Forza Horizon, since 3 especially, delivered us some of the most memorable E3 debut trailers in Microsoft’s gaming history. While the first 2 games were more classic feature-lists and fast cars in typical scenarios, with Forza Horizon 3 they upped their game, starting to deliver cinematic showcases that truly make you feel the environment and its organic nature, accompanied by great musical choices. No more text, Playground lets the game talk. With the release of the excellent E3 trailer for Forza Horizon 5 that had even non-racing fans turn heads, the question has to be made. Which Forza Horizon has the best E3 reveal trailer?
4 pretty easily for me. Like, just an amazing trailer through and through. Love Surfing the Apocalypse’s cover of I Can See For Miles and sometimes put it on Spotify when playing. And the seasons switching with the phrase “Now here’s a surprise” played as frost builds on the side of the Senna. The Senna passing the Centenario as a proverbial passing of the torch. The drifting in the cities. The showcases. It really as a fantastic representation of what makes Horizon 4 brilliant, but 3 and 5 have truly fantastic trailers too. 2’s is good but slow. 1 is edited like that one awful scene in Bohemian Rhapsody and the music is grating. Not remotely a fan of that trailer and it makes it look like a game it’s not.
In terms of sheer graphics and potential I would vote for FH5. But I’m really nostalgic about the FH2 trailer. I still remember watching it on loop for days back then.
Everyone who didn’t vote for FH3 is just wrong.
That trailer is one of the best game trailers ever made. The pacing, the anticipation, how it peaked, the score. It was also the by far biggest jump over the last trailer of FH2, which was like an amateur shot.
Just so good craftsmanship.
Same goes for BF1 trailer. The game shown doesn’t really matter what’s the best trailer is. What’s the best trailer is, should be voted on.
There is a lot of recency bias in this topic^^
FH4 and FH1 take the next places.
Outside of the first trailer, they are all great. Have to go with the Horizon 3 trailer though. Usually not a fan of covers, but the song choice along with the tight editing gives me goosebumps for some reason.
I might be in the minority here but I really liked the first Horizon trailer for what it had to do.
A completely open world racer based on the Forza franchise was completely foreign to everybody, and it had to communicate how:
open the world was
beautiful this world is
intricate this world was
it featured the same sort of roster of cars that we see the mainline Forza series
this is all under the pretext of a musical concert
Whereas all the other trailers already have this established for them and they didn’t have to really dwell on these things, but rather introduce new features.
The only problem is I think that first trailer went on a minute too long. They should have cut it off before the dubstep kicked in, but included some of those important scenes in the first bit. It really could have been perfection but now it’s relegated to simply being good. While all of the others are great.
I voted FH3 because it was a perfect marriage of music and visuals, communicating everything about the game without text, and ended with essentially cover shot of the game.
It’s remarkable how these trailers from Playground Games / Xbox Marketing are consistently the highlight of E3s whenever they show. As much as I love Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport, they don’t generate the same level of excitement with their trailers, nowadays.
This is a great point. I thought the first trailer did a great job handling all of these aspects. I just wasn’t a fan of the dubstep part of the music XD
I still remember seeing the first trailer for the first time and wondering how well they would pull it off because it seemed ambitious. Thankfully the game turned out great and really cemented Playground as a talented studio right from the get-go.
So my assumption is that the dubstep part was included to show the edgy / illegal nighttime unsanctioned races in a different feel from the rest of the game.
I ended up voting for the first trailer as this was the game that convinced me to finally go get an Xbox. It also got me listening to a bit more variety of music than I had before. I still hear songs every now and then (happened to me a week ago) where I know for certain that I first heard it while playing Forza Horizon 1. So while I acknowledge that later games’ trailers might objectively be better, this one gets my vote!
I am voting for FH5, but the FH3 or FH4 also sstands out. The one with the UNSC ship also travelling with your car.
The reason I think FH5 is the best, because unlike a lot of the previous ones this one has actually wowed me with the actual gameplay and game-time graphics. No videos! Only gameplay, and iin-game graphics.
