When it comes to Gran Turismo tracks, the lack of any of the original eight in Sport was a glaring omission, and thus it came with much rejoicing when Trial Mountain was revealed to be the first of what would be several returning tracks for GT7. But it wasn't quite the same Trial Mountain.
The shirt, as my father once called it, has been stretched out to fit two long straights on either side. Turns 4, 14 and 15 were also changed. But this isn't even the first time an OG eight track has been redesigned. Which brings me to High Speed Ring.
Yes, High Speed Ring has been changed before, starting out life as a 3.1km circuit and skipping GT3, before returning in 4 as an upsized four km circuit. The turn 2 change is likely to bump this length up a bit more, but like Trial Mountain, most of the turns are the same as they were (5/6). But then PD did something controversial with the third returning track, Deep Forest.
It's more or less the track you remember for 2 sectors. Then you're greeted by a hairpin straight out of Tilke's book of track designs, taking out the sweeper after the back straight and challenging final turn in the process. Which brings me to the meat of this thread. How much can a track be changed before it's no longer even the same track? For me, Trial Mountain and High Speed Ring are simply modernised versions of themselves, but an entire sector getting redesigned almost from scratch makes me question if we can call this Deep Forest at all.
A real life equivalent is Fuji Speedway, a track which also saw it's final sector get completely overhauled in 2005. A lot of people will argue to this day that it's not the same track anymore, and you'll find similar arguments for Hockenheim and Assen which also got 21st century redesigns. So if Deep Forest is not Deep Forest, the question then becomes, how much did we want the old Deep Forest back? Because if I was going to pick one track to have come back out of all of them, it would be Grand Valley Speedway, but that's just my opinion so I don't really know the answer to this question.
Which means I'll now hand this over to anyone reading to make their own comments on this dilemma.
The shirt, as my father once called it, has been stretched out to fit two long straights on either side. Turns 4, 14 and 15 were also changed. But this isn't even the first time an OG eight track has been redesigned. Which brings me to High Speed Ring.
Yes, High Speed Ring has been changed before, starting out life as a 3.1km circuit and skipping GT3, before returning in 4 as an upsized four km circuit. The turn 2 change is likely to bump this length up a bit more, but like Trial Mountain, most of the turns are the same as they were (5/6). But then PD did something controversial with the third returning track, Deep Forest.
It's more or less the track you remember for 2 sectors. Then you're greeted by a hairpin straight out of Tilke's book of track designs, taking out the sweeper after the back straight and challenging final turn in the process. Which brings me to the meat of this thread. How much can a track be changed before it's no longer even the same track? For me, Trial Mountain and High Speed Ring are simply modernised versions of themselves, but an entire sector getting redesigned almost from scratch makes me question if we can call this Deep Forest at all.
A real life equivalent is Fuji Speedway, a track which also saw it's final sector get completely overhauled in 2005. A lot of people will argue to this day that it's not the same track anymore, and you'll find similar arguments for Hockenheim and Assen which also got 21st century redesigns. So if Deep Forest is not Deep Forest, the question then becomes, how much did we want the old Deep Forest back? Because if I was going to pick one track to have come back out of all of them, it would be Grand Valley Speedway, but that's just my opinion so I don't really know the answer to this question.
Which means I'll now hand this over to anyone reading to make their own comments on this dilemma.
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