A Wider Horizon

I finally made it to the island.

“Making it to the island” — it sounds like gamer lingo, but I can’t think of a better way to describe finishing Forza Horizon 6. In this installment, completing the game means earning points through races and challenges to unlock a series of colored wristbands. Once you unlock the gold one, the gate to the island in the southeast corner of the map swings open. The island isn’t yours to own, but you can go there. Its scenery will belong to you.

As a longtime series player, this kind of ending feels all too familiar — and a little flat. And it still requires grinding.

But the addition of Auto Drive makes the grinding in FH6 a very different thing.

The last time I experienced an in-game autopilot was in Cyberpunk 2077’s 2.3 update, released in the summer of 2025. It freed your hands so you could take in Night City’s scenery — which made sense, since the driving in that game was never its strong suit. It also let you cruise without a destination, turning a game about swinging an Errata katana at everything in sight into something closer to an Apple TV screensaver.

My first instinct with FH6’s Auto Drive was the same: it must be for sightseeing. Like the lead-your-horse mechanic in Red Dead Redemption 2 from ten years ago — let the horse find its own way while you sit back, listen to music, take in the view. Vibe riding. But once I actually tried it, something felt off. If my Ferrari FXX-K Evo can hit 350 km/h, Auto Drive will drive it at exactly that speed. The scenery blurs past too fast to see. It’s clearly just getting somewhere. But for simple point-A-to-point-B travel, there’s already a fast travel option. So what exactly is Auto Drive for?

It wasn’t until I started the painful grind toward the gold wristband that I figured out the second purpose behind it.

I left the game on its default Average difficulty, which put my starting position in the middle of the grid. But all I had to do was push hard through the first few corners — occasionally going full bowie knife 99 on whoever was in the way — get to first place, and then set the controller down on the coffee table and let Auto Drive finish the race. Auto Drive follows the racing lines the game has programmed in. So do the Drivatars. At this difficulty, their conservative driving makes it nearly impossible for them to overtake once I’ve opened a gap. Every race from the purple wristband onward became the same arrangement: I handle the attack, Auto Drive handles the defense. The collaboration got me to the island faster than I’d expected — and made the grind feel like something else entirely.

This is why the Oppressor Mk2 was inevitable in GTA Online. Even players who love driving in games can’t stomach the commute between mission points when they’re grinding for some piece of in-game garbage asset they don’t even want.

Racing games have never had a wide audience. It’s not just that you need some interest in car culture — you also need to actually learn how to drive in-game, whether that’s on arrow keys, an analog stick, or a wheel peripheral. There’s a real skill floor. For players with no interest in driving, learning to control a car is frustrating enough to make them question their own coordination. Much like driving in real life.

Playground Games clearly wants FH6 to be more than just a racing game. From a business standpoint, it’s a smart call — draw in players who want to explore Japan, let them find their own reasons to be there, and the horizon naturally gets wider. FH6 hit six million players across all platforms in its first two days, a record. On X, I see Japanese users posting every day asking whether they should buy it. Maybe they want to see how the game’s Japan compares to the one they actually live in. Maybe everyone’s talking about it and they don’t want to miss out. Their hesitation is easy to understand — they don’t normally play games like this. But Auto Drive changes the equation. Drop the difficulty to the lowest setting, start every race from pole position, borrow someone else’s car tune, switch on Auto Drive. Anyone can make it to the island.

Which makes the flatness of that ending entirely appropriate.

A Taiwanese rapper once sang: the journey is the scenery; the destination is just a postcard.

FH6 is the kind of game where the process matters more than the result.

And for players who actually want to drive — the game hasn’t forgotten them either. FH6 includes more unmarked forest paths than any previous entry, scattered across the map, most of them barely wider than the car itself. For me, with every objective already finished, the best thing in the game right now is taking an Aston Martin DBX into the trees alone — no pedestrians, no Drivatars, just one winding path after another, tires catching fallen leaves, a stillness I rarely find anywhere else.

Then the path straightened out. The rear wheels slid a little, but I crested a small hill and came out onto a clearing.

Mount Fuji. In the last light of the afternoon.

“This game is amazing,” I said, in English, before I could stop myself.

I meant it. 9.8/10.