Skip to main content

Forza 5 Drivatar AI has 7 difficulty brackets, won't emulate cheaters, says Greenawalt

Forza Motorsport 5 developer Turn10 has bracketed the racer's cloud-based Drivatar opponents into seven difficulty tiers. While the opponents are based on the real habits of other players, they won't replicate cheaters or trolls.

It follows Greenawalt's clarification that the studio hasn't been holding back cars for post-launch DLC packs.

Discussing the increasing difficulty setting of Drivatars with OXM, Greenawalt said, "The thing that's interesting is that they don't just drive faster - they drive completely differently. Because fast drivers tend to be cleaner, they cut corners more, they use the car a lot more, they're much smoother. So, when you change the difficulty the racing fundamentally changes, and all this was trained by real people - it's not programmed by us."

While the cloud-based tech will learn and craft your own personal Drivatar based on your subtle nuances and techniques, it will not capture dick-moves like purposefully slamming into fellow racers and such. Greenawalt continued, "So people cut corners and the Drivatar learned how to do it and where to do it and how to do it appropriately. We didn't train it to run into you.

"Usually what's happening - and I've been finding a lot of people do this - they cut off the AI and then they slam on the brakes, and they get hit. And they're like, 'oh, that AI hit me!' And we're like, 'it's got real human reaction times and it's driving with the real physics, so of course it hit you! You went in front and cut it off!'"

It's definitely a break from race AI having the same, predictable racing lines. What do you make of the tech so far?

Forza Motorsport 5 is an Xbox One launch title coming November 22.

Read this next