After what seems like an entire month of teasers, the next major GT Sport content update is almost upon us.
Polyphony Digital has put out its official update notification on the game’s website, and via in-game messages. It will make the update available following a two-hour maintenance period during the early hours of Monday, July 30:
At the following time, we will perform maintenance on the ‘Gran Turismo Sport’ servers. A new game update will also be available after the maintenance. Please note that during this time the online services, including [Sport Mode], will not be available.
[Day & Time]
30 July, 2018, 06:00 – 08:00 UTC* The above time is subject to change.
We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your understanding.
This update stands to be a rather large one by recent standards. GT Sport players have been a little spoiled for additional free content up until the end of May, but aside from bug fixes, June was a little quiet. The v1.22 update looks set to rectify that.
At present we know that the update will bring at least one new circuit. The official Gran Turismo social media accounts have been talking about this circuit for a little over three weeks, but we still don’t know the identity of the track. From the information in the teasers, it’s set in the Provence region of southern France, but no-one has yet managed to pin down a geographical match. Given Polyphony’s track record to date of alternating real and virtual circuits, it seems likely to be a new fictional location, following v1.19’s Circuit de la Sarthe.
We also know that there’s seven vehicles due. This comes by way of Kazunori Yamauchi’s traditional silhouette teaser. It appears to be a weird mix of vehicles, spreading from the Honda S660 kei car to the Le Mans-winning Mazda 787B racer.
Most notable though is the presence of Lewis Hamilton’s championship-winning Mercedes F1 car. Hamilton has a special connection with GT Sport, through his position as the game’s “Maestro”. This extends to his tips on driving the tracks in the game and now, it seems, his 2017 Mercedes-AMG F1 W08 EQ Power+.
The update will also bring an expansion of the game’s livery editor. This will now apply to your in-game avatar’s suits and helmets, granting you the ability to customize your driver as much as you do your car.
If Polyphony Digital sticks to its established patterns, we should also see changes to the single player game. This will likely include new events for the new cars and tracks, and Circuit Experience for Circuit de la Sarthe.
The timing is also interesting. This update comes just after the end of the FIA Championship‘s second season, so we may see changes to some areas of the game’s physics.
Of course, anything is possible, but we’ll have to wait until after the weekend to find out what v1.22 will bring. As always, online services including saving your game will not be available once the server maintenance starts, so be sure to make a manual save well in advance.
Featured image courtesy of JKcreativeworks.
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