Forza 5 playable without download – but DLC required for end game

Forza Motorsport 5 is playable right out of the box, Turn 10 has confirmed, contradicting earlier reports.

Speaking to IGN, Turn 10 Studios’ Dan Greenawalt clarified his own comments from earlier in the month about Forza 5 requiring a huge amount of free day one DLC.

“While playing, the player will be asked to connect to Live in order to download a completely fresh set of player-created Drivatar opponents – it’s not a lot of data, but the download contains enough Drivatars to cover all difficulty settings,” he said.

“Connecting will also download new content – but the vast majority of the launch content is contained on the disc. This download is simply additional cars and tracks. The gameplay is not blocked while downloading the additional content; it’s done in the background just like disc install.”

In other words, you can open the box, insert the disc, and start playing, whether or not you connect to Xbox Live right away. That said, if you have plans to finish Forza 5′s career mode, you will need to grab that DLC.

“Deeper areas in the career mode were designed to utilize these additional cars and tracks,” Greenawalt confirmed.

“This is similar to what we did on Forza Motorsports in the last generation as well – shipping both free and premium content at launch. In some ways it’s similar to the Disc 2 content in FM4 as well. However, this time (unlike DLC tracks in previous Forza’s) deeper progression in the career mode was designed to fully integrate this launch downloadable content.”

This emphasis on connectivity and downloadable content may raise a few hackles, but Greenawalt said you can play career mode, free play, and other modes offline, and your progress will synch next time you do go online.

If you want your Drivatars to learn and adapt as you do you’ll have to connect, because it relies on cloud processing, but once you’ve downloaded fresh Drivatar data you don’t need to be online to take advantage of it.

Forza 5 will launch alongside the Xbox One in November. Digital purchases will ship with all day-one content bundled in.

Thanks, CVG.