What surprising series influenced the design of Forza Motorsport? Dark Souls

If you asked most developers what game series Forza Motorsport shares similarities with, you probably wouldn't pick the Dark Souls franchise and its "soulslike" spinoffs.

Turn 10's Forza titles don't take place in grim fantasy worlds where weird little guys giggle at you shortly before you get thrown off a cliff by a monster lurking offscreen. They're fast-paced racing sims that emphasize real-world fidelity and breakneck speed. But for its creators, it's Elden Ring that has inspired them the most recently.

Game director Andy Beaudoin and director of engineering Mike Grodin had just rushed offstage at the 2024 DICE awards (making a slew of speed-based jokes along the way) when we flagged them down for a fast interview. It was here that Beaudoin explained how FromSoftware games have been a creative influence over the last few years.

"I love the 'FromSoft' games," he said. "I love Dark Souls and played it for years and years and years. When I think about what makes me passionate about Motorsport that also draws me to those games is the idea of mastery, the idea of repetition, and feeling incremental improvement while I'm playing."

Turn 10 developers play "games of all genres" for inspiration

It was a surprising comparison to hear, though it makes one wonder if Forza games from Turn 10 and Playground Games would benefit from weird little guys giggling at you before your car is sent flying hundreds of feet in the air.

"It's just that feeling of being so powerful and learning and saying 'oh I overcame that,'" said Grodin. "It's almost like games teach us to fail so often and then they teach us to overcome that failure. I just love that part of the job."

It's a nice reminder that the world of video game design has a global, unspoken language that lets creators draw on overlapping principles to make incredible games.

If the inspiration was to flow back the other way, maybe the next Elden Ring could introduce force-feedback similar to those you see in racing games...not just for the combat...but the weird little guys too...