Guerrilla Games and the road to Horizon: Forbidden West

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Horizon: Zero Dawn was a dramatic shift for Guerrilla Games. The studio known for the Killzone series dropped its linear levels, guns and space Nazis for a sprawling open world, more primitive weapons, and robot dinosaurs.

At Develop:Brighton this morning, three members of the studio's leadership reflected on this journey to mark the studio's 20th anniversary, sharing the motivations that led them to create PlayStation's blockbuster series.

"Killzone was our first IP, testing all our ideas, seeing how things worked. There were some great ideas in there, but also some that never really worked," said studio director and art director Jan-Bart van Beek. "We had this idea that was based upon franchises like Aliens, where it's all about the bad guys and what we found out was that people still really need a hero to clamp onto and identify with. So when you're making a whole IP about the baddies, it's hard to do good storytelling. That was something we definitely took on board."

"We'd been making ruins for a little bit too long, and the studio got really excited about making nature"

Van Beek added that Aloy was an "intrinsic part" of the pitch, and the team reminisced about first seeing fans cosplaying as the Horizon hero, finding tattoos of her, and even learning that babies have been named after the character.

Looking back, he also suggested Killzone was "maybe a little too Euro-centric," suggesting there were elements that may not have resonated with American audiences.

"Idiosynchronacies that meant it never really gelled with them, so when we were making Horizon we were looking at a much broader audience, and telling a bigger story that's