Forza Horizon 6's sprawling Japanese switchback spaghetti looks great, but I'm not sure I'll use its big blank settlement building valley

Playground Games offered the first in-depth look at Forza Horizon 6 during last night’s Xbox Developer Direct, in addition to confirming its leaked release date of May 19th. As you’d expect, there were lots of cars sliding and speeding through a variety of Japanese biomes in a manner I can’t wait to experience for myself, but one new feature introduced left me wondering whether it’s something I’ll actually take time out of my driving around for.

This feature’s dubbed The Estate, and it’s a big barren bit of land designed to let you build whatever sort of settlement/hangout you like. The concept seems quite like Assassin’s Creed Shadows on the face of it, with this patch of rundown rural property mirroring Tomiko’s Homestead as a sprawling home base you can wander back to if you fancy a break from driving around.

According to Playground design director Torben Ellert, The Estate comprises an entire mountain valley, which “starts off completely empty and overgrown, but once you unlock it, you can build and decorate directly in the open world here. And anything you construct is permanent and visitable by your friends.” An Xbox Wire post offers a bit more detail, with this space being designed to mirror abandoned bits of rural property referred to in Japan as Akiya. “Being responsible for an Akiya is really rooted in community, you take on the job of refurbishing somewhere that’s useful and meaningful to the people around you,” Ellert added in that post.

So, you can serve the community by building a giant private racetrack for you and your mates to lap, or designing some cross between a car dealership and a Bond villain’s lair. I’ll likely opt for a mix of both if I can be bothered, but honestly I can’t say this is ever something I’ve yearned for a Horizon to have. The various purchasable player homes around the map have always done the trick whenever I’ve felt the need to stop and scroll through my garage or install some upgrades. There are still eight of those in Horizon 6, and each boast their own visually customisable garage space for the first time.

So, on the outside you’ve got a building handcrafted by the devs to fit aesthetically into the space in Horizon’s Japanese landscape which it occupies, plus an interior space you can personalise without having to worry about potentially ending up thinking a bit of the map looks a tad more generic or artificial than the rest whenever you drive past it. In my eyes, that’s the best of both worlds, and the garage customisation on its own is certainly a new addition I dig. The world also has permanent car meets you can head along to if you want a space to show off your exotic ride to other players.

Going back to The Estate, I could envision myself being more on board with using it as a base if Horizon 6’s player homes had been left a bit more akin to Shadows’ Kakuregas – purposefully small and customisation-free pit-stops designed to let you quickly take a break or replenish your stuff before you get right back on the road. As is, I’m left wondering if I’ll end up looking at the empty section of Horizon 6’s otherwise strenuously crafted map as a gap I’d have preferred Playground to fill in themselves.