Forza Horizon 5
Never thought we could dribble around the roads of the Horizon Festival in a car like the 1969 Chevrolet Camaro Jordan Luka 3 Motorsport Edition, but 2024 was a year with a ton of surprises coming to Forza Horizon 5 that we hope you enjoyed and will keep enjoying while adventuring through Mexico.
We kicked off the year with Community Choice, a content update done partially with members of our community. Our players got the chance to vote which cars, features, and decorations they wanted to see back into the game. The votes were tallied, and the result was a series filled with neon lights at Aeródromo en la Selva, 16 returning stunts, 10 reward cars added to the Autoshow, and a Festival Playlist packed with European Exotics.
That’s not the only time our community came together for an update. Back in March, the Horizon Race-off went live. This update gave our players a collaborative goal: complete street and off-road racing events to unlock two cars for the entire community! A new traveling outpost made its way to the Horizon Festival this series too. The Race-Off Outpost showed players progress on both the street and off-roading challenges, but the best part of this new feature is that it changed its location every week allowing players to explore the map to find it.
Two months after the Race-Off, a wave of retro vibes took over the Horizon Festival with Horizon Retrowave. This content update featured a new start screen players saw (and many chose as their favorite) as soon as the game booted with the update. The Retrowave wasn’t only about the looks, but also the sounds. Forza Horizon 5 welcomed a new synthwave radio station: Horizon Wave. Hosted by Isabel Moss, the new station featured 21 new songs including a streamer friendly “Encanto Remix” by Mitch Murder.
An exciting new game mode came to Forza Horizon 5 this year on the Hidden Horizons update along with all the cars and content: Hide & Seek. This new 5v1 experience had players enjoy a thrilling game of chase between two teams. 5 players joined the game as the Seekers whose job is to find and stay close to the Hider in order to fill their meter. If the meter reached 100% before time runs out or before the Seeker reaches their destination, they took home the win! On the other side, Hiders had to use the environment and NPC cars to cover themselves and stay hidden from the Seekers until the End Zone location was revealed to all players. When the End Zone is revealed, their mission becomes to reach that location before Hiders complete their meter. The following game update, Back to the 90’s, gave players the opportunity to unlock accolades and achievements related to Hide & Seek. We hope you still enjoy hiding and chasing as much as we have!
EventLab creators had a great time this year with all the props added to the game ranging from coffee cups, racing decorations, highways, elevation pieces, and of course the new Halo props that came in the Horizon Track Day. Our largest Prop Pack ever featured 71 pieces with iconic structures from the Halo franchise such as the Covenant Barricade, UNSC Barricade, Covenant Drop Pod, Energy Shield, Covenant Crate, UNSC Pelican, and more. Most of these pieces came directly from Halo Studios, bringing them right out of Forge Mode and into the Horizon Festival. Three songs from Halo’s OST were also added to the game during this series to FH5’s radio stations. Horizon XS now plays the Halo Theme Gungnir Mix (feat. Steve Vai) and Radio Eterna added Installation 04 and The Trails to its catalogue.
Forza Horizon 5 saw an amazing set of car packs with a large variety of cars, including EVs, superstar racers, pop culture icons, and more. One of our community’s favorites was the Universal Icons Car Pack, which included 5 cars from TV shows and movies: 3 versions of the Back to the Future Time Machine with movie-like lights and sounds, the 1982 Universal Studios K.I.T.T. (featuring the Super Pursuit Bodykit), and the iconic 1992 Universal Studios Jeep Wrangler Sahara ‘Jurassic Park.’
