Lots of information about the game has dropped over the past week (as well as the game demo, of course). In last week's Week in Review, Brian Ekberg discussed the single-player campaign in the game, called the Forza Driver's Cup. One thing I noticed that he mentions is that completing it unlocks several more events such as showcases, as well as trophies and driver gear rewards. I'm looking forward to learning what those events are. In order to access those events, you'll have to have the pre-launch update installed, which adds about 50GB of data (in addition to the 45GB that's on the game disc). Yes, the whole game is 95GB!

In the most recent Week in Review, Brian discusses homologation, which should add an interesting dimension to upgrading cars for races. Previous Forzas all used a Performance Index (PI) system, where a single number tries to capture the overall performance of the car. It's a straigthforward system to work with, but the result is that a small number of cars dominate the leaderboards. In FM7, the single-player campaign as well as "multiplayer events created by Turn 10" will both use homologation, which is further restrictions on how cars can be upgraded. They describe four restrictions: tire type (e.g. "sport"), tire width, horsepower, and PI. These additional ways of limiting car performance should make for more interesting racing, particularly for leagues and other types of organized online races. Homologation is also available in Free Play mode, and if you don't fancy building your own car, there's an "auto-homologate" feature.

Turn 10 also provided some news about Forza Rewards and FM7. Signing up for the rewards on the Forza Rewards website means you can get a weekly payout based on how much you've played the various Forza games. It's a tier-based system, and each tier unlocks a higher weekly payout (e.g. tier 3 allows you to grab 50,00 CR weekly, whereas tier 5 pays out 100,000 CR). These tiers have also been used to give out stuff at the launch of a new game, e.g. in Forza Horizon 3 you would get some number of cars based on your tier, as well as a cars based on what games you've played and whether you had VIP membership.

So far they've not announced any cars being handed out to Forza Rewards members in FM7, instead we got to learn that there are a number of driver gear suits, badges, and prize crates. We don't yet know what kinds of crates these are, if you've seen any of the preview videos that have come out recently you'll know that crates vary in cost and payout (see below for some links to videos). What we do know is what the weekly payout will be based on your tier and what rewards you'll get at the start of the game:

There are no rewards for tier 12 at the start of FM7, because tier 12 is only available when the game starts and can only be achieved by playing said game. Curious what the suits look like? Wonder no more:

(image edited for size, here's the full resolution image)

They're also retroactively awarding players full score for DLC- and token-based achievements, and will instead focus on achievements related to time invested in the game for FM7.

When it comes to wheel support, Turn 10 also announced the list of wheels supported on Xbox One. I won't recreate the whole list, instead you can find it in the Week in Review. They previously announced the list of supported PC wheels at Gamescom.

Turn 10 will have an FM7 debut livestream on September 27, two days before the game is available to play for Ultimate Edition owners. It starts at 9am PDT (noon EDT, 6 PM in Europe) and will "go all day and well into the evening" and be broadcast on both Mixer and Twitch.

There's a bunch of FM7 preview videos available on YouTube now after a showcase event was held in the UK. They generally show off the single-player campaign, but sometimes also other things. FailRace, who frequently puts out videos with time trial challenges or oddball races, has a video with the first part of the campaign. As you'll see, the first two races are the same as in the demo (Porsche 911 GT2 RS at Dubai, and the Merc truck at Mugello), the third is the same car as the demo (Nissan GT-R Super GT) but the race is at Suzuka in the rain. Some muscle car racing after those. They also released a video showing off Maple Valley and some autocross rivals racing. As usual with FailRace, the commentary and feedback about the game is great.

Super GT has one video showing the first part of the campaign, but also a video showing a Ford GT LM race at Suzuka, and some short videos discussing multiplayer and rivals, and driver gear and prize crates.

GameRiot has some campaign playthroughs. Here's part 1, and here's part 2. After the first three races, they did try out the 60's F1 cars, and then switched to the Trophy Trucks. They also have a video with some Audi R8 and 2017 Ford GT Forza Edition races.

One of the things I noticed in the videos is how quite a number of cars are locked behind car collection levels (see for instance the last GameRiot video). I'm curious to see how that affects the game, hopefully it'll be fairly straightforward to unlock them through either single- or multiplayer. If the cars that are shown on those screens are all the cars that are locked, there should be plenty more available elsewhere, while these cars perhaps are the more "collectible" ones.

Alright, that's the wall of news for this week. We're five days away from early release, and don't forget the Turn 10 livestream on Wednesday if you're curious to see more gameplay!