Forza Horizon 5 was one of the most surprisingly inclusive games from E3 2021
If someone had told me that Forza Horizon 5 would be a game that’d make go ‘huh, that’s actually quite inclusive’ we’d have laughed a little. That’s a little ignorant, because wow, Forza Horizon 5 really blew us away during The Xbox/Bethesda games conference yesterday, and not only because it looks beautiful, but because of the diverse and inclusive characters the game showed off, too.
What made it so surprising is that Forza Horizon 5 – for what we know of it anyway – is ‘just a car game.’ But as we quickly learned through the conference, that couldn’t be further from the truth. While you do race through gorgeous environments, skidding and swerving your way through lush jungles and woodlands, taking in the architecture of phenomenal cities, you do so with characters and in locations that are sorely underrepresented within video games.
That trend continues in Forza Horizon 5, with the player racing through the streets of an idyllic, seaside town in Mexico and even taking the time to look at a mural by Farid Rueda that’s directly within the town in real life. An authentic look at Mexico is something that’s rarely happened within video games, with some games like Overwatch creating a Mexico map that was based on a town in Italy, instead.
It isn’t just the authenticity of locations that this game is interested in, either. Thanks to a FAQ that Forza posted, we now know that the character creator for Forza Horizon 5 will be inclusive too, allowing players to choose their pronouns, have prosthetic limbs, multiple voice options, as well as the ability to buy their own clothes through the use of credits. That’s not even touching on the multiple hairs and skin colour options, too.
While players were not shown this character creator just yet, the game doesn’t have long before it comes out so there is every chance we could be seeing it sometime soon!
Forza Horizon 5 is set to come out on November 9th, 2021 for Xbox Game Pass, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Xbox One X/S, PC and Xbox Cloud Gaming.
About The Author
