LEGO Horizon Adventures Won’t “Lean on” Some of Horizon Zero Dawn’s Darker Story Elements

gamingbolt.com:

LEGO Horizon Adventures is shouldering the responsibility of broadening the successful PlayStation IP’s appeal much further, and it’s attempting to do that in several ways. Part of that is, of course, the fact that it will also release for Nintendo Switch, but with its LEGO theming, it’s also clearly going for a much younger audience than the main Horizon series. But with LEGO Horizon Adventures set to retell the story of Horizon Zero Dawn, how exactly is it going to keep its contents suitable for a younger audience, especially considering how stark and apocalyptic some of the late-game narrative reveals can get?

Speaking during a recent interview with GamesIndustry, James Windeler, narrative director at Guerrilla – which is co-developing the game alongside Studio Gobo – touched on the same, revealing that LEGO Horizon Adventures is going to take a lot of creative liberties with Zero Dawn’s story. Specifically, Windeler explained that some of the original story’s darker elements are going to be either removed or de-emphasized in the upcoming LEGO game, while the general tone is, of course, also going to be much more lighthearted.

“We have tried to keep as much of the story as possible,” he said. “A lot of what happens in the world, like the destruction of the old world… that’s a pretty heavy theme for an eight-year-old. So we needed to find ways to keep that present in the story, because it is essential to Horizon. But it is also not something we leaned on. You won’t find some of those devastating reveals from the first game, like those corporate masterminds dead around the table or anything like that.

“There are moments from the first game that packs a really heavy emotional punch, that we’ve found, I think, a very good way to represent faithfully, but undercut them with comedy that keeps things light-hearted. This stuff is present, but it’s certainly not surface. This is a much simpler version, but it has a lot of echoes from the original.”

Windeler added that