Codemasters and EA have shown the first official gameplay of F1 2021, with many content creators getting their hands on the game. Here is a round up of some of the best gameplay so far.
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Codemasters have now officially showcased F1 2021 gameplay via their Racing Ahead and EA Game Changers program. These programs allow content creators who are part of the EA Game Changers program access to early builds of games. In this case F1 2021.
So there are a number of content creators and EA Game Changers who have uploaded official F1 2021 early access gameplay. This includes creators such as AR12Gaming and Aarava. Even news outlets such as The Race have had access to the game and have released their own footage.
Below is a showcase of some of these F1 2021 gameplay clips, along with some information about confirmed new features that are in F1 2021.
The first clips we’ll highlight are those from Formula 1 news outlet The Race.
In this gameplay video, The Race editor Nathan Quinn runs through a lot of the new features that have been confirmed in F1 2021, whilst showing a good amount of real F1 2021 gameplay.
One of the more surprising, yet welcome additions to F1 2021 comes in the form of more customisation across the whole game. If you jump in to F1 2021’s settings screen, you can now adjust a lot more settings.
In game modes such as My Team and Career Mode, you can turn on or off elements such as team management and press interviews. And you can also adjust how fast your driver earns certain currencies, be it money, acclaim or resource points.
Outside of these game modes, there are more options for car damage, you can change how accurate the weather forecast system is, and there are new options such as making every car in a race a ghost to remove collisions completely. You can even adjust how likely a safety car or VSC is to deploy during an incident.
Codemasters have added a lot of new settings which help you as a player really define how you play the game.
Jumping back in to the My Team mode, there are more new options, such as a news stories tab, development boosts, and new quick practice options.
The development boosts act as discounts to car upgrades which can be earned via completing additional objectives in weekend sessions.
And the quick practice mode does away with having to manually participate in practice sessions. Instead you allocate practice programs based on time, with each one having a different success rate. In essence it’s a way to fast track through some of the practice sessions to increase your time spent battling with other cars.
The car upgrade menus have been overhauled in the My Team game mode, and there is a brand new driver rating stat, focus. Focus has been said to adjust your team mates motivation, and can increase or decrease dynamically based on their results.
This means that if your driver has a bad race, it can signal the beginning of a slump while their focus is low. Or it could signal a fantastic winning streak.
Through these new gameplay videos, we’ve also learned a lot about the new game modes that are going to be in F1 2021.
We’ve learnt that the Braking Point game mode is a complete stand alone, fully voiced and acted story mode. It will take place across multiple seasons of Formula 2 and Formula 1, and will feature a linear story arc.
Overall the Braking Point story mode will take you around 5-7 hours to complete. Unfortunately you wont be able to transfer your driver from Braking Point into any other game modes, so you wont be able to continue your progression after the story mode wraps up.
Above is gameplay from Aarava, where he runs us through new additions, gameplay tweaks and his first thoughts on F1 2021.
We learnt a little more about the Real Season Start, which is a game mode which lets you jump right in to the action from the current real world race.
Upon launch, the Austrian Grand Prix will have just happened, meaning the earliest you can jump in is directly after Austria. You will be able to take control of any driver on the grid, and you will inherit their points and your chosen team’s points in the championship.
From there, you can race out the remaining races, whilst trying to maximise your drivers position. You could for example take control of a driver at the rear of the grid and try to win their first points of the season. Or you could take control or Max Verstappen or Lewis Hamilton to duel for the Drivers Championship.
Essentially, Real Season Start is like a single championship mode, which lets you start at the same race that the real world Formula 1 circus is at.
F1 2021 features an improved damage model, which allows for more areas of your car to become damaged during a race.
The additional spots include side boards, barge boards, side pods, rear diffuser and rear wing. All of these areas can be damaged making racing wheel to wheel even more perilous.
The footage above is of AR12Gaming racing in F1 2021. He explains some of the new features and game modes in detail.
If you do damage any of these spots during a race, they will hamper your car’s speed in a straight line and potentially hurt its performance around corners. And just like in real life, these areas aren’t repairable during a race. You can’t simply pit, and replace your car’s rear diffuser.
The Best F1 24 Racing WheelsSo if you damage these areas, you will be carrying them for the entire race. If this isn’t for you, you can turn down or disable the damage entirely. And, as mentioned above, you can even make every car a ghost so there will be no collisions.
As well as the focus on an improved damage model, Codemasters have leant even further in to the simulation aspect by reworking the tyre model.
The new and improved tyre model simulates tyre wear and heat much more effectively, making the cars in F1 2021 a little trickier to drive in some scenarios. In F1 2021, you will have to take even more care than ever before to ensure your tyres are in their working window.
Codemasters have confirmed the use of ray tracing in F1 2021. This is in effect throughout the menus where you can view the cars and drivers in extraordinary detail. It’s also in play through the race replays, where raytracing will add to the realism in this year’s titles.
F1 2021 is a transition year in terms of moving from the old generation of consoles such as the PlayStation 4, and into the next gen consoles such as the PS5 and Xbox Series X.
The game will utilise some of the extra power these consoles produce in certain areas of the game. Next gen gamers will notice the added ray tracing mentioned above, as well as quicker loading times throughout F1 2021.
There’s also a new setting which allows players to switch between a graphics mode and performance mode. Graphics mode will improve graphical fidelity while performance mode focusing on higher FPS, giving a smoother experience.
Below are a selection of official screenshots of F1 2021, released by Codemasters. These show some of the new cars including the new Aston Martin. F1 2021 comes out in July which is only a month away now, so keep your eyes peeled for more gameplay footage to be released soon.
Rich is the co-founder, and one of the main F1 setup creators and content writers for SimRacingSetups. With over a decade of experience as a graphic designer, marketing director, competitive sim racer and avid motorsport fan, Rich founded SimRacingSetup.com to share his passion and knowledge of sim racing and Formula 1 with other sim racers.
View all articles written by Rich
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