Just under a month on from its surprise announcement, Polyphony Digital has announced more information on the first ever paid DLC for Gran Turismo 7: the Power Pack.
The original announcement of the Power Pack left quite a lot to the imagination, with the essential overview being that it would add 50 races against a new variant of the Gran Turismo Sophy AI, dubbed “Sophy 3.0” across a variety of categories. Endurance racing will return, as will qualifying sessions.
Quite what the categories would be, how the races would operate, what the difference between Sophy’s 3.0 and 2.1 versions was, and why there are cars modified in a manner not possible in the current game was all open to interpretation. As was the price.
We do now have answers on most of this, with today’s pre-launch announcement, so let’s delve into what you can expect from this paid add-on.
Table of Contents
- How to Access the Gran Turismo 7 Power Pack
- Gran Turismo 7 Power Pack Races
- Gran Turismo 7 Power Pack New Cars
How to Access the Gran Turismo 7 Power Pack
First things first, the Power Pack is a $29.99/€29.99/£24.99 add-on. It’s not currently available in the PlayStation Store, even in New Zealand where we sometimes see slightly earlier availability, but we’re expecting it to be added on the morning of Thursday December 4 around the same time as the Spec III update unlocks at 0800 UTC.
That’s not the only restriction though, as you’ll also need some game progress in GT7 in order to be able to access it. Handily it’s not very much progress though: you only need to complete Menu Book 9 — Championship: Tokyo Highway Parade — to make the Power Pack icon visible.
This will appear at the jetty in the lower-left of the map, where a three-mast sailing ship will appear (we’re not sure of the symbolism of this one), allowing you to access the Power Pack. You can also purchase the pack through this method, being directed to the PS Store if you haven’t already bought it.
Additionally, this one is only for the PlayStation 5 owners. The inclusion of the Sophy AI made this inevitable, although we’re wondering if the icon will still appear on the PS4 World Map just to twist the knife.
Gran Turismo 7 Power Pack Races
There’s a new UI for the Power Pack, which resembles a mixture of Gran Turismo Concept, Gran Turismo 4 Prologue, and a skills tree from any given RPG (or an F1 game). In essence there’s a web of 50 events and 37 rewards, which you unlock by completing earlier races to progress to later ones.
We can make out six distinct themed paths, most of which have some branches you can venture down. Not all of these are detailed in the announcement, and there’s a total of 13 branches, but the themes include Historic cars, GT1 racing, American Muscle, the Nurburgring, and some Tuning Battles. There’s off-road events too, as well as circuit challenges.
Each race features full, three-stage race sessions and, notably, no restarts: if everything goes sternum-skywards, you’ll need to go right back to the very beginning of that particular event.
The three sessions are Practice, Qualifying, and Race, and each is pretty self-explanatory. You’ll need to familiarize yourself with the car/track combination — and this won’t be as easy as it sounds, for reasons that will become clear in a moment — in practice, before heading out onto track with all of your AI rivals to set a qualifying time. That sets the grid for the race.
Your rivals in each race will be the GT Sophy AI, although it’s not quite clear why it’s been given the name “Sophy 3.0”. The release only states that it has “the most realistic behavior yet”.
Adding to the difficulty is that you won’t be grabbing your favorite grind car or an overpowered machine for its Performance Point (PP) bracket, rather selecting from cars specifically created for the event. These pre-tuned machines also sport unique modifications not seen elsewhere in the game.
Each of these cars will offer a different level of difficulty and come with appropriately different reward levels. Notably, as we can see from the screen below, there’s also an entry fee for the races too:
We’re still missing some details, particularly around the endurance races — and this is again stated in the plural — and how they will operate. “24-hour endurance tests”, also in the plural, are also noted, and we have questions over whether there’ll be GT5-style in-race saves or if it’ll hinge off the game suspend/resume feature of the PS5 console.
Completing the races awards stars, with a required amount of stars to unlock subsequent races and rewards on each path. There’s 37 rewards noted, but it’s pretty vague as to what these will be right now — with some exceptions — while credit rewards, feeding into your in-game wallet, are also mentioned but with no amounts revealed.
Gran Turismo 7 Power Pack New Cars
One unexpected aspect of the Power Pack is the addition of six new cars. All six are based on existing cars in the game, but sport entirely new visual updates comprising unique modifications.
In many ways, this reminds us of Gran Turismo HD and its “Tuned” cars. Each of the ten cars in that game had a tuned sibling, offering a slightly different look and different performance, which the Power Pack seems to mimic but in considerably more depth.
We’ve already seen two of the six cars on the pack’s cover, but they’ve now been officially named as the Porsche 911 Turbo Rally (930) and Volkswagen Beetle 1966 Desert Racer. Joining them is an AE86 we spotted in the menu icons, the Toyota AE86 Levin D-Tuned, and three others: Ford Mustang 2015 American Racer, Nissan Skyline GT-R GP-Tuned, and Toyota Supra GT Road Car.
These will feed into your main game garage, as far as we can tell, and we expect they’ll be treated by the Collector’s Book as valid siblings to the base cars in the same manner as the X2019 Competition/Anniversary and RX-Vision/Stealth cars.
As a quick reminder, the Power Pack is a PS5-exclusive, launching on Thursday December 4 at $29.99/€29.99/£24.99, and you’ll need to have completed Menu Book 9 to get started. Also included in the cost is a five-million credit boost for your GT7 wallet — which would cost far more in MTX payments on its own than the price for the pack.
There’s still plenty of details to discover with the Power Pack, and GTPlanet will be picking it up and powering through as soon as we can to unpick all of its secrets. If you’re going to join us, let us know in the comments thread!
See more articles on Gran Turismo 7 DLC and Gran Turismo 7 Game Update.
