According to Forza Horizon 2’s creative director Ralph Fulton, the game has enough content to keep one bust for more than 100 hours.
In an interview with OXM, Fulton talked about how a higher-than-usual percentage of people finished the original Forza Horizon. “When we were talking about ‘more, more, more’–something that we really wanted to take from Horizon was that lots of people finished our game,” he said. “To be honest, a really surprising percentage finished it. I mean I think the standard is like 10 percent of people finish a game and obviously that’s across all games, but we were significantly higher than that.”
While that is certainly an accomplishment that Playground Games–developer of Horizon and the Xbox One version of Horizon 2–can be proud of, those players dropped the game completely once it was over. “But after people completed it, they left,” he said. “They were out [of] the game–there was nothing left for them to do.”
Playground paid closer attention to that than most would have thought and has designed Horizon 2 in a way that will keep players engaged for longer periods of time.
“[T]his time you’ll get to what we call ‘soft-completion’ in… 15 hours, maybe? That’s a good chunk of game. I can play that. But then there’s just so much content, so you can try out New Game Plus and so on and so forth–so easily over a hundred hours of gameplay for the super-hardcore, right?”
Now with this addition Playground hopes Horizon 2 will see some returning players a months down the line.
“And I think what’s great about that is it means it’s a game that you always feel you can come back to and do some stuff then and progress without it necessarily being your primary game,” he said. “Months on, when your Call of Dutys and your Assassin’s Creeds are out, there’s always that opportunity to stick in Horizon 2 again and just continue that road trip.”
Horizon 2 launches next Tuesday, September 30, on Xbox One and Xbox 360.
