Shortly after we received confirmation of a March 4th release date for Gran Turismo 7, more details were shared on the returning career mode and customisation options for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 driving experience.
Following its absence in the online-focussed – and quite brilliant – Gran Turismo Sport, the career mode returns in full-blooded fashion for the first numbered entry in the series since 2013.
There’s a compact World Map that hosts the many distractions of the career mode, including a licence centre where the series’ infamous licence tests make their return, a tuning shop where players can pick up new parts to mod their cars – including licensed parts such as brake pads from Brembo – and a user car section where players can pick up pre-loved classics. It looks like all the fun of an evening spent browsing Pistonheads but in video game form!
It’s part of a re-emphasis on car collecting within the game, with an all-new GT Cafe tasking players with picking up certain cars with their own connection. It’s a mode that’s also said to require an internet connection – so it’ll be interesting to see how the car collection sits with a wider connected audience.
Elsewhere there’s the return of the livery editor – something put to great use in Gran Turismo Sport – and of course the return of iconic Gran Turismo tracks such as Trial Mountain and High Speed Ring.
One final detail in the recent blog post gives us a look at Gran Turismo 7’s weather system – a feature that was present in Gran Turismo 6, which boasted dynamic weather and day/night transitions.
Will Gran Turismo 7 offer something similar? “The time/weather change simulation brought to life in GT7 is unique to Polyphony Digital, who researched the complexities of nature and tailored it into a video game,” reads the blog post. “Referencing a massive amount of meteorological observation data, we have recreated spatial / time of day conditions for particle size distribution and concentration distribution of aerosol particles in the atmosphere on a global environmental scale, in a procedure that is unique to the Gran Turismo series.”