Forza Motorsport 3 Microsoft Press Conference Impressions

During Microsoft’s E3 press conference, Turn 10’s Dan Greenwalt took to the stage--accompanied by Audi's slick R8 V10--to show off a few new features from the latest in the Forza series of racing games, Forza Motorsport 3. Greenwalt made sure to emphasize that Forza 3 is the definitive racing game of this generation and then proceeded to show a video of an in-game R8 taking some laps through a track surrounded by lush greenery. We then got a glimpse of an impressive cockpit view where the driver took a few seconds to look over to his right and left. Shortly thereafter, one of the other cars in the race collided into the guardrail and careened into the other driver, including the Audi, which then caused the R8 to flip over on its roof and skid for a few feet. That poor Audi's not so pretty no more.

After the brief video, Greenwalt went on to explain that Forza 3 features a brand new engine that lets the game run at 60 frames per second. Additionally, he said that the game will have up to 400 cars from 50 different manufacturers. Some other new features were briefly touched upon, such as the new one-button driving assist and the gameplay rewind, which would seem to indicate that you might be able to enact a mulligan in case you're involved in a major collision out on the track, but that's purely speculative. As far as Forza 3's Xbox Live interaction is concerned, customizing and modding cars will be just as prominent as in previous games--a video showed how various people have made a hobby of creating a variety of visual designs for their cars. And, of course, people will still be able to share these cars, as well as HD videos of Forza 3 races, with each other.

The presentation closed with another video showcasing what's possible with Forza 3's video editor. We got to see some pretty amazing drifting (which also shows off some of the nice driving physics in the game), as well as some spectacular stunt driving that looked as though it came straight from a Michael Bay-directed racing sequence. One scene showed two cars sliding into place and another drifting in between them for an especially impressive bit of driving. Overall, it was a decent top-level demonstration of features in Forza 3, but we're eager to see it up close and personal as soon as possible. Forza Motorsport 3 ships this October.