On the occasion of the release of Horizon Forbidden West, we had the chance to ask Mathijs de Jonge, Game Director, questions regarding the Guerrilla Games license.
Geeko – What motivated you to launch the development of a sequel to the first Horizon?
Mathijs de Jonge – A lot of ideas for Horizon Forbidden West came up during the development of Horizon Zero Dawn, and we had already thought regarding some stories we wanted to tell if we were lucky enough to be able to do a sequel. We are continually touched by feedback on the world of Horizon, and players have become so invested in Aloy’s story in Horizon Zero Dawn that it has allowed us to continue her journey through the Forbidden West.
Did player feedback on Horizon Zero Dawn have a significant impact on your decisions on Forbidden West?
We are always listening to our community and have taken many comments regarding Horizon Zero Dawn into account. We also had our own list of features we wanted to improve. It was also important that we build on all the things that worked well in the first game, and our goal was not just to add more content, but to focus on the quality of the player experience.
We know that Horizon Forbidden West takes place in the American West, what motivated this choice?
Visiting famous places a thousand years in the future is part of Horizon’s DNA, helping to enrich exploration and discovery. In Horizon Zero Dawn, we took players on a journey through many iconic locations like Monument Valley and Yellowstone. For Horizon Forbidden West, we wanted to offer interesting new areas to explore, so we chose to go west into Utah and continue up the Pacific Coast to San Francisco. This part of the United States has great diversity in its environments, as well as some of the most iconic places in the world.
Aloy’s new abilities in Horizon Forbidden West seem to give us a lot of freedom, how has the level design been adapted to exploit this aspect?
We wanted players to be able to explore and traverse rich and diverse environments, and Horizon Forbidden West has some cool new additions and improvements that allow Aloy to perform different actions. Much of the open landscape is freely explorable in a fluid fashion thanks to these new mechanics. From swimming the depths of a river with the scuba mask, to using the grappling hook to safely escape from a herd of machines, to climbing a cliff to the top and then rolling out from the glider to gently drop into the next area, all these elements give a great sense of rhythm to the exploration of the game.
Are the new features of the Playstation 5 featured in Horizon Forbidden West?
From the ground up, we’ve developed Horizon Forbidden West to shine on both console generations, and the game will look great on the PS4. On PS5, the game looks even better, with more detail both near and far. Features like the adaptive triggers really convey a unique feel and personality to each of Aloy’s weapons, especially in combination with the haptic feedback, while the 3D audio further enhances that feeling of immersion.
We know that Horizon Forbidden West will push the formula installed with the first game even further, what was the most complicated task to achieve for the development of this sequel?
Developing a sequel is daunting, because you have to meet player expectations. By the end of Horizon Zero Dawn’s development, we had a much better handle on the scope, size, pacing, variety, and quality of the project than when we started. We took what we learned in the development of Horizon Forbidden West, building on everything that had worked so well.
Were there things you wanted to get into the game but mightn’t?
This is always the case during the development process, we experimented and dropped some ideas for various reasons, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The game has a lot of new features, and we reached a point where we had to stop adding more to allow us to tweak the really important features.
Thanks once more for taking the time to answer our questions. Do you have a last word to say to your fans?
We can’t wait for you to experience what we’ve worked hard on and travel the Forbidden West on your own.
