Kazunori Yamauchi is a very peculiar uncle. The gesture of him is quiet, the forms of him are always immaculately correct even for what is stile between Japanese and his attitude halfway between the calm and enthusiasm is that of a guy who has never wanted the protagonism, because the protagonists It is others. Is your game, no doubt, and seeing it sitting in the middle of an empty ship answering the press questions through a frugal videoconference gives a little bit of rage, because it shows that you would have liked to shake hands, share impressions and above all watch play to the people. He is proud, as I say, but also worried, because the true girl in his eyes have always been cars. Cars as experience, as a culture, as a passion that he believes is being lost and that he considers him to defend. Yamauchi is not a rock star, but simply a guy who loves what he does, and maybe that’s why he transmits that trust: although his work is designing cars games, he is from the few developers who do not seem to try to sell you a motorcycle.

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Basic information

• Developer: Polyphony Digital
• Editor: Sony
• Platforms: PS5, PS4
• Availability: 04/03/2022

Great tourism 7 is, as everyone who came before him, before him, first of all a letter of love to what his creator considers the most fascinating mechanical ingenuity that humanity has devised, and for love sometimes become crazy. If you start talking about them it is because it is precisely that attention to detail and that desire to go further, to walk an extra mile, which make great tourism in a special product, although coming from another person it would be very easy to confuse them with bravuconated. Is what happens, for example, by listening to Yamauchi to speak for several minutes of the water cycle, interrupting its closed door presentation to explain to those present how the clouds are formed, how the heat trapped in the atmosphere makes the humidity of the Ocean wins altitude, how air currents work. Where he wanted to arrive, we checked moments later, when he presents a simulation that includes all these Factors Amen from the geographical location, the temperature and time of day so that the midday heavens in Japan are not the same as Californian sunsets.

Where others had opted for cloud textures to good tunnun, Gran Turismo 7 presents a complex system that exists only because it also does it in reality, because it captures the sensations of driving a Lamborghini in Suzuka implies capturing the car, the circuit and the reality. But it is not simply an aesthetic question: minutes later we see a timelapse of the same circuit soaking with the rain and drying in the sun, and we observed how the hot asphalt also comes into play in the simulation, bearing before the most exposed areas and interacting with the Future grip of tires. In the same way, later, we discovered that the starry sky is not an artistic license, but the Nights of Gran Turismo 7 are governed by an astrophysical model that includes stars and even individual planets from databases made public by NASA. Appreciate it, says Yamauchi, it is almost impossible outside the photo mode, but if we play with the opening parameters of the optics and we are lucky it is possible to appreciate even the contour of the Milky Way. As he said, crazy.

Follies that remain phenomenally on paper, but beyond demonstrating commitment continue to know anecdote. I doubt that nobody recovers love for cars thanks to the physically correct coordinates of Pluto, and that is why it is a relief that these curiosities came accompanied by real measures. The first, obviously, goes through a driving model that we have not been able to experience first-hand, but that if it promises is to exhibit the same attention to detail, and by its way of making systems live up until the moisture of the environment, the aerodynamics of the vehicle or distance variations with respect to the asphalt generated by the suspension are converted into factors that determine driving. The fullest way to demonstrate it is a more complex customization suite than ever, and a change of paradigm that promises, again, real simulations; Until now, comment Yamauchi, the result of these settings and the famous performance points that the system conferred to each configuration was measured by a simple equation between weight, power and grip, something that great tourism 7 disposes in favor of a button that we It allows to start a physical simulation in the background each time we modify some parameter. The depth is as dizzy as it seems, and that is why it is appreciated that concrete tests were offered: for example, a split screen run in which a Volkswagen Beetle prepared swept the floor with the face of its serial counterpart. Both were precious, since we took out the subject.

In this aesthetics and automobile pornography also help graphics, as realistic as the trailers warned and so likely to receive criticism for their sobriety part of the fans of hypersaturation and post-processing effects. Gran Turismo 7 is not made, it is real, and in particular I appreciate that natural enlightenment and those credible colors that opt ​​for coherence with a philosophy rather than to disengage jaws. Even so, the game offers authentic infarction prints, especially during repetitions that have been remodeled to use cameras that accompany the soundtrack processed; It is in this mode, and in others as the again overwhelming photographic suite, where the graphic engine is allowed to be welcomed by adding effects such as the RAy Tracing, because in a new exercise of honesty and commitment to its principles during the races the 60 frames per second not They are negotiable. Even so, and by virtue of that same honesty, I will say that the difference is small, and sometimes invaluable. Undoubtedly, the topic will bring up, but at the sight of the results dispense with the ray trace during the gameplay was the most sensible option.

