Horizon Forbidden West Devs Were Forced to Delay Launch to February 2022
Horizon Forbidden West has been officially delayed to February 18, 2022. The sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn was initially slated to launch towards the end of 2021, but it looks like the pandemic got the best of the devs, and the team behind the game simply had a hard time accessing motion-capture equipment and actors for the installment.
“We are not going to risk the quality,” said PlayStation Studios Head Hermen Hulst. “We want to ship extremely high quality games—finished games—and we had to do that obviously without pushing our teams to the breaking point.”
Horizon Forbidden West is one of the “two very big, very narrative-driven games in development” that the devs have been working on—the next God of War title is reportedly the other one. Although Hulst did say that Horizon Forbidden West is “on track to release this holiday season,” he did confirm that it was “frankly affected by access to performance capture and talent.” Game Director Mathijs de Jonge also made a short appearance via a pre-recorded presentation and did appease fans at Gamescom 2021 saying that the game’s development process is going smoothly.
Horizon Forbidden West may have passed a significant development milestone when its devs debuted its gameplay footage earlier this year, but it would seem that reality has forced the team working on the game to reschedule things.
“Horizon Forbidden West is coming to PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 on 18 February 2022!” wrote Guerrilla Games. “Pre-orders will begin next week on 2 September. Are you ready to continue Aloy’s journey?”
The good news that comes with this bad news is that players who have not been able to snag a PS5 just yet—because of the ongoing silicon shortage—will still be able to play Horizon Forbidden West when it launches next year on their PS4.