The highly anticipated racing sim for Sony PlayStation 5 is shaping up to be a hyperrealistic driving tool with new modes and better audio.
- Gran Turismo 7 releases on March 4, 2022 with over 400 cars and 34 locations with more than 90 different layouts.
- Music Rally and Music Replay are new modes that bring driving and music together in a fun and relaxing gameplay experience.
- A new Cafe location will feature conversations with car designers of some of our favorite cars from automotive history.
As its March 4, 2022, release date draws nearer, Sony is spilling more information about the highly anticipated Gran Turismo 7 racing game coming to PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 consoles. Polyphony Digital CEO and Gran Turismo producer Kazunori Yamauchi says the 25th anniversary of the GT Series is the biggest yet, and GT7 will be a return home for longtime fans of the driving simulator that debuted in 1997 on the original PlayStation.
At launch, GT7 will have more than 400 cars; 34 locations with over 90 different layouts; and completely new modes and features that highlight historically significant cars, details, and people from automotive culture. On certain tracks, GT7 uses meteorological data from NASA to produce beautiful starry-night skies as you’d see them from that location in person. Moons and other planets will be visible. More cars and tracks will arrive after launch, though details on an additional content schedule haven’t been released yet.
Remember the kickass intros from previous GT games? The computer-generated look inside a combustion chamber followed by Lenny Kravitz from GT3? Or the emotionally charged orchestral ‘Moon over the Castle’ introduction to GT4? We do, and music is the theme of two new modes in GT7. Music Rally and Music Replay.
Music Rally is a relaxed gameplay experience where players drive to the beat, instead of their limits. It’s just you versus the music, in a harmonious battle to make it to the very end of the song. Yamauchi hopes this lighthearted mode will pull some of the seriousness out of the simulation and get new players interested in driving cars.
Music Replay creates camera positions, video cuts, and movement influenced by music rather than using predetermined cameras following car positions. This means the cinematic replay from your most intense races will have several different compositions depending on which song you’ve chosen.
Haptic feedback and adaptive triggers while using the PlayStation 5 DualSense controller will give extra input while driving to simulate the real thing. Yamauchi said players will be able to feel the different racing surfaces, curbing, tire slippage, and effects of tire wear and weather. In previous GTs, ABS was just a light that would flash in the interface under braking; now it’s a sensation felt through the controller, and players can also experience simulated locked-up brakes through the adaptive triggers. We hope this mode is more than just loud vibrations and delayed input, but it sounds promising—especially for people playing without a steering wheel and force feedback.
It’s Educational!
The academic side of GT is now expanded in a new Café location. Players will learn more about the cultural significance of cars and hear automotive designers talk about their creations, like the Audi TT’s Freeman Thomas, original Miata designer Tom Montano, and others. These instances are earned through completing challenges and collecting cars.
If you’re a person who plays games just to remove the wing from cars like the Honda Civic Type R, you’re in luck. There are more than 60 types of performance parts per car, including wings, widebody kits, roll cages, wheels, and of course an exhaustive number of paint-color choices. To the relief of folks who have made amazing re-creations of racing liveries in GT Sport, Yamauchi said that stickers and liveries created there can be migrated to Gran Turismo 7. That means we won’t have to wait long for the epic GEAR Racing Lamborghini Huracán GT3 livery that someone has already made in GT Sport.
Tuning Is a Game within a Game
Yamauchi described the mechanical tuning capability as a “mini-game within a game.” The goal is that it will become a learning tool for people curious about how changing or adjusting specific parts of a car immediately affects things like acceleration, weight, horsepower, grip, and top speed. GT7 uses a new Measure feature, which will allow you to make adjustments, and the game will quickly simulate the areas in which the car’s performance has either improved or decreased. We spotted a few interesting tuning options in the preview trailer that include nitrous oxide, an exhaust silencer, and an anti-lag system.
The more than 300-person team at Polyphony Digital, once just a group of 15 at the start of the series, are eager to show off the 3D spatial audio they’ve cooked up for GT7. Experienced best with headphones, 3D audio better imitates how the sound we hear in reality bounces off various objects before reaching our brains. It’s more than just making the exhaust louder in tunnels: the sound will react differently depending on the surface it hits, such as raindrops hitting glass versus puddles or tires over grass versus curbing. 3D audio makes it possible for you to identify where the noise is coming from instead of just flooding your ears with raw audio.
The World Map, teased earlier, brings back some of our favorite GT modes that were otherwise skipped in GT Sport. License, Used Cars, and the Tuning Shop have returned. Yes, that means the gang of yellow-polo-shirted garage crew members is back to clean your car, change your oil, and, in one cute animation, pull at either side of a car to illustrate the installation of a widebody kit.
The hyperrealistic photo mode, Scapes, will have more than 2500 locations where you can photograph cars. Yamauchi explained that replay and photo mode are the only two areas with ray tracing capability, to preserve performance while racing. The reflection of headlights off plastic rear bumpers, individual rain droplets running down the window glass, and tiny etches and imperfections around the gauges of the historic cars look stunning in this preview. It has become somewhat difficult to quickly tell a real photograph and a rendering from GT7’s Scapes mode apart. Just make sure you have a 4K or HDR TV display to support these promised visuals.
Used-Car and Legendary Dealerships
The Used Car Dealership also makes a return. The dealership features cars with mileage, used oil, and vehicles that would otherwise be inappropriate to see for sale in the new car dealership GT7 calls Brand Central. These vehicles are more affordable, and the variety will change daily. A Legendary dealership will feature the most expensive cars. To buy something in the Legendary dealership is to obtain a piece of significance to car history.
For us, GT7 sounds like the biggest excuse to grab a Sony PlayStation 5, even if they’re still somewhat difficult to source. We look forward to getting more hands-on with GT7 before its release on March 4.
Gran Turismo 7 25th Anniversary Edition – PS5 Disc & PS4 Entitlement
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$89.99
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Standard Editions are available for pre-order on PlayStation 4 for $59.99 and PlayStation 5 for $69.99. Preorder bonuses include extra in-game credits, a free car pack that includes the Mazda RX-Vision GT3 concept, the Porsche 917 Living Legend concept, and the Japanese Grand Touring Championship Castrol Tom’s Toyota Supra GT500 race car. An $89.99 Digital Deluxe Edition is also available for preorder and includes extra in-game credits, PS4 and PS5 dual entitlement, and a special Toyota GR Yaris painted in your country’s special livery, as well as the game’s official soundtrack.
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