Horizon Forbidden West developer almost cut flying due to PS4 support

The Horizon Forbidden West team considered cutting theft from the game, as they were unsure if the PlayStation 4 hardware could support it.

In a chat at Develop:Brighton earlier today, studio head Jan-Bart van Beek said Guerrilla faced technical challenges while developing Zero Dawn’s sequel, as it was being released across two generations. consoles.

“It was almost until the last moment that we didn’t know if we could support flight on PlayStation 4,” said the developer (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz). “We were like, ‘Do we need to cut all functionality from the game? This is going to make such a mess’.”

Cinematic trailer for Horizon Forbidden West.Watch on YouTube

Ultimately, the team managed to fly to work on both consoles, so Aloy was able to take flight on the back of a Sunwing when Forbidden West was released last year. It took time, however, with van Beek joking Guerilla “sacrificed coders to the gods” to get the job done.

Angie Smets, head of development strategy for PlayStation Studios – who previously served as Guerrilla’s studio head – went into more detail about the challenges faced while developing the cross-generation version.

“At the start of the project, it was really hard to focus on the PS5 and push the quality bar there, and in the second half, it was really hard to get the PS4 to catch up,” she shared. .

Guerilla technical director Michiel van der Leeuw added that while the team was “pushing the bar for quality” on the PS4 version of Forbidden West, they wanted the game to be “significantly better” on Sony’s new console. .

“We wanted it so that in every screenshot of Horizon you can see the difference,” explained the technical director. “So there were the clouds, the vegetation, the fabric, the skin, and we had to look at all of those elements and see what we could do because if you had a screenshot you should always be able to tell which version it’s about.”

That in itself created its own hurdle, with van der Leeuw stating that while the team was making a PS4 game that he was “super proud of”, the PS5 version was “so much better”.

This means many have decided to forgo the PS4 release and wait until they can get their hands on a PlayStation 5.

“A lot of people said, ‘Actually, I want to play it on PS5, so I’ll wait for PS5s to come out because I don’t want to miss it,'” van der Leeuw recalled.

The underwater exploration of Horizon Forbidden West was another technical challenge for Guerrilla. Eurogamer picture.

While Forbidden West was a cross-gen release, its The Burning Shores DLC was a PlayStation 5 exclusive.

Prior to the DLC’s release earlier this year, game director Mathijs de Jonge noted that anything the team “added or augmented” during Forbidden West’s development had to be “[optimised] for PS4 as well”. However, with Burning Shores being a current-gen exclusive, Guerrilla was “able to move forward” with its development, thanks to the more powerful hardware.

“The ruins of the LA cityscape and surrounding areas are very detailed and require a lot of processing power and fast streaming technology to run smoothly, especially when the player is hovering over the land and can see a lot at a glance. times,” de Jonge said. in March.

Along with the improved visuals, de Jonge also hinted at one of Burning Shores’ battles that apparently wouldn’t have been possible on the PS4. Indeed, it required “A LOT of memory and processing power” to work.

Aloy travels to Hollywood in Burning Shores.

As for the future of the series, van Beek claimed that Guerrilla “will be chasing Horizon for a long time”. This will include the next Netflix adaptationit’s new cooperation-oriented online project and one third game focused on Aloy. The studio is also said to be working on a Zero Dawn remaster.