Jalopnik Is Live On Twitch At 4 p.m. ET to Tour the Open-World Mexico of Forza Horizon 5
Gif: Jalopnik / Steve Da Silva
It’s Tuesday again, which means Jalopnik is streaming on Twitch at 4 p.m. ET! Our usual host, Adam Ismail, is out again, so there’s no one to moderate the unruly Jalopnik staff and to prevent them from expressing disdain on Twitch for objectively-great car movies like Speed Racer. But the focus of this stream will not be car movies — sorry, Andy. No patently false claims from you today!
Jalopnik is streaming Forza Horizon 5 once more. But this time, we’re on a sightseeing tour of Mexico as brought to you by Turn 10 Studios. When the studio announced its decision to bring the Forza Festival to Mexico, fans wondered how the open-world formula would play out in a country known for many distinct environments. Mexico has big cities, big mountains and big beaches. All of which make the country an attractive place for big motorsport events and races.
Formula 1, Formula E and MotoGP have all run in the heart of the country, Mexico City, AKA CDMX. And the state of Baja California hosts the legendary Baja 1000 race. FH5 simply took that motorsport heritage and filled in the game with nuance and subtlety that makes the setting truly authentic. Or did it?
Was Turn 10 Studios actually able to make Forza feel like it was set in Mexico or not? Where are the Volkswagen Beetle races? None of that New Beetle crap, but with honest-to-goodness old VW Beetles, which were made in Mexico well into the new Millennium. Or for that matter, where is the Nissan Tsuru in the Forza Horizon 5? The Tsuru, known in the U.S. as the Nissan Sentra, was once the unofficial four-wheeled mascot of Mexico. Even to this day, the Nissan can be found bombing through the majority of Mexican cities — an (unsafe) workhorse that endeared Nissan to the country.
So, Steve DaSilva is taking me, José Rodriíuez Jr., and maybe also a rotating cast of Jalopnik staffers on a tour of the game to see what FH5 got right and what it got wrong about Mexico. Join us at 4 p.m ET on our Twitch channel!
