it regardless.
Wow they’re going for one contiguous map!!!
Probably just as well, getting between some of those places is boring as fuck in the real world!
It really is!
It really isn’t.
It really is.
It really is.
Is it really?
Really it is.
if your australian youd really know it is
Is my Australian what??
Imagine if they had the Road going from Port Augusta in SA to Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. Literally nothing but straight road with slight bends and alot of flat land and shrubbery for 10 hours of that drive.
Road Train Simulator! lol
That actually sounds pretty cool (to an extent)
I like long roads where insane speeds can be reached and minor mistakes result in crazy crashes.
One of the first things I did in The Crew BETA was find the freeway belt and just fang it across the mini golf US map.
Nullabor is DLC…
lmao I can totally imagine this..
Noooo we are surely getting a Rally based expansion set in Tasmania though, omfgggg targa <3
There’s worse out there, just on the WA side of the Nullabor is a portion of the road called the 90 mile straight.
It’s not a practically straight road, it’s perfectly straight and if you’re doing the speed limit stays that way for well over an hour.
146km from just outside Balladonia to Caiguna. I did about 100km of it one day, and the rest the next day.
It would almost be nice to have a transition point, highways could be a short loading screen and then maintain the actual geography of Australia… Then again the whole map would have a whole lot of dead space so this seems like the best way to go.
“There’s nothing to see” was one of the most common things I heard when I was travelling round Australia.
It’s beautiful out there. The distances are large, but it’s stunning and constantly changing.
Unless you actually drive it and look. It can seem boring if you’ve driven it dozens of times, but for foreigners on a visit, the rural drives are one of the most popular things.
See my avatar? That’s how I saw it. 🙂
i agree ill know most of SA like the back of my hand
well if SA is in the game
This made me groan at first, but it’s probably how the Italians and French felt when the Horizon 2 map was revealed… Although at least their places were mostly in the right direction/orientation
Eastern creek, wakefield and oran park.
If those 3 tracks are in the game im happy, raced on them IRL and now i want to do it in game!
Horizon is their open road arcadey version of Forza, not the track sim version.
Oran Park RIP. 🙁
Its in Iracing and laser scanned
Should have just built Tasmania!
That would work well with Test Drive Unlimited.
…you’re welcome?
Its a shame they didn’t include Geelong (aka G-troit, motor city), they could have included drive by shootings and late 90’s/early 2000’s commodore street racing
Bush Bash Invitational
Americans won’t know any better.
Playground Games are British.
Either way, happy they made it varied, not just stereotype crap.
they wouldnt know if we took a topographical map of the US and labelled it ‘Australia’
It will set a (false) precedence when people come to Australia though:
“Wait what? I cant easily drive from Yarra Valley to The Twelve Apostles via Rainforest, then head South to Byron Bay?”
That happens already.
“I’ll just drive to Sydney”
Well, that’s a whole day out of your holiday then… unless it’s a touring holiday?
“No, I just want to see it”
Fly, you fools…
Only for those that play Forza Horizon 3 ;).
Rotate to the right, problem solved 😉
except for Byron Bay… h ha ha
Shhhh, don’t point out the massive flaw in my plan XD
Well, Australia IS a pretty big country 😛
Apparently the biggest island in the world.
Australia is an island, a country and a continent.
Do we know whether the map shown in the article is the full extent of the map, or no?
Except for the bottom-left corner (which has roads leading into it and a mostly-obscured mission marker, so it’s pretty unlikely not to exist) it looks as though it was taken off a demo at E3. I’d expect that they’re not likely to fiddle with it too much.
Pretty stupid comment. Use something called Google.
The map is about 5 times as big as the image in this article. http://cdn.segmentnext.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/forza-horizon-3-map.jpg
Except that this image is the exact one used in this article (scroll all the way up)
It doesn’t really bother me tbh, but they could of easily just shrunk Australia and attacked it in that fashion.
Serial Killer DLC?
Nah mate,the DLC is called “Wolf Creek”.
The inspiration for Wolf Creek was a couple of British backpackers being attacked by a ‘bushranger’ sort of bloke, he had a modded-out ute which could totally be a microtransaction 😀
I want to visit Outback.
I don’t care as long as I can do donuts in a beat up old Torana!
I remember the Australia track in Need For Speed 2 where I think you pass Uluru and end up near the Sydney harbour bridge. as well as one or two other landmarks
I find it funny that I did not see one australian car in the initial trailer for a racing game set in australia 😛
Note: Happy to be proven wrong.
Because nobody outside Australia cares about commodores or Utes. They have said they’re putting some into the game to appease Holden bogans though.
the HQ and Torana have been in the game for almost a year, there’s also things like the efijy, Hurricane, valiants.
But yes if you like holden you must be a bogan
Obviously. Or a taxi driver from like 2000.
Or just someone that likes a lot of different cars ?
Mind you i don’t like much of the holden stuff after the first generation commodore but i believe they still have their place.
There’s a lot of holden concepts and older cars that really paved the way for modern motoring.
Then I guess there won’t be anymore bogans in 2017 because the Holden manufacturing plant in Adelaide closes.
Their putting alot the fords and holden commodores
Pretty sure in the gameplay demo. The orange vehicle drifting in the opposite direction in the rainforest was a fpv pursuit. 😀
Look closer at the cars they drive past. There were 2 FPV Pursuits.
+ They’d be silly if they didn’t put an XB Falcon in there.
Completely expected this, and it doesn’t bother me, as long as they do a good job with the feel of each individual area, where they are located in regards to each other is no big deal to me.
Also hoping the Great Ocean Rd is done well in this game. This is assuming there is a good amount of coastal road going further north from the Twelve Apostles. It’s one the nations most iconic roads, it would be a waste if they just have the apostles without a good representation of the awesome road that leads to them.
Here’s hoping for caravans and interstate drivers going 50km/h and completely ignoring the turn outs and motorbikes coming around blind corners on the wrong side of the road.
Like previous forza horizons the maps aren’t real world but a representation of them Colorado and the Mediterranean map from fh2 are nothing like the real thing but it fooled many and was great fun
No shit, it’s stylised. Do you think horizon and horizon 2 were accurate depictions of their respective bits of country side
I’m keen to see if many people whinge about having to drive on the left, when we automatically adjust to driving on the right in every game we play.
LoL if they added parts of Tasmania just make sure we can at least do this
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-02/tasmania-police-condemn-hoons-doing-burnouts-on-tasman-bridge/7133694
Although they probably will focus on the more mountainous regions if they did (Mt Wellington Mountain Climb).
Nah it’d be a run the gauntlet behind the Flannelette Curtain for sure!
Glenorchy –> Chigwell –> Claremont –> Bridgewater –> Gagebrook
If you make it through without your car ending up on bricks you win Forza Horizon 3.
IMHO maybe the map should have had 2 sides with all the sexy areas, linked by a big Nullabor \ desert section in the middle
why is this news?
They’ve added a bunch of Aussie cars now, FG-X XR8, FG GT-F, XY GT, there’s an A9X and some other Holdens too.
Playground Games have already stated that FH3 isn’t going to be a 1:1 lookalike of Australia. They said they have taken different parts of Australia and mashed them together to make FH3. They have never stated that it would be a remake of Australia.
same thing on FH2 in southern Europe. nobody cried about that? write some useful articles.