Story
Horizon Forbidden West continues six months after the events of
Horizon Zero Dawn. Aloy, a machine hunter, has travelled west to investigate a mysterious and deadly blight. In these uncharted lands, she will meet strange new tribes and encounter ever more deadly machines. Together with old friends and new companions, she must brave this dangerous frontier to find the answers she needs to save life on Earth.
The World:
- "The map extends all across the western United States, there are a lot of different environment types, such as jungles, deserts and snow cover areas"
- "Specific animals live in the drier areas or the more humid areas, and specific machines like being around water, such as the Snapmaws"
- “The map is a little bit bigger, but in general, we've really looked at increasing the density, and adding more content, making sure there's a lot more to do for the player across the map, and then making that content also engaging by telling little micro-stories,” de Jonge said.
Destructibility: The part we seen in the demo a set piece, "and we have quite a few of those scattered around the game throughout the open world, in quests and certain scenarios. We also have destructibility in terms of trees and rocks, and other smaller ruins. So yes, absolutely. There's more destructibility throughout the game, but this is a really big world, so we're not going for full-scale destructibility. "
New Things in Horizon Forbidding West
Traversal
Free Climbing: The game now has free climbing, the entire world, everything is automatically annotated. That means you can climb anywhere,” he continued, noting that this will be somewhat limited inside settlements, where players also shouldn’t expect to fight, either. “There is more hand-placed, controlled exploration going on there. But outside of the settlements, in the open world, you can climb anywhere.” "So now you also don't have to go around the mountain. If there are no handholds, you can just go over it in a straight line, which is great".
"As was explained, the Focus ping is only for places where the light conditions are bad. At night for example, when you cannot see climbing points immediately, you can ping it just to see more clearly. Even without the ping though, you can always climb up places."
Pullcaster: Is a grapping hook which speeds of climbing
Shieldwing: Is a glider that Aloy can use to safely descend from great heights or surprise enemies from above
Diving Mask : Aloy can now swim under water for a long as she wants
Riding Machines
"We added new machines that you can ride in this game like the Clawstrider - you can ride that one. There might be more, but I can’t get into specifics. Unfortunately, you can’t ride the Tremortusk. The key reason for that is that quite a few years ago, we prototyped riding the bigger machines for the first game, and we noticed that if you put the gameplay camera behind that, it makes Aloy really, really small on the screen. "
Combat:
- The Weapon Wheel is expanded from 4 slots to 6
- We seen new ammo types like the adhesive grenades
- New weapon type added call the Spike Thrower, its a spear that explodes after a certain amount of time.
Weapon Techniques:
"We also have weapon techniques, which add more depth to the combat. So every weapon class in the game, like the slingshots or bows for example, they all have one or more special weapon techniques. One special weapon technique that we showed in the gameplay trailer, for example, was in the very last shot. You see Aloy get down on one knee to execute a very powerful arrow shot that takes the Tremortusk down. That was actually a weapon technique that the player acquired through the skills screen. You can cycle through these weapon techniques and switch to different ones, with more being gradually unlocked as you progress. "
Valor Surge system: "Which you'll have seen in the demo as that very cinematic pause where Aloy slams a glowing canister into her spear. This is Guerrilla dialing more into the action of action-RPG, offering up a selection of these Valor Surge moves to unlock and equip depending on how you like to wield battle. "
"By being tactical in battle – shooting plates off machines and now also off human enemies, along with using traps and other tools – you'll start earning combat XP. By building this up, you'll fill your Valor Surge bar, which when filled lets you pull off one of these cinematic, impressive moves. The one in the demo is known as the 360 Blast, but there are more to discover. "For every play style that's on the skill, there are specific Valor Surges that you can purchase with skill points. So they're really kind of designed to fit all sorts of play styles to enhance those and to reward the tactical play," adds de Jonge."
Human Combat
"We've added armor on them. You see this after Aloy has taken down one of those Raiders, and she runs towards the next one, she starts meleeing and hitting him. Several plates light up on him. And this is armor that can be knocked off, so you expose more vulnerable parts, as well, that you can then shoot at.”
