Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition arrives Oct 6 on PS5 — bringing the characters to life
The world of Horizon Forbidden West brims with life across its spectacular landscapes, fierce roaming machines, and thriving cultures that populate a renewed land once ravaged by the biomass-consuming machines of the Faro Plague.
And though the wilds are breathtaking, and the machines are massive, Horizon’s third essential element is its authentic tribal inhabitants. On her mission, Aloy meets a varied and colorful array of compelling characters, each with their own hopes, journeys, and motivations.
Weaving real personalities and genuine humanity into these characters was a feat accomplished together by many teams at Guerrilla. This PlayStation Blog explores those processes, from the narrative foundations of character development to capturing the perfect performance and ultimately implementing them through cinematics and conversation design.
Each stage is crucial to ensure the characters of Horizon are as realistic and full of depth as the world around them.
Spoiler Alert: Please note this article may contain some spoilers for Horizon Forbidden West, Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores, and their storylines.
When players meet a character in Forbidden West, their place in the world of Horizon is entrenched and clear: we quickly understand their personality, desires, and fears. We may learn they hold certain beliefs due to their upbringing, why they may be rebelling against the status quo, and ultimately, we see how their task crosses over with Aloy’s.
For the narrative team, each character starts with a fundamental question: what does this person want?
“We always start with conflict,” says Annie Kitain, lead writer. “Once we have a pretty good idea about this, we are able to figure out the rest of their character
Read more on blog.playstation.com