The second important proposal comes in the form of figures, always a hot topic in the genre: Gran Turismo 7 will have more than 400 launch cars, and in the field of circuits we will have more than 100 events concentrated in 34 different locations with 97 independent traces. It is a figure rather than respectable that this time has been attempted to squeeze offering different tests associated with each track, and that it is to be expected to be nurtured based on future updates. In addition, and for continuing with the numbers, the soundtrack will have about 300 topics by 75 artists that are distributed among the genuine genres for this type of productions: Jazz, Hip Hop, Electro, Lounge, Classical… And it is an important relevant issue of music, because beyond the aforementioned procedural cameras for repetitions there is another novelty with a strong Melogan component: Music Rally mode, a luck of hybrid between great tourism and Guitar Hero in which there is no line of goal as such, but a BPM accountant governed by the tempo of the subject itself. The idea is to enjoy the music and the road, and the goal to reach the end of the song before running without beats, suffering on the fastest topics and reaching different points of the layout to refresh our accountant.

And since we talk about the sound section makes sense to do it also of the 3D audio, one of the great battle horses of the new generation of Sony and a technology that Polyphony seems to have welcomed enthusiasm. Again the attention to detail and an almost obsessive realism, now incarnated in a small demo that placed visible spotlights on each point of the scene that the audio engine considered an emitter in the mixture: each point of contact of each wheel with the asphalt, each exhaust tube, each engine of each vehicle on the track… a sea of ​​intensity cones and variable orientation that, together with the study recordings that have been carried out individually for each car (a titanic task, especially in The running times) results in a really shocking sound landscape.

But the sound at the end is nothing more than a vibration of a certain frequency, and with this we go back to the crazy ones: for everything that remains below the 100Hz, that is, for all the physical phenomena related to a career that causes vibrations Below the most immediately perceptible threshold by the human ear, Gran Turismo 7 uses the dual sense haptic response: the characteristic tact of ABS on the brake pedal, the sliding of a tire blocked on the asphalt, the vibration of the body… Details, details and more details that the team has searched for reproducing using the sense of touch and that low frequency range. It sounds promising, and I would even dare to say that it is necessary: ​​it is time for someone who is not Astro Bot to take a true game to a virgo as the dual sense.

And as for the game modes, after the selection of vehicles the true charging pillar of what Yamauchi defines as a “Sandbox of Life with cars”, good and best news. The first ones are faster: the most casual multiplayer returns, with split screen races, online lobbies and tools to share creations, but also a sporty mode still to determine that it allows us to delve into that more official and competitive aspect that Gran Turismo Sport started. The licenses associated with chronometrated tests or challenges such as drift careers, and of course returns a classic cut campaign mode in which to start with a more modest vehicle and expand through our garage little by little. With all this we already had, and that is why the surprise is the great tourism coffee.

It is the neuralgic center, the heart of that life simulator with cars and the Yamauchi mission, of its attempt to infect the passion of it to the new generations. In the structural coffee is exactly that, a local flirting that serves as a hub and that organizes its challenges around menus, small restaurant letters that go tasting proof to complete their more than thirty categories. In the sentimental, however, there is interest: each of the letters is a tribute, and are accompanied by small talks, images, chronologies, and a tribute to the philosophy of each car that on many occasions it implies its Own designers talking about you to you with the player and bringing him from his hand through his story.

That is the bet of Yamauchi, and that is, among all the technological novelties that puts on the table a beast as complex as it seems to be great tourism 7, the idea that makes the eyes shine: that of talking about cars, the to meet you, that someone transmits that culture to children. Personally, and again with honesty by flag, I have to say that it is a world that has always generated me the absolute disinterest. Up to now. Today the cars I like a little more than yesterday, and the merit is just yours. Test exceeded, Yamauchi friend. Mission accomplished.