How Guerrilla created Vegas in Horizon Forbidden West

blog.playstation.com:

Horizon Forbidden West sees Aloy traverse dangerous and harsh environments in search of Gaia’s sub-functions, with hopes of restoring the planet’s terraforming system, rebalancing the biosphere and saving life on Earth. Though our story is set 1,000 years into the future, players will uncover and recognize many iconic locations from our real world today.

DISCLAIMER: Please note that this behind-the-scenes feature contains major spoilers for the storyline and many gameplay elements of Horizon Forbidden West. To get the most out of this in-depth article, we would strongly recommend completing the quest The Sea of Sands prior to reading.

During the quest The Sea of Sands, Aloy ventures into the arid Stillsands Desert in her search for Poseidon, one of Gaia’s sub-functions. At first, the desert appears desolate, however, hidden under the sands are the flooded ruins known as Dunehollow, formerly Las Vegas.

It is up to Aloy to piece together data fragments left behind a millennium earlier by a businessman called Stanley Chen and reactivate the city’s long-forgotten water systems in order to gain access to Poseidon.

Guerrilla Quest Designer Samantha Schoonen led the development of this quest, The Sea of Sands, from start to finish. To bring this vision to life, she did a lot of research on Vegas’ iconic Strip. 

“We looked into casinos and ideated on crazy ideas for far-future Vegas buildings,” says Schoonen. “I drew a lot of inspiration from our concept art as well, and we thought of things like a broken-down roller coaster area, remnants of a pirate ship, and a rooftop swimming pool – we worked a lot with our art departments to figure out what would work, though of course not everything made it into the final game.”

Designing