Melee Combat
- One branch of the skill tree is all about melee combat, where you can acquire new melee combats moves with skill points
- One such move is the Resonance Blast, which we seen in the trailer, its a move you get by hitting the enemy multiple times and charging up the spear, these moves deal more damage. "You’ll see rings at the end of the spear light up, and when that's completely full, you can hit the enemy and reveal points of damage - that was the blue ring from the demo. You then follow that up with an arrow to do a lot of damage. This is a specific move available in the skill tree"
- "The melee weapon and the melee systems have been greatly expanded in Horizon Forbbiden West. We now have different combos that you can also acquire through the skill tree and each combo move has its own specific purposes. The one that you see in the in the demo has a multiple hit and one of the last hits does this extra damage"
Work Bench
"According to game director Mathijs de Jonge, players will have to return to settlements in order to access a work bench. From there, weapons and outfits can be upgraded from materials gathered throughout the world. De Jonge mentioned that many items will have multiple upgrade tiers, which not only increase the items stats, but can also grant new skills or damage/ammo types, in the case of weapon upgrades."
"It comes from just the desire to make the weapons more engaging, that you have a little bit more of a bond with these weapons. By investing time and resources, and by upgrading them, you get that feeling of like, you actually spent time to make this weapon better, rather than getting an upgrade from a machine and just slotting that in," explains de Jonge. "You have to fight sort of machines or get other resources throughout the world in order to upgrade. So the whole loop is more integrated, in that sense with the rest of the world."
Underwater Gameplay and Exploration
Stealth Kelp: As de Jonge referred to the underwater spots for Aloy to hide, as well as a “cat and mouse” approach to fending off enemies in the water.
"The underwater exploration is completely new to this game since in the previous game, you could only swim just below the surface. Now you can go as deep as you want. With a diving mask, you can stay underwater for as long as you like, so you don't have the pressure of an oxygen bar that keeps depleting. You can really take your time and explore these beautiful underwater locations.
"And we have, like you saw in the demo, these flooded areas because the game takes place a thousand years in the future, so the sea level has also risen significantly. A lot of the places that we have on the map are now flooded. So you have these sunken cities that you can go into. There are also...I don't want to go into too much detail on this, but there are also specific scenarios, quests and even activities where you have to go underwater to discover certain secrets or to help certain people."
"Instead of going further up by climbing, we also looked at ways to explore downwards - and that's why we looked into water exploration. We wanted to create a very beautiful world underneath the surface of the water, one that players would also want to explore, and that's why we added the diving mask and all the new swimming abilities, like the boost that you can use to go through currents. There is also a dodge mechanic that you can use to dodge away from machines. You can use smoke bombs in water to blind enemies and get away from them. There are more tools to use underwater as well, to help with traversal and getting around these dangerous enemies."
New Machines So Far
Bristlebacks
Clawstriders
Shellsnappers
Sunwings
Tremortusks
Burrower
Differences Between the PS4 and PS5 Version
"Forbidden West is going to look amazing on the PlayStation 4. We already demonstrated with Horizon Zero Dawn just how pretty our artists and engineers can make an open world on PlayStation 4. Forbidden West is going to look even more pretty on that console.
But PlayStation 5, of course, has the added processing power to go even further.
We can render things at a much higher resolution. For example, each individual strand of moss is rendered separately. It’s that level of fidelity. And at mid-range and long-range we can keep rendering at very high detail, and that’s something that’s just not possible with PlayStation 4."
We also have something we call a lighting rig. This is a setup that travels along with Aloy wherever she moves. It really lights up her entire character in a much better way than what we can normally do. With PlayStation 4, we can only have this lighting setup active in cinematics, because there’s a little bit less game running so there’s more processing power available for that. But on PlayStation 5 there is a lot more processing power.
And, of course, we have the new peripherals, like the Dual Sense and 3D Audio. These are all great additions that make the game more immersive. The weapons feel more real because of the haptic feedback and adaptive triggers, and the 3D Audio puts you more in the environment. And that’s literally the biggest ambition we always have in making games, to really immerse the player, to make them feel like they’re actually in the world so they are fully engaged.
60fps on the PS5
"For the PlayStation 5 version, we are supporting two modes. One is Performance Mode. And another is something like a Quality Mode. The Quality Mode is 4K 30 FPS, but the Performance Mode is indeed 60 FPS. So yes, we do have a 60 FPS version for the PlayStation 5."
We use ray tracing technology for a lot of things in the game. We use it for the sound engine, for the physics and for the rendering. So we use a variety of technical setups, in terms of ray tracing. I'm not a tech engineer, so I can't explain it in much more detail than this. But yes, we are utilizing it.
About Flying Machines
We are aware that this feature is very, very high on the wishlists of many gamers, but I cannot confirm or deny anything about this. I can only talk about what's in the actual gameplay demo that we showed.
