Forza Horizon 6 wants you to replay a new race event, but is that a good thing?

Look, no one’s saying Forza Horizon 6 won’t be great. We’re sure it will. It always is. But there’s something about the upcoming arcade racer’s latest gameplay preview that lands awkwardly with us. Doing the same thing multiple times is, apparently, something to look forward to.

Speaking to IGN, developer Playground Games delved into more detail about the new event type, ‘Rush’. It’s basically somewhere between the traditional ‘Showcase’ events and a tight and twisty gymkhana run, and that sounds awfully fun. A lot of the racing’s very focused on hitting top speed in Forza Horizon, so it’s smart to introduce a different flavour of racing which seems more about precise control at lower speed.

But while Showcase events have previously been something you drive in just once, the intention this time is to make these Rush races ones that players can enjoy multiple times. The devs are saying it’s a good thing, but we’re not sold on ‘now play the same content repeatedly’ as a back-of-box feature.

“We went back and looked at our telemetry data from Forza Horizon 5, focusing on Showcase events,” says level design director Tom Dillow. “And we noticed for the most part Showcases are one and done. The player gets given a showcase as a reward, they go there and have an amazing three minutes, then they drive off and there’s no incentive to return.”

Don’t worry, you haven’t accidentally switched to an article about modern dating culture. We’re still talking about Forza Horizon. As Dillow points out, Showcases have been re-used in seasonal events, encouraging players to race them again for new rewards.

But for FH6’s Rush, the team wants to take that replayability further.

“We wanted to build a Showcase-adjacent event type,” says Dillow, “and if we were going to do that we wanted to maintain that Showcase DNA. We then started to lean into replayability. If we build these amazing events, we want our players to enjoy them over and over again.”

The team used the pillars of “chasing a high score, course mastery and most importantly… fun” to guide their hand.

From a developer’s perspective, it makes sense. Showcase events must cost plenty of time and resources, so it’s logical to want the player to spend a lot of time with it.

But hang on – what is it, exactly, about replaying an event you’ve already completed that’s fun?

Arguably, Showcase events were such standout, impressive moments in prior Horizons exactly because they were one and done. You tore through a few minutes of incredible spectacle, and then the game whisked you off into something completely different. That’s what made the events stand out.

Obviously, if you subsequently revisit that event multiple times, the impact’s going to be lessened. It’s going to feel like the game’s re-using content to pad out your experience. Which is what the seasonal Showcase events in Horizon 5 feel like.

It’s too early to pass judgment on this yet. We’ve yet to see exactly how Rush events will be replayed, and what levers can be pulled to make them feel different each time. But we certainly hope Playground Games is thinking about how to maximise fun, rather than how to maximise assets…