Next month, Aloy will face new threats in a danger-filled land as she embarks on a new adventure. Horizon Forbidden West’s Burning Shore expansion leverages the power of PS5 to make this journey possible. We reached out to Guerrilla to understand how, and to find out more about the enticing combat and world design details we should expect on April 19. Game Director Mathijs de Jonge offers his development insights.
PlayStation Blog: What were your first impressions when first learning about the power and capabilities of the PS5, from a developer perspective?
Mathijs de Jonge: Horizon Forbidden West is a very visual game, so the promise of more CPU power and memory meant we were going to be able to add even more quality to the image; and gameplay-wise I was most looking forward to being able to play at 60fps. This was high on my wishlist as it works so well with our combat gameplay as you’re fighting the machines.
When I first heard about the superfast SSD, it was hard to believe that it was so capable – but it seems like loading times truly are a thing of the past. This works brilliantly for a game like Horizon Forbidden West, where long loading screens can be a real immersion breaker. From a development point of view, fast loading also helped me with reviewing the game because I could jump straight into any section without having to wait.
How have you taken advantage of PS5’s power to create Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores?
One of our key priorities with Horizon games is to add a ton of detail and richness to our environments. On Horizon Forbidden West, everything we added or increased was something we’d need to have a plan around how to optimize for PS4 as well. On Burning Shores, since we can just focus on
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