Why you can't drive Forza 4's Warthog
"They didn't give us tyres from 2525."
Turn 10 has explained why you can look at but not drive the Warthog from Halo 4 in upcoming Xbox 360 exclusive racing game Forza 4.
Turn 10 explored the possibility of allowing gamers to drive the Warthog in the game, but decided against it for a number of reasons.
"One, it's got some technology that's built into Halo that would have been a big investment for us to then build into the game only to support one vehicle," Turn 10 chief Dan Greenawalt told Eurogamer as part of a new interview published today.
"To do with vehicle dynamics in general, it's a very, very tall vehicle. It's got four wheel steering to a very large degree. It's one thing to have four wheel steering on a car like a GTO - you know, real cars. But to have the amount of crab walking that car can actually do, per the specs? We're technically oriented. We don't just kinda do things. We researched the Warthog. We were like, well, we would have to do, literally, crab walking steering on the front and back. Technically we don't support that because no real world cars in our game do.
"Also, the suspension travel is gargantuan. It's a different type of suspension than is found on most cars. And then the final damning fact for us was, we didn't make the tyres in Forza 4. Pirelli made all of the tyres in Forza 4. This may sound like a cop out, but it's true: we didn't want to soil the ability to say all of the simulation in Forza 4, when you turn off all of the assists, is drop dead, absolutely as good as we could have got it. They didn't give us tyres from nanotube technology from 2525."
The Warthog vehicle design to be used in Halo 4 is buried deep within Forza 4 as an Easter Egg, unlocked as you unlock real world cars.
It's viewable in Forza 4's "Autovista" mode. You can use motion-sensing add-on Kinect to move around the model of the Warthog, and AI Cortana will narrate and tell stories about the vehicle's prowess.
You can't fire the gun, though.
"Not only is it not fair for the other cars, but I've got young kids," Greenawalt explained. "It's very important to us to have a game that is PEGI 3, or E rated in the US. Shooting a gun at other cars, while it would be tremendously entertaining - there's no doubt about that, I'm a core gamer as well - it really would not help us towards that vision of creating the next generation of car lover."
