Thanks to the recently released Forza Horizon 3, a gamer has managed to get in one last game with an old friend who had, sadly, passed away.
Spartansnverdie posted on Reddit that he stumbled across the drivatar of his late friend, who passed away in 2015, leading to an understandably ‘surreal’ and ‘bittersweet’ reunion of sorts.
He wrote:
So I am just cruising the Coast when I see a XBL name i haven’t seen in a while. It was my buddy Drew. Sadly Drew passed away about a year ago. He was only 19 years old. Anyways i see his driveatar, I Immediately pull up behind him and challenge him to a race. It was pretty surreal it was like i was playing with him again on xbox. It was bittersweet, but just another reason to love this game. Thank you for bringing me that moment with him.
Drivatar was a feature first introduced in Forza Motorsport 5, way back in 2013. Similar to ghost data in any racing videogame, these AI based ghosts mimic racing style and history when the player is not online.
If this story sounds familiar to any of you, you might well recall that a few months back, a great short film was put together based on an anonymous YouTube comment in which a guy described being able to race his late father again thanks to ghost data.
You can check out said short film – called simply ‘Player Two’ just below.
There are obvious similarities between this and Spartansnverdie’s tale – but it’s just the kind of truly bizarre and wonderful thing that can happen, thanks to ghost data.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.