Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered Devs Detail Improvements to Foliage, NPC Behaviour, and More

gamingbolt.com:

WithHorizon Zero Dawn Remastered set to launch later this month, with an update on the PlayStation Blog, developer Nixxes Software has revealed new technical details on some of the way ways it has attempted to enhance and update the 2017 title.

For starters, the studio says players can expect much denser vegetation and foliage throughout the game’s world. That, of course, was a key characteristic of Horizon Zero Dawn’s map to begin with, but it seems like Nixxes Software has attempted to bring the game up to the same level of quality in this area as its 2022 sequel, Horizon Forbidden West.

“To bring the foliage in the remaster up to the same level of quality as in Horizon Forbidden West, we enhanced the shaders, textures, geometry and foliage interaction,” said senior environment artist Patrick Blankenzee. “We assessed all the foliage assets inHorizon Zero Dawn and upgraded them with all these new features. We did this for hundreds of plants, bushes, flowers and trees.

“We looked at the biomes in the original game and compared them to the concept art. We found places that we could enhance and bring closer to the original intent, with the rainforest biome being a good example of this. With powerful procedural technology, we injected new foliage and raised the quality and density to new heights. The riverbanks have also been upgraded with more biodiversity to bring them closer to the original intention as seen in the concept art.”

Environment artist Julian Hofman added, “Working with the original team over at Guerrilla, we were able to ask questions, and directly compare their latest work on Horizon Forbidden West to the work we were doing for the remaster. This gave us some very specific goals to work towards, like the fresh generation of moss that you can now see Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered.

“For me, the foliage changes make the game feel more alive and make it live up to the incredibly high standards of the Horizon games. The result is a coherent world to replay