Speaking with Stevivor, Forza Horizon 4 Art Director, Ben Penrose, discussed the challenges of designing assets for a game that plays out over four different seasons.
“In some respects, it really is [a task of designing four different sets of assets],” Penrose said. “In other respects, it’s not. One of the things that was key in making sure this was ready for us to be able to do was to make sure that we weren’t just scaling everything by four.
“There’s some really cool tech — some really cool tools there — that make that workload manageable. But there are ways in which the workload does scale up by four times, and actually, a lot of that is the artwork. So there is no getting around the fact that you need to produce four sets of artwork for a whole bunch of content in the game.”
Penrose stressed that Playground Games was mindful of download size regardless of how many times an asset needed to be reworked, and that the studio was continually working to optimise the game’s total size. Sadly, he was unable to confirm a final download size during the interview.
Forza Horizon 4 heads to Windows PC and Xbox One on 2 October. The title launches as part of the Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Play Anywhere programs.
This article may contain affiliate links, meaning we could earn a small commission if you click-through and make a purchase. Stevivor is an independent outlet and our journalism is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.
