Gran Turismo 6 lunar rover takes drivers to the moon

Gran Turismo has always been about realism here on Earth, but now Gran Turismo 6 gives drivers a chance to venture to the moon and navigate a lunar rover.

Ozzie Mejia

December 6, 2013 3:00 PM

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The Gran Turismo series has always been about realism on the road and in the driver's seat. That's always been the case on Earth, anyway, but now the series is venturing into space for the first time. Gran Turismo 6 will allow players to navigate the treacherous zero-gravity surface of the moon, using a playable lunar rover.

"We had been working for a while on simulating the stars properly in the game, and the moon was being recreated very accurately," Polyphony president Kazunori Yamauchi told PlayStation.Blog. "We thought, 'wouldn’t it be interesting if you could drive on the surface of the moon?' So we did some research into the lunar rover and thought we should make it available in the game to drive.

It was something we knew we could do with the technology that we had. It was really born out of curiosity."

Polyphony's dedication to realism led the studio to research actual routes used by the Apollo 15 lunar rover. The moon simulation will be featured as a side track, which requires rover drivers to reach checkpoints in a certain amount of time. The new track also serves as an inspiration for new futuristic car designs from Alfa Romeo, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW, which will also be playable.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?