Guerrilla Games had already done a fantastic job with its character models in Horizon Zero Dawn, but the developer is set to blow its previous work out of the water with its upcoming sequel for PS4 and PS5 consoles, Horizon Forbidden West. Community lead Bo de Vries shared a lengthy post regarding how series protagonist Aloy has evolved since the original game on the official PlayStation blog today, and it includes a few images showing off her new and improved model made possible by next-gen hardware. Aloy appears to be more life-like than ever.
From Guerrilla’s Bo de Vries:
Each generation of consoles brings extra power that lets us add even denser polygons to our character models, so we can create finer details such as peach fuzz, smooth contouring, or finer texture details and accurate materials expression, to name a few. And not only do visual aspects benefit from the new PlayStation 5 hardware — we have also increased the number of skeletal joints to bring our deformations and facial expressions to a whole new level for more credible and immersive character performance. All in all, a dream come true for both players and developers!
Guerrilla goes on to explain that the PS4 version of Horizon Forbidden West should be equally as immersive as the PS5 version despite the last-gen console’s weaker hardware.
We actually developed and tested the game simultaneously on both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, because it’s very important to us as a studio to ensure PlayStation 4 players get an equally immersive experience. With our knowledge from Horizon Zero Dawn, we knew that we still had some unexplored resources that could push the realism and quality of our character assets forward; it’s great to now be able to tap into that knowledge and experience for the sequel.
Horizon Forbidden West will be released exclusively for PS4 and PS5 consoles on February 18, 2022. The expensive Regalla Edition, which includes a large Tremortusk statue, appears to be sold out at most retailers already despite its $259.99 price tag.
Source: PlayStation