Guerrilla Says Video Games Offer A Ton of Possibilities
Earlier this month Horizon: Zero Dawn’s DLC, Frozen Wilds, launched and much like the full game, this expansion has been met with praise. Now, in a recent interview with GamesIndustry Guerrilla Games explains how they built the masterpiece that is Horizon: Zero Dawn.
Jan-Bart van Beek, the Art and Animation Director at Guerrilla and the mind behind Horizon: Zero Dawn, discussed that video games offer an avenue unlike movies. They offer limitless possibilities, large imaginative worlds and creativity in abundance. This creativity is something the team at Guerrilla let shine through with their highly acclaimed title. This is what van Beek had to say about their creative process, not only with HZD, but in general, “We wanted something that had a sense of relevance, that people could understand, but at the same time is unfamiliar and fresh. You could do it in a comic book, but video games are the medium that really allows you to do these really crazy things. It used to be ’80s and ’90s Saturday morning cartoons, with their crazy exurberant worlds, but we can still do them in games. That’s what we find exciting about games, that there’s still this levity to it, where you can go crazy and come up with combinations that people don’t necessarily expect. Gamers are generally more open to accepting new ideas, so it’s an ideal market.”
Van Beek also talked about the difficulties of bringing an idea that was not only completely different from anything on the market, but also different than what they were used to with their previous games like Killzone. For them, Horizon: Zero Dawn was something that stood out from Killzone, and something that was not only more colorful, but also inviting. He said they really wanted to make the game unique, with its own identity, yet also familiar enough that people will like it. “It’s really important to focus yourself on creating that visual identity. Something that you’re confident that if you put it in front of someone, they would recognise it as the product you’re designing. It can’t borrow too much from other things, it can’t even be inspired by other things, it has to be its own thing. That’s hard, it requires a lot of work, and it often requires you to go back to the drawing board and reimagine it all over again.”
It will be interesting to see where Guerrilla takes Horizon: Zero Dawn in the future, and hopefully that future holds a sequel. Would you like to see Horizon 2? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below and keep it locked for updates!