Forza Horizon Dev Working on Open World Action RPG - News

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Forza Horizon developer Playground Games has opened up a new studio that will be working on an "open-world action RPG." 

Playground has just acquired new office space in its hometown of Leamington Spa and is 17,365 square feet.

Sean Eyestone, senior producer at Battlefront II developer EA DICE, has joined the team, as well as Gran Theft Auto V game designer Will Kennedy. Juan Fernandez di Simon, who previously worked as the senior designer on Ninja Theory's Hellblade, was hired to be the principal combat designer.

"We're delighted that we've secured a second studio to house our new team," CEO Gavin Raeburn told GamesIndustry. "This is a hugely exciting project that is already attracting world-class talent to Playground.

"The combination of new blood and experienced Playground team members is already showing huge promise and I'm excited to see this talented group contribute to Playground's continued success."

A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.

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Azzanation (on 27 November 2017)

If they can make an openworld game asgood as there driving games than Masterpiece incoming.

• +5

PhatChips (on 27 November 2017)

Wouldn't it be funny if they continued work on Scalebound

• +4

Ggordon (on 27 November 2017)

Thats good stuff

• +3

Normchacho (on 27 November 2017)

That's cool. The Forza Horizon games are really good, and I'm interested to see how this turns out. Also, I wonder if this will come to the PS4. Playground are an independent studio, but so far they've only msfer games for Xbox.

• +2

Mr Puggsly (on 27 November 2017)

Scalebound lis being reworked into Fable 4. Confirmed!

• +1

ironmanDX (on 27 November 2017)

Awesome. I wonder how far alone in development it is.

• +1

Random_Matt (on 27 November 2017)

Leamington Spa, nice place

• 0

COKTOE (on 27 November 2017)

This must be the Horizon: Zero Dawn clone that the artists collective at Microsoft ordered to be squirted out at the factory.

• -1

miedek COKTOE (on 27 November 2017)

my first thought aswell. Lets hope theres some actual artistic vision behind this project.

• +1

CosmicSex (on 27 November 2017)

It had to happen. Forza sold very poor for Xbox's biggest exclusive (not exclusive) AAA game of the year. There was a breaking point where they had to do something different. Wishing them success.

• -16

Paatar CosmicSex (on 27 November 2017)

This is the Forza Horizon dev, not the Forza Motorsport dev. Microsoft Stuidos and Turn 10 does Motorsport, Playground does Horizon. (they do help each other, but those are three different studios that develop the games, and Forza Horizon has actually had better success than Motorsport recently)

• +9

Azzanation CosmicSex (on 27 November 2017)

As Paatar pointed out. Im surprised alot of people dont know this info. Also relax, FM7 hasnt set the world on fire with reviews however it probably doesnt have to. The budget on it shouldn't be massive considering its FM6 with extras. FM7 at this stage is the best reviewed sim racer on the market and FM8 will continue the trend.

• +2

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