F1 25 is one of the most realistic racing sims ever made, but since F1 21, the series has been much more than just a simulator. Braking Point, the F1 series’ story mode, returns for its third installation in F1 25. Much like the My Team management mode, Braking Point puts you directly into the heat of the action. Instead of managing how your organization operates, you’ll be handling the drama of being an up-and-coming F1 team.
“When we introduced the characters of Braking Point in F1 21, and then we introduced Konnersport in F1 23, it was important to us that those characters felt authentic, and it didn’t feel realistic that those characters could come in and start winning championships right from the outset,” creative director Gavin Cooper explained. “But the time that we’ve spent with these characters, the time we’ve invested in them over the last five years, has brought us to the point where we feel we can tell that story now. We can tell a story that puts them in contention for the championship, puts them against the official teams as rivals.”
Braking Point wants to ensure that newbies are encouraged to keep playing.
“We’re conscious that, for a lot of new players, Braking Point is a natural first place for them to visit,” Cooper said. “We wanted to help ease them from the end of Braking Point into the rest of the game. We have a very high completion rate for Braking Point, out of the number of people that start it, the number of people that complete it is really high.
“Players who complete Braking Point will be given a bespoke flow that allows them to take Konnersport directly from the end of the story, into the start of either of our Career modes.”
Players may even decide to go back for a second playthrough, as endings can alternate based on your chosen driver in any given event.
Experienced players will be happy to see a new fourth difficulty has been added to Braking Point to give the best drivers a bit more of a challenge. The other three difficulty levels have been rebalanced to give a broader range of players the best possible experience. Another seemingly minor adjustment that has a major impact is the use of Nvidia Audio2Face technology, which generates facial animations based on recorded audio. This means that your drivers will fully animate from a front-facing camera during Meet The Press segments. The technology also carries over into the My Team mode and the facility heads.
In something that’s quite unlike anything we’ve seen from the series before, F1 25 will cross over with an upcoming movie, simply titled “F1.” The film, starring Brad Pitt, will feature the Apex Grand Prix team, abbreviated to APXGP. At launch, F1 25 players will be able to use the Apex team in the My Team mode, or you can add them to your Driver Career mode as the 11th team on the grid. After the launch of the game (and the movie on June 25), you’ll be able to play gameplay segments based directly on key moments from the movie to unlock rewards, in addition to liveries, suits and helmets featured in the film being unlockable in-game.
In addition to the changes being made to the My Team mode and the annual enhancements, F1 25 is set to be the most fully-featured racing sim we’ve seen yet and we’ll be able to go hands-on for ourselves on May 30.
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