New Gran Turismo 7 Update Brings Back Grand Valley, Pits You Against Superhuman AI

On Tuesday Gran Turismo 7 received an update that’s fair to call the largest in the game’s almost year-long history. Perhaps the one that fixed the multiplayer or the one that let you sell cars was more impactful for other reasons, but the the just-released 1.29 patch literally adds something for everyone.

If you grew up playing Gran Turismo, your interest has no doubt been piqued by the return and reinterpretation of Grand Valley Speedway, a franchise classic. If you’re into AI stuff and are especially good at this game, you’ll want to try your hand against Sophy — the opponent designed by Sony’s artificial-intelligence arm, in collaboration with GT dev Polyphony Digital. And if you’re a virtual-reality fan and early adopter, you’ll be pleased to experience the entirety of GT7 — split-screen multiplayer aside — in PS VR2.

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This is a big one, and that’s even before we recognize the five new cars in this update, one of which is Richie Ginther’s 1965 Honda RA272 — the first grand prix winner bearing the Japanese automaker’s badge. It’s not as much of a handful to drive as you might suspect, and it becomes a lot more fun if you ditch the stock hard-compound racing tires for less grippy rubber. There’s also the 901 Porsche Carrera RS 2.7, Citroën DS 21 Pallas and two new Vision Gran Turismo concepts from Italdesign, in on- and off-road flavors.

I wish I could comment on how the game plays in PS VR2, but alas — I don’t have Sony’s new hardware to test. It seems pretty great though, according to those who have already driven with it. What I can comment on is the experience of lapping the reimagined Grand Valley — now called Grand Valley Highway-1, for reasons that the picture up top likely makes clear — and what Sophy is like to race against.

First off, when we learned yesterday that Grand Valley was coming back not as a permanent racetrack, as we knew it best from GT1 through GT6, but as a ribbon of public asphalt along California’s central coastline, opinions were mixed. Polyphony of course updated Trial Mountain and Deep Forest in rather dramatic fashion for GT7, reprofiling certain corners and adding new sections of track entirely — but those at least remained circuits, with similar geographic features to what they had in the late ’90s. Grand Valley, by contrast, has been picked up and dropped in a completely different part of the world.

As a longtime fan myself, it wasn’t what I expected or, frankly, wanted. But I warmed up to it very quickly, once I admitted how drop-dead gorgeous the new scenery is and learned that the new Grand Valley appears to be one giant love letter to the California coast. As I’ve barely spent more than six days in California in my entire life, I did not immediately glean this from the trailer released Monday. Fortunately, photographer Eric Yui has put together a handy thread on Twitter highlighting various landmarks that have been bestowed upon Grand Valley, like the iconic Bixby Bridge, Coronado Bridge, Rain Rocks Tunnel and Ragged Point Inn.

California is a big state of course, and in real life, all of these points of interest are pretty distant from each other. In Gran Turismo, you can visit them all in a 3.17-mile lap, driving a made-up track you may have first encountered 25 years ago. That’s pretty neat.

In terms of layout this is still Grand Valley, which means it’s still a dream to drive. The Turn 5 hairpin, now at cliff’s edge, is wider in radius and more carousel-like than it used to be. The technical middle sector is deceptively tight as ever, while the last-sector chicane — typically everyone’s least favorite part of the track — has now been moved closer to the prior corner’s exit, and totally redesigned. These are all, in my opinion, welcome changes. The South Course — GT7's new name for what used to be called the East Course — is a fun blast in low-power machinery, with jagged corners and undulating tarmac that challenges you to brake in a straight line. It’s all good stuff.