A new series and a new set of Festival Playlist has started in Forza Horizon 5 today. Series 13, for those that still keeping count, is the Horizon 10-Year Anniversary, celebrating the start of the open world racing game series.
Forza Horizon was a weird direction for a spin-off- make a racing sim series go open world- but ten years later the series is one of the best open-world racing games out there.
The new Festival Playlist celebrates each of the past Forza Horizon games every week/season. So the summer season is for Forza Horizon 1, with all of its challenges themed around the 2012 game that started it all.
But it’s more than just themed events. Throughout the month, you will see some familiar decorations and props around Mexico if you played any of the past games to recreate the Horizon outposts of the past. So in summer, you can see the many Horizon 2012 Colorado banners and those inflatable man decorations not only around Mexico, but also during races.
These props are also available in Eventlabs for custom events.
There’s also a new story mode content. Horizon Origins recreate the many intro sequences in the Forza Horizon series featuring the hero/cover cars. On first bootup, you’ll automatically take part in the recreation of Forza Horizon 5’s intro, which is a simple high-speed drive in the Mercedes-AMG One.
But the throwback goes harder. Log in during the celebration and you’ll see a new intro screen. Right now, the intro screen is a remake of Forza Horizon 1. It has the right music, the same cars and even the same camera shots (only two scenes were missing from the original), but the environment is all in Mexico. We reckon this will change each week- to coincide with the Festival Playlist- so check again next week and see if they do indeed recreate each past game’s intro just for this anniversary.
Speaking of music, the accompanying game update adds a selection of songs from the past 4 games to a new radio station: Horizon Mixtape. Some songs require an unlock.
The new update also adds Midnight Battles. A throwback to Forza Horizon 3, these are head-to-head races for pink slips (sort of)- you get to keep the car you race against if you win, but you won’t lose yours.
Midnight Battles are tied to Street Scene, you unlock one for every four Street Scene races- 16 wins are required to unlock all four Midnight Battles.
The reward cars from Midnight Battles are not new cars- they all appeared in past Festival Playlist series- but these cars are now effectively part of the pool of permanent car unlocks, making them less rare and easier to get by everyone:
- 1971 Ford Mustang Mach 1
- 1984 Honda Civic CRX Mugen
- 2003 Toyota Celica SS-I
- 2010 Lamborghini Murciélago LP 670-4 SV
Plus, on the cosmetics side, there are 22 new rims from ADV.1 added. Forza Horizon 5 is starting to add more car appearance-changing car customisation- the last series sees two new body kits- and the teaser for the next series, Series 14, will see the return of Rocket Bunny body kits.
Forza Horizon 5 Series 13 Horizon 10-Year Anniversary New (Returning) Cars
As with each new series, new cars are added to Forza Horizon 5. But for this one, it’s all returning vehicles that long-time fans of the series are fond of, especially the original Forza Horizon.
The one other addition is a new edition of the Dodge SRT Viper, the cover car of Forza Horizon. The anniversary edition is tuned up to S1 class, and has a unique windscreen sticker.
- 2010 Ferrari 599XX – 20 points during Summer
- 2011 Koenigsegg Agera – 20 points during Autumn
- 2012 Eagle Speedster – 20 points during Winter
- 2010 Aston Martin One-77 – 20 points during Spring
- 2013 Dodge SRT Viper GTS Anniversary Edition – Complete Horizon Origins
You can find the full patch notes, which includes bug fixes, of the update here.
Source: Forza
