Basically This Is How You’re Supposed to Make an RPG
Horizon: Zero Dawn lies just around the corner, with every asset showcased in recent ads and its beautiful launch trailer. It’s safe to say this is PlayStation’s baby, especially through its showcasing of 4k graphics on PS4 Pro. But you can imagine how much more this title means to Guerrilla Games. The Amsterdam-based studio is renown for its technical feats. Except, this time around, the reviews provide more than technical praise; with all the attention to world detail, it looks like Guerrilla has successfully delivered the full package in an RPG.
What makes the game stand out, according to Senior Producer Joel Eschler, is the outright avoidance of mediocrity. He stated as much in an interview with VG247:
“If we were working on something and it wasn’t working, we didn’t like it internally or it was going to be too expensive to make right or the playtests were saying that it wasn’t working, then we looked at it really hard and decided, okay, either we’re going to spend another couple of months and really try to get this up here, or we’ll just cut it. We don’t want something to be in there that’s mediocre.”
Additionally, Eschler talked about multiple teams focused on making particular aspects of the game as engaging as possible. One result of this delegation was the crafting of meaningful side-quests. Despite a clear separation of main narrative and side-quests, the team worked toward making both compelling:
“We spent a lot of time doing the world building and building up the lore, so we could have these side stories that don’t necessarily impact the big overarching narrative, but still impactful to these individuals. We wanted it to feel like a real, living world.”
Horizon: Zero Dawn is available for PlayStation 4 on February 28, and the reviews are in. If you’re interested in our own review of Horizon, you can click here. Metacritic gives the game an average score of 88. But let us know your own thoughts towards PlayStation’s next great exclusive. Simply comment down below. Happy gaming.