Recently I went into my history with the noble sport of racing- in video games, and the great amount of respect I hold for them. One of the leaders in the video game racing market is undoubtedly the Forza franchise. Turn 10 studios have spent the last decade in bridging the gap between casual racers and dedicated simulators and I feel they have struck quite a unique balance. Not to mention the fact that the games themselves have consistently been at the forefront of visual fidelity and yet, impossibly, the games themselves haven't become increasingly shallow. Plus, they have endeavoured to ensure that UGC (User generated content) remains easy to make and share, so that's pretty cool too.
But I'm not here today to commend Turn 10 for their creative work ethic, I'm sure their egos will be fine without my stroking. I'm here to take a conspiratorial look at the lore of their spin off series under the Forza brand; Forza Horizon. If Motorsport is the game for racing enthusiasts who want to push supercars to their limits, then Horizon exists purely for the car nuts who love to look at the prettiest supercars in the prettiest environments and maybe take a few screenshots along the way. Personally, I am more a fan of the latter series, even if I do sometimes gag at the cutscenes.
Unlike most racing titles, Forza Horizon boasts a storyline to follow, and unlike Need For Speed, said storyline isn't packed to the brim with FMVs. Although that doesn't save the thing from being more cringy than your average Facebook feed. In Forza Horizon, you play the role of a participant of the exclusive 'Horizon festival', a car junkie event wherein people travel to beautiful and remote locations all over the world, usually a bus-ride away from tourist hotspots, and show off their multimillion dollars worth of vehicles in endless vanity events and races. So as you can imagine, this is a festival for rich asshats to pat the backs of other rich asshats, on account of them both being rich.
In gameplay this narrative translates to the player being mic-ed up to the most obnoxious event organizer of all time as they are herded across the country side on an overblown ego trip. Needless to say, I hate every single person who has a hand in the Horizon festival; It is my dream for Turn 10 to have a crossover with IOI so we can get a Hitman level wherein we get to murder each and every last one of them. Maybe it's the obnoxious over-enthusiasm that you get blown through your ear every 10 minutes, or maybe just the general air of pampered entitlement that exudes from the participants, whatever the source of my irritation, the consequence is that I have trouble enjoying the games unmuted.
My animosity has benefited me a unique view when it comes to the world of Forza Horizon, however. Unique in that, I look into it a lot more than the developers likely intended for. But I have found that the more I play through these games, the more questions I end up having. Perhaps it is my love for the Deus Ex franchise coming through (I feel another Deus Ex marathon coming in the near future), or perhaps I picked up on some deep-seeded lore that Turn 10 have been hiding since the beginning. Unlikely, but it makes the subject no less interesting. (At least to me.)
Firstly, I made note of how, logistically, the Horizon festival is unlike any other of it's kind. I don't mean that in a congratulatory way, I mean to say that the way the Horizon festival is run does not compute with other famous historical festivals. Let's compare it with, arguably, the world's biggest festival; Glastonbury. (Yes, I realize that Glastonbury is a music festival but we're focusing on pure logistics here.) According to an article by Glamour UK from 2017, the event's organizer, Micheal Eavis said that the event's costs total up to 22 million. That covers "The infrastructure, the fencing, the roads, the water and the loos, the marquees, the management, the security and the police." All bare essentials in order to get things to work.
If we use Glastonbury as a baseline example of a public festival that is run somewhat competently, than we can estimate the price that each Horizon festival has cost. First let us look at the space that both festivals take up and scale costs proportionately (Not the most accurate way of taking all variables into account but it'll have to make do.) In terms of physical size, Glastonbury takes up 900 acres of land or 1.4 Square miles. (Rather the venue!) Let us compare that with the size of Forza Horizon's maps. It was hard to find any data on the square miles worth of playspace in the first two games (Colorado and Italy + France), but some clever individuals did figure out that data for the latter two (Australia and the UK) Horizon 3 boasts up to 23.32 Square miles whilst 4 has 27.59.
That would mean that the Australia Venue would cost somewhere around 363 Million, whilst the UK retreat would be 430 Million. Astronomical prices to host a festival alone, however, there is another factor to take into account. You see, Glastonbury only takes place over 5 days, whilst the Horizon festivals operate on a unspecified timescale. However, I have heard the 'banter' of the event organizer rattle around in my skull enough to have the term "Summer of Horizon!" ingrained into my greymatter, so we can assume it is around 3 months. So, if we take into account that Summer consists of roughly 92 days, and assume that Horizon runs from start to finish (Unlikely to be the case, but it'll give us a ballpark from which we can work with.) That means that the Australian Horizon festival cost somewhere close to £6.6 billion to organize. (Or $8 Billion as of the writing of this blog.)
