F1 23’s Braking Point 2 feels like a promising blend of Netflix and Football Manager
After a one-year sabbatical, Braking Point 2 is ready to get us back into the racing suit of Formula 1’s rising star, Aiden Jackson.
The story mode makes its return in F1 23 as one of the big new features along with the F1 World hub, new tracks in Qatar and Las Vegas, red flags, the 35% setting for race duration, and more that we discussed in our hands-on preview last week.
Braking Point 2 starts with a recap of the story so far. It comes with both old familiar faces (Akkermann, now turned mentor for Jackson) and never-before-seen characters such as the good-hearted team principal of Konnersport Racing Team.
Devon Butler quickly emerges again as our main antagonist. Once again, Butler has as much depth as a Saturday morning cartoon villain.
This time his childish anger is at least packaged with a promising plotline involving his father, who also happens to be the team's main sponsor - not far removed from some real-world Formula 1 scenarios.
Codemasters / EA
F1 23 further sinks its teeth into Drive to Survive-like storytelling, following in Grid Legends' footsteps. The narrative blends CGI cutscenes, phone calls and executives' interviews from the backstage, replicating Netflix's successful documentary format.
While playing, you can clearly see the managerial side of things gets more space this year. As a team principal, you have to make decisions, and often clean up Butler's messes. These choices have consequences, and can impact team morale - how much these choices affect the story remains to be seen, however.
Braking Point 2 directly mirrors what happened throughout the 2022 Formula 1 season, like Vettel announcing his retirement in Hungary, and more.
It also looks at the history of the sport, citing a few cases where billionaires had their children racing for the teams they were funding, or focusing on litigious teammates (Senna-Prost, or even Rosberg-Hamilton).
Our demo gave us access to the first three chapters of Braking Point 2, set in the 2022 Formula 1 season. As part of that, we played the Miami, Montreal and Hungary circuits, with two of them not included in our original hands-on preview. Normally you'd want to race in shiny new cars, but we'll admit that seeing Ricciardo and Vettel on the track again warmed our hearts.
Codemasters / EA
You have three difficulty settings, but the hardest mode was the standout.
As with the original Braking Point, you're tasked with achieving a mandatory goal, and a bonus goal. Your bonus goal might be getting in the top ten, and that could assign you extra performance points for your car.
Reputation points are also awarded not only based on your final position, but also if you follow a "racing etiquette" - a good reason for not crashing against the wall at every turn like poor Stroll in Monaco.
You can get these kinds of bonuses even during interviews, with the "right" answers clearly highlighted so you don’t miss them. Again, we'll have to play the full story to see if these points have a real impact on the rest of the game.
With F1 23's release date now just a couple of weeks away, though, Braking Point 2 clearly looms as one of the most interesting modes in this year's iteration.
