Forza Motorsport 5 records how you race and translates that information into a Drivatar. It’s kind of like Tekken’s Ghost Battle system, but for cars and Drivatars will replace AI racers in Forza Motorsport 5. It’s an interesting idea to have more realistic racers, but what happens if other players just aren’t competitive racers or players make Griefatars? Siliconera asked the Forza 5 team while we were checking out the game.
"It’s funny that you say that because we recognize that there are people out there who are – there are two different problems there. One is that some people aren’t that good. The way we solve that is the game is always learning. As your skills improve, the Drivatar’s skills improve, as well. Inevitably the more you play the better you are going to get. It’s not like if you have a bum race here and there your Drivatar is going to be a terrible driver. It’s almost like a rubber band, your skills will stretch out, expand and contract as you go and so too will your Dirvatar’s ability," answered Brian Ekberg, Forza Motorsport community manager.
Eckberg continued, "For people who just want to get online and grief people, if you were to turn around and drive against traffic the Drivatar would stop paying attention to that. It does not record that kind of griefing behavior. That’s how we get around that because we recognize that there are people that do that, people that like to get online and grief"
"The Drivatars you will go up against are a huge range of skill levels. If you’re a beginner and you don’t want to go up against expert Drivatars you can select that difficulty range you are comfortable with. Just like previous Forza games, the more you challenge yourself the more you’ll be rewarded at the end of the race."
Since announcing the game, Microsoft shifted gears and dropped requirements to always connect Xbox One online. Drivatars are still a part of Forza Motorsport 5 and in the beginning of the game you will race against Drivatars that were shipped on disc trained by the Forza team and certain members of the community. The game will ask players to connect to Xbox Live to download a fresh set of player created Drivatars. A representative from Microsoft said this won’t be a lot of data and the initial download should cover all difficulty settings.
Also, if you upload your Drivatar and then play offline for a few weeks Forza Motorsport 5 continues to record how you play and will synchronize Drivatar data whenever you log online again.
Forza Motorsport 5 is a launch title for Xbox One.
