Wristbands, Not Career Modes: The New Reality of Forza Horizon 6

One of my favourite memories from the Forza Horizon and Motorsport franchises was that satisfying feeling of progression, moving from your first crappy ride to eventually splashing the cash on a supercar. It has been absent in recent games in both the open-world and track racing genres, but things looked up when Playground Games confirmed that wristband progression would be returning in Forza Horizon 6.

In the Developer Direct at the start of the year, Design Director Torben Ellert explained the premise: "You'll start out as just a tourist in Japan," requiring you to earn a place in the Festival first. "After that, you'll rise through the ranks, unlocking wristbands as you complete races in faster, more exciting cars."

But does this return to wristband progression actually deliver the career mode experience I wanted?

The Illusion of the Tourist

Technically, you are a tourist for about five seconds. In reality, you are best friends with the Horizon Festival organizers and are given a handful of free cars almost immediately. Take that "newbie" badge with a grain of salt. I don't have any connection or fond memories of my starter car. In fact, I don't even remember which one I picked because I haven't used it past the first race, and you are given all three anyway.

All of this is to say that the "rags-to-riches" narrative feels hollow when your garage is immediately overflowing with cars as a reward for playing previous titles. This is even more noticeable if you have the Premium edition, which includes a bunch of bonus rides across its different packs.

The wristbands themselves do dictate the performance cap of vehicles you can use in main events. The opening qualifiers restrict you to C-rank vehicles, but each successive wristband raises the floor. You will quickly be racing B-rank and A-rank cars in the Festival events. At face value, it seems to have the career progression I have been craving, and it is certainly a step up over its predecessor, which gave out the Corvette C8 as a starter car.

Why the Progression Feels Broken

However, Forza Horizon is, ultimately, an open-world racer that wants you to drive around in whatever you want whenever you want. These restrictions in the main events don't actually prevent you from driving more powerful cars in the open world or Discover Japan events, like street races.

My main gripe is that it is just too damn easy to climb that ladder. The progression mandated by the Festival races begins and ends there. Several factors contribute to this:

  • Wheelspins are still a car crash for progression, handing out expensive cars and bucketloads of cash like it's candy. You rarely ever need to buy or tune a car for an event because you will already have earned at least one applicable ride for free.
  • Dual Progression Paths: There are two new progression paths—Horizon Festival (the wristband races) and Discover Japan. While these are fantastic ways to house different activities, you get rewards like cars or thick wads of cash all the time for completing tasks, including races, stories, and even food delivery missions.
  • Pre-event Car Stacking: Just a few hours into your holiday in Japan, you have multiple houses with garages stocked with cars. You are presented with a stacked list of cars before every race and repeatedly handed new ones just for breathing.

This is quite a feat considering Wheelspins have intentionally been made rarer in Forza Horizon 6 explicitly to encourage more satisfying, linear progression. Yet, the result is that the economy feels inflated, stripping away the need to hunt for funds or specific vehicles.

Freedom vs. Forced Narrative

All of this is to say that I don't have any connection or fond memories of my starter car. Just a few hours into your holiday in Japan, you've got multiple houses with garages stocked with cars.

I must admit that half the fun of Forza Horizon is to drive around in fast cars, but there is no ignoring that it loses most of the satisfaction without the build-up. It is hard to force yourself into that career progression when the game undermines the struggle by constantly rewarding you with high-tier vehicles.

The tug of war between complete, free-wheeling freedom and linear, rags-to-riches progression isn't a replacement for a proper career mode. It is a compromise at best. And frankly, part of me thinks I wouldn't actually like more forced progression if my wish came true anyway. I would probably be missing my supercars if I couldn't use them at all until 30 hours later, once I'd paid my dues.

Especially given how slow collecting all 550 cars in the Forza Horizon 6 car list would be. I had a blast turning a crappy kei truck into a super-powered S2 rank beast, or tuning it to do backflips and handstands. Perhaps Playground Games' approach of encouraging more linear progression in the main races, but letting you complete side content however you'd like, really is the best of both worlds after all.