The Halo crossover in Forza Horizon 4 made its official debut during the Forza Monthly live stream yesterday, and the experience looks just as impressive as we thought. You could already drive the Halo Warthog in Forza Horizon 3, but this time
the fan service comes with a much greater attention to detail.
This Halo experience in the open world racing game begins on a beach with a Halo ring in the background: You’re driving a Warthog as Master Chief, and you can see a Pelican dropship being chased by Covenant Banshees right above you. Cortana is acting as your AI copilot, telling you that you have limited time to reach the landing zone before the Halo structure collapses.
The demo was the highlight of yesterday’s livestream, and you can watch it starting at 1:46:00:
It’s fair to say that this is a significant crossover in the history of Xbox: Halo pretty much defined the original Xbox console when it launched back in 2001, but 17 years later the Forza series may already have surpassed Halo in terms of popularity. Back in 2016, Forza Horizon 3 was the first game in the series to launch on both Xbox One and Windows 10, and also one of the first titles to support Xbox Live cross-platform multiplayer between the two platforms. For this console generation, Forza Horizon 3 game also continues to claim the highest Metascore (91) for a Microsoft Studios title on Metacritic, and its Hot Wheels expansion released in 2017 also received critical acclaim.
Forza Horizon 4, which will be released on Xbox One and Windows 10 on October 2 is expected to do even better than its predecessor, especially since it will be available on Xbox Game Pass on launch day. Back at Gamescom, Xbox Marketing head Aaron Greenberg confidently said to Gamesindustry.biz that he expects record-breaking sales:
“So our expectation is that Forza Horizon 4 is going to be the biggest and best-selling Forza game that we’ve ever launched. Currently our pre-order tracking is well ahead of where we want, and tracking ahead of where we were with Forza Horizon 3. So the early indicators are really good. And that’s before you get into the fact that this title will be in Game Pass, which will allow it to reach another set of gamers who may never have played or bought the game.”
Do you think the Halo crossover and Xbox Games Pass availability will make Forza Horizon 4 the most popular Forza game ever? Sound off in the comments below.
