Horizon: Zero Dawn is one of the mot anticipated games of this year- but I think in all the hype that it is getting, it is easy to forget just how much of a risk it must have been for Guerrilla Games. Here was a studio that had only been known to work on first person shooters before now, who were all of a sudden making an ambitious, open world action RPG?
It could have gone horribly, horribly wrong- but it doesn’t seem like it did, judging by how good Horizon is looking. Speaking to GameReactor, Guerrilla Games’ managing director Hermen Hulst discussed how the move to Horizon happened, and why it was a risky move for the studio.
‘I think there’s always been a lot of love for the Killzone series, people ask about it a lot, and they are entitled to,’ Hulst said. ‘I think what our game director refers to is that when we started generating this new IP for the studio, we set out basically what I did is, I gave a brief to the entire studio, and I said, “anyone want to pitch ideas? Come back!” And obviously, as first person shooter dev, there were a lot of FPS concepts that came out.”
“So it wasn’t immediately logical for us to pick an open world game that’s an action role playing game, the studio had no experience with that at the time- it’s been six years, we have some experience with it now, obviously. So it was a risky undertaking, compared to other concepts. But we’re very happy that we decided to do it- but at the time, you don’t know how it’s going to go, and you’re out of your comfort zone, and there’s so much to learn. It’s been an incredibly intense six years for us.’
But the hard work all appears to have paid off- Horizon: Zero Dawn looks great, and it seems as though the game will come together in the end to deliver one of the most exciting titles in Sony’s portfolio. I can’t wait to see how it all turns out.
The game will launch exclusively on the PS4 on February 28.