As insane as that figure is, things get ridiculous when we take Horizon 4's cost into account. You see, Horizon 4 introduced a new gimmick into the game wherein every week the season would change in order to allow players to experience a variety of different terrains and visual styles. (And it consequently still looks stunning) This would mean that the UK venue would have to have run for at least an entire year. (Good god, those poor caterers.) Taking this into account, as well as the widely known knowledge that the average year consists of 365 days, we can conclude that the UK Forza cost at least £31 billion. (OR $37.9 billion as of the writing of this blog.)
What does all this math tell us? That the organizers of this event are not just some thrillseeking millennials driving rental supercars, they are people with enough capital to run a small country. (An extremely small country, but still.) This clashes with the happy-go-lucky attitude that we see presented by the event organizers, or at least the attitude we see displayed by the people we are told are the event organizers. In the fourth game, the big narrative twist is the fact that the player themselves are the organizer of the Horizon festival. "That sounds like a lot of work!" you may think, but really, all it amounts to is racing around fast cars all day and trying to win medals. (Exactly the same thing you end up doing in all the other games.) This makes it clear that these 'organisers' aren't actually in charge of anything at all. They are a young face that are installed for the sake of keeping up appearances, so that the real planners can operate anonymously.
That seems like a bold accusation, but I have a bit more evidence. You see, the organization of the Horizon festival isn't just an amazing exercise in spending power, but political power as well. There is a reason why every single racing event in the world takes place on a race track; it is a safe and maintained environment wherein few people are ever in actual danger (beyond the drivers.) The tracks themselves are sectioned off from the general public, they are installed with measures to limit the effects of a crash, and the road itself is specially treated to withstand the beating of superheated rubber, day in and day out. Yet somehow, the Horizon festival does not follow these rules.
Every single Horizon festival takes place on the roads of some remote location across the world, the same roads that the general public are still using. It isn't an uncommon sight, when travelling from one event to the next, to see trucks and sedans populating the highways whilst supercars weave inbetween them. Supercars which, by the by, are not all entirely road legal. Some of the events and races even take place on highways and roads that the planners didn't even bother to section off (or didn't section off on purpose) meaning that locals are unwittingly drafted into a deadly street race without their consent. Who allows this to happen?
Whenever there is, inevitably, a horrific collision with a member of the public, you'll notice that no emergency services are ever called. No Ambulance, no police, not even the AA bother to show up in order to tow the poor fools away. It is as though the parameters of the festival have temporarily become an independent state for the duration of the festivities, and all civilians unlukcy enough to be caught in the mess are no longer the concern of their local government. Such an arrangement would surely transcend the boundaries of financial accessibility, (or should I saw 'ideally') which must mean that the Horizon festival runners have unmatched political pull all over the world.
Such a theory is supported by the setting of the second game. As I mentioned earlier, Forza Horizon 2 takes place in Italy and France. Both of them. That means the Horizon money men were able to negotiate a deal wherein they could set up a festival/temporary independent nation, that transcended international borders. No amount of money can buy that kind of power, it's the kind of influence that can shift the lines of the globe, should they so choose.
So what does all this ultimately mean for the Horizon festival? Well, it is clearly run by some sort of ultra influential secret cabal. Just look at the evidence. The festival is always run in a remote location that is close to well known landmarks (Easy to reach but not directly in prying eyes), they employ a revolving door of patsy organizers (A young attractive face to draw all the attention), Police and government resources are kept far away from the event at all times (To limit the temptation for surveillance and spies) and the whole event takes place over large spans of time. (As if to obfuscate the schedules of the real power players.)
I believe that the Horizon festival is a front that is set up by a shadow cabal of comparable influence and resources to what is assumed to be at the alleged disposal of the rumored 'Illumanti'. The festival itself is designed to be this huge, obnoxious affair, with the intention of providing a smoke screen so that 'the cabal' can host their annual get-togethers. As their members would likely consist of people from all walks of life, and branches of government, it is essential that their participation in 'Cabal' meetings are kept perpetually secretive, and so the Horizon festival was devised as a way for them to 'hide in plain sight' as they meet and decide the future of the world from secret boardrooms. Never in the same place twice. Then, IOI will do a crossover with Turn 10 wherein 47 will infiltrate this cabal, likely revealing them to be branch of Providence, and eliminate them all. (Wait, I trailed off a little bit there towards the end.)
At the end of the day, I don't really believe any of this to be the real story behind the Forza Horizon series. (Unless it is, in which case: I never doubted for a second!) I just think that it is really funny to take a critical eye to a world that is inherently not designed to withstand it. Poke hard enough and you can unravel a thread that leads you to some weird places. (Like the Illuminati.) At the end of the day, I just wanted to have a bit of fun and I hope you got as much of a kick out of reading my conspiratorial ramblings as I did writing them. And remember, that's just a theory, a game the- oh wait, that's MatPat's thing...
No comments:
Post a Comment