Celebrating the first anniversary of the release of Horizon Forbidden West‘s Burning Shores DLC, developer Guerrilla Games has released a new trailer that talks about how the game’s epic Horus fight was designed. the video features senior art director Misja Baas and principal game designer Arne Oehme, as well as other parts of the game’s development team, talking about the Horus fight. check out the video below.
The studio seemed to be aware of ambitious the prospect of designing a fight around Horus might be right from the outset. Oehme talks about how the fight acted as a great climax because it was supposed to be the end of the Forbidden West storyline. The fight also acts as a finale in a gameplay sense, since it tests several of Aloy’s abilities.
“We had to complete the story arc of Horizon Forbidden West, as it was the final quest of the expansion and as such, we had to deliver a level that was worthy of being its grand finale,” said Oehme.
“As we are fighting a machine that was responsible for the destruction of civilization, it felt like it shouldn’t be easy to take down with just your bow and arrows. We wanted to challenge all of Aloy’s abilities in this conclusive fight: her ability to sneak in unseen and stay hidden, her agility and ability to climb and swim, and also to collaborate with her friends.”
Baas talks about making the fight look as epic as it feels. He also talks about the sense of scale of the fight, and how it was important to let players see Horus from a distance as well as up-close.
“In order to create structure in the fight and to give it good pacing and rhythm, we tried to separate the player and the Horus throughout the encounter,” said Baas.
“If we were only going to fight the Horus up close, it felt like we were ‘clipping its toenails’ so to speak. You would constantly be really close and you wouldn’t see a lot of it and we wanted to make sure that players get a chance to see the machine and observe its abilities. We also wanted players to witness its ability to move around and notice the destruction it causes to the landscape in its path. It was really important to us to give the Horus this moment of presentation to give players a demonstration of its power.”
Check out the full video, which also features technical designer Marcin Matuszczyk and senior creature animator David Vince talking about all of the challenges involved in designing the fight, from gameplay to animation, below.
Horizon Forbidden West: Complete Edition was released on PC earlier this year. For more details, check out our review.