Man, it looks like PD are really having fun with the 2CV and Stepbro. Used to be this series was so straight laced and took itself so seriously. Nice to see all this
GLORIOUSLY stupid stuff in a semi–realistic game!
For me, the highlights of this update were the new Mazda Scapes and Car Concierge. I've been to two of the locations IRL, and I can't put into words how surreal it feels to see a place you know in the game, and vice versa.
The CC resolves a LOT of FOMO for me. I'm a little bit OCD when it comes to UCD and LCD cars, feeling pressured to collect them in every colour they come in; some for the interior body colours, some for irreversible mods, or just plain wanting to know what car comes in what paint colours. Now that the CC allows us to not only see all the colours, they also allow us to buy the cars whenever, so I can finally free up garage space! I feel so much better now that I know I've only 32 of the
48 colours that the Dino comes in!
I am SUPER happy that the Car Viewer feature dinally made it into the game, because it's one of the features I wrote that I wish were in a future GT7 update. That said, the Car Viewer as we now have it feels completely underbaked and an afterthought. I was really disappointed that we couldn't move the car around the scene, and that the range of the camera's movement is tied to a fixed radius around the car. We can't even do a full top–down view! As others have already mentioned, the lack of interior viewing is a serious letdown. Hell, there isn't even an option to toggle active aero parts like in Scapes! What gives? I remember back in GT5, where the new car dealerships showed off cars in a studio–like environment, with large screens covering the walls that could switch between different scenes like a clear day, autumn leaves, or a nighttime city. I was really hoping the Car Viewer would have options like those. Ahh well. The inability to swap in cars from the garage also stinks; to take a photo of a car, I have to back out of the CV entirely and get into a car I want to shoot, then go back into the CV. Scapes allow us to hot swap in cars from our garage into the Scene directly; why can't the CV? It just feels like zero thought and consideration had been put into this feature. I don't think my expectations were too high, nor the effort to implement them too much trouble; they were all features in past GT games (you could glitch a Photo Mode camera into the car's interior in the PS3 games). It also runs like a slideshow high on drugs on a base PS5, presumably because it forces RTX on. I wonder if it's any smoother on a PS4?
The Brand Experience isn't that much better, either. At present, it consists of four brands each featuring one car that I really don't expect to be mildly popular in the playerbase. Some have speculated that the BE could be something akin to GT2's manufacturer one–make races, which I'd have been excessively happy about. I thought it might be a feature to take a car from a brand to test drive before buying, or even rent it for a few days. But all the BE ended up being is just 5 short licence tests with pittance for rewards. I know all this is free and optional stuff, but it really hurts to see all the potential (and admittedly self imposed hopes) going down the drain like that.
I'm yet to drive Sugo, but it's just one of those tracks that feel like it should've been in the series for 20 years by now. The option for wet weather is much–appreciated relief after the drought (
) of dry weather only tracks added to the game since launch!
