Forza 3 Discussion...

Now that we’re a month into post-announce territory for Forza Motorsport 3, we’re starting to hit our stride with a regular bi-weekly series of Forza Pitpass Report articles that will reveal a slice of car heaven, as well as peeks at new tracks in the upcoming game, for our fans and community. Then during the off-weeks, we’ll be diving deeper into cars, tracks, features that we’ve already announced with podcasts, bonus screenshots, and other supporting content from Turn 10. Let’s put it this way -- we have so much content in this game that there aren’t possibly enough days between now and launch to show all of it.

This week’s focus is squarely on our friends across the Pacific in Japan, who have developed some of the fastest and most ferocious production and racing cars in the world. These obviously aren’t the only Japanese cars we carry in Forza Motorsport 3; but in the interest of space, time, and sanity, we’ve limited our coverage on a handful of select vehicles, ranging from sporty subcompacts to burly Super GT dominators.

For online gaming, tells Kotaku, Forza 3 features an incredibly elaborate race rules editor.

While the game will ship with a dozen or so pre-created race modes, everything about them, from the number of laps to start delays and what sort of assists a player can be using, can be changed.

"We have a whole bunch of options that just cascade," Krauskopf said. "There are pages and pages of options they can set to make the race exactly how you want it to be."

Krauskopf likens it to the ability first-person shooter fans have to manipulate the online game rules for Halo 3, but with much more control.

For example, most racing games allow players to choose a track, the car classes and the number of laps. In Forza 3, a gamer can take that basic race and choose to change the rules of how a winner is determined.

Krauskopf explains:

• First they could section everyone into two teams, one team will win.
  
• They could then decide that a specific person from each team must cross the finish line to determine who wins (we'll call this person the "mouse"), the rest of the players are just there to provide interference to the other team, or protection for their own team (we'll call them "cats").
  
• Then they could create still deeper challenges by limiting teams to specific car classes, tunings, assists, or upgrades.
  
• If they want to make things more interesting they can stagger the roll-off times from the start line giving some a head start.
  
• If the players want to be super specific about their race, they can limit the mice to D-class, front wheel drive European hatchbacks and the cats to all wheel drive turbocharged V10s.

The game's online modes have more than 100 rule types to tweak giving players an almost limitless ability to customize the way they want to play, he said.

Forza 3 will still include all of the Live support Forza 2 had as well. Other new additions to online play include a new party system that allows gamers to hop into one room and then jump from race to race together.

The team has also worked to blur the line between the game's offline and online modes when it comes to a player's career.

"As people are playing online they are still earning experience points and getting rewarded for in-game credit," he said.

Finally, the game will feature a robust set of leaderboards that will take into account how assisted a driver is when racing, so those hardcore fans can steal easily identify "clean" and skilled drivers from those who win with the help of the game.

"We are going to certify score boards, showing you who use assists, and which are totally clean times," Krauskopf said. "Thats how we serve the people who are our real loyal fan base."

It's, essentially, a more extreme version of what Turn 10 is doing with Forza 3 online play.

"We are giving everyone the ability to enjoy the game," he said. "But not taking anything away from our fan base."

Here's the full list of cars announced today:

• 2009 Audi Q7 V12 TDI
• 2009 BMW X5 xDrive48i
• 2009 BMW M5 E60
• 2009 Cadillac CTS-V
• 2008 Chrysler 300C SRT-8
• 2009 Jaguar XKR-S
• 2008 Land Rover Range Rover Supercharged
• 2009 Mercedes ML 63 AMG
• 2009 Mercedes SL 65 AMG Black Series
• 2009 Pontiac G8 GXP
• 2009 Porsche Cayenne Turbo S
• 2008 Volkswagen Touareg R50

At least one game will be making it out on time this holiday season. While everything from Red Steel 2 is being pushed back into 2010, Forza 3 is still right on track.

Microsoft has announced that the latest in the racing series will be available this October. Forza 3 was the subject of numerous leaks before finally being revealed at E3. After all the rumors and speculation, it'll be good to finally see it on store shelves.