If you saw a slick Forza Motorsport 4 video pop up today and assumed it was an April Fools’ Day gag, you were not alone. The clip, which appeared on YouTube on April 1, reportedly opens by declaring that it is intended for internal use only, and between that warning and the date, plenty of people smelled a prank. Look closer, though, and it has every sign of a genuine Turn 10 production rather than a fan made fake.
Sixteen Cars And A Big Leap In Visuals
It is easy to see why the footage got people talking. Turn 10’s in game visuals look like a clear step up from Forza Motorsport 3, with the video promising advanced lighting and modeling to make the cars and tracks look as true to life as possible. Reflections and bodywork detail are striking, and the narration makes no secret of the studio’s ambition to deliver the best looking racing sim of the year.
The headline numbers are significant too. The video shows 16 cars on track in a single race, double the eight car fields of Forza Motorsport 3’s online races, and it points to a garage of more than 500 cars. Sharp eyed viewers spotted one unexpected badge in the manufacturer montage: Asklon, the fictional company behind Halo’s Warthog. Whether that means a Warthog in the garage or simply an in joke between Microsoft studios is anyone’s guess.
Kinect Lets You Walk Around The Car
Kinect gets plenty of screen time. According to GamingBolt’s early report on the leak, the footage confirms both Kinect support and head tracking. Players can walk around a car and use hand gestures to open the doors, climb in and start the engine, and a more casual mode is also shown.
On track, head tracking lets you lean to look into corners or glance around the cabin without touching a controller. Some of these ideas were hinted at in earlier Kinect promotion, but this is the clearest look yet at how they fit into the actual game.
An October Release And An E3 Showing In Waiting
How the video got out is less clear. Nobody has explained who uploaded it or why, and there are suggestions that the footage was prepared for a bigger showing at E3 in June. Until Microsoft or Turn 10 says otherwise, it is worth remembering that a video like this may not reflect exactly what ships.
The video points to an October release on Xbox 360, which would fit the autumn slot the series has made its own. It is also a far more substantial look at the game than the brief teaser Microsoft released in December, a trailer that ran into its own trouble after it emerged that it had used footage from the racing web series Turn9 without permission at the time.
Leaked or not, this is the most convincing case yet that Forza 4 will be one of the best looking games on the system.