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'Canada is really, really cold 1,000 years from now,' says Horizon Forbidden West's narrative director

Post Arcade chats with Guerrilla Games' Mathijs de Jonge and Benjamin McCaw about the highly anticipated sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn

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The PlayStation 5 isn’t exactly in need of a so-called “system-selling” game. Sony sold nearly 8 million of its sleek white consoles in the first five months it was on the market, and it’s still nearly impossible to find one on store shelves. But those who have managed to nab a PS5 are still awaiting its first must-have blockbuster exclusive. Right now, all signs are pointing to Horizon Forbidden West as the game that will take this honour.

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Guerrilla Games’ sequel to its smash hit Horizon Zero Dawn, an original action role-playing game that launched in 2017 to rave reviews and player adoration, has been generating attention for months with tantalizing trailers and demos showing an expansive new world, stunning action, and glimpses into the game’s provocative story set in the 31st century. It looks to build upon the travails of Aloy, a powerful warrior who in the first game saved the tribal remnants of humanity from a seemingly unstoppable machine threat.

As Forbidden West‘s expected fall launch draws near, Post Arcade had a chance to chat with Guerrilla’s Mathijs de Jonge and Benjamin McCaw, both of whom are reprising their roles from the first as game director and narrative director, respectively. During our quick but informative video call the pair talked about the cultural legacy of the original game, how the sequel has evolved its combat mechanics, and — revealed for the first time here — what Canada might look like in Horizon’s far off, dystopian future.

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POST ARCADE: When you were working on Horizon, did your team have an idea of where a sequel might go if it ended up becoming a series?

BENJAMIN MCCAW: Absolutely. As we developed the story for Horizon Zero Dawn we were already thinking in terms of a sequel and what it would contain. There are even little hints of that in the game itself. Just as an example, there are data points in Zero Dawn that include a little bit of information about the Forbidden West. So, yes, we definitely want to make sure moving from Zero Dawn to Forbidden West that it doesn’t feel like something we just threw together at a later point. Production on the sequel began right after completion of The Frozen Wilds (Zero Dawn‘s post-launch DLC). But, like I said, there was some ideation before that.

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PA: The original game did a fantastic job of gradually unraveling a mystery that gave us answers not just about who Aloy was, but the history of the world. With these major parts of the story now revealed, how do you go about providing players with similarly satisfying twists? Do you try to go even bigger and more shocking, or do you forge a different path?

BM: I think a little bit of both. The thing that I think works really well in Zero Dawn is that Aloy has a highly personal story that is wrapped up in the world mystery. And I think that’s something we’re definitely trying to continue as she ventures into the frontier of the Forbidden West. But there’s no intention to go bigger or more shocking. That not really the point. The point is to maintain the mystery, to enjoy the process and feel emotionally connected to Aloy unraveling those mysteries.

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PA:Horizon Zero Dawn‘s sophisticated combat, clever artificial intelligence, and focus on providing players with a range of tactical options was a primary part of its appeal for many players. How have you changed these mechanics for the sequel?

MATHIJS DE JONGE: Player choice has always been very high on the list in terms of designing the combat systems and defining which playstyles we wanted to support. We have the weapon wheel so you can quickly bring up and switch weapons on the fly. There’s also the agility of the character, which plays a big role in how we set everything up.

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We’re making an action RPG, so we want to explore both sides of that coin. There are more action-like moves, but there’s also more depth leaning towards the RPG side of things. There’s a wider variety of weapons, which can all be upgraded over multiple steps by acquiring resources from nature or from machines. It makes you bond a bit more with the weapons, but it also levels them up and unlocks new abilities.

We didn’t build any new limitations, we just added more options.

PA: How did you approach world design for the sequel?

MDJ: With the first game what we wanted to have was a really beautiful world that you want to explore, where you see landmarks in the distance that you would want to travel to and explore. And I think in Forbidden West we really tried to give the player more freedom in how they want to explore.

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There’s less frustration in how you can climb with our new, completely freeform climbing system. You can climb anywhere on rocks or mountains. To speed up traversal and make it more enjoyable we added grappling so you can move very quickly. And we have the chute wing, which allows you to glide down from any elevated position. It’s makes traversal more enjoyable.

And you can use these things in combat, as well. You can quickly glide towards enemies that are not expecting you, or grapple out of difficult situations. And we added a diving mask so you can go underwater as long as you’d like to freely explore these beautiful underwater scenes.

PA: I suspect you’ve worked out, or at least discussed, what’s going on in various places in Horizon’s world. Could you provide some clues as to what Canada might look like in the 31st century?

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BM: I have actually given this some thought. Where are you based?

PA: I’m in a town just outside of Toronto.

BM: Okay, so think about what we showed in The Frozen Wilds. One can imagine that going any further north will be very, very cold. But, on the other hand, if you think about what we showed in our recent Forbidden Westdemo, there’s some pretty unusual weather conditions going on in the world. So, what I’m saying is, Canada is really, really cold in 1,000 years, but Toronto has a balmy quality. Maybe a little too balmy.

PA: Good to know! What has Sony’s new hardware allowed you to do in terms of player immersion, both visually and in terms of how we interface with the game?

MDJ: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.

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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.

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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.

And the PlayStation 5’s solid state drive is, of course, also incredibly fast. In Forbidden West, fast travel is really fast. It loads in seconds instead of waiting for a couple of minutes. It’s really a game changer in that sense.

PA: Aloy is clearly one of gaming’s new iconic characters. She seems to resonate with a huge swath of players, from crusty old guys like me to my teen daughter, who wants to cosplay as her. Did you have any specific ambitions for her beyond her role as a protagonist? Was she meant to convey a message?

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BM: You know, when I think of Aloy I think of a person, not a message. She’s strong, she’s independent, she’s clever, she’s compassionate. And I think the idea of her transformation really resonates with people. She starts off as a motherless outcast, then transforms into a renowned machine hunter, then to almost a kind of saviour for some of the tribes in the world.

We really wanted to try to continue these qualities as she moves into the mysterious frontier of the Forbidden West. But I think we also wanted to imagine, as we develop the game, how she would evolve. And I think people are going to be really, really excited about that when they play the game.

PA: Since the release of the original, I can’t help but detect the potential influence it has had on other sci-fi stories — and not just games. When I was watching Netflix’s I Am Mother, for example, I thought: Wow, they basically just played Horizon and decided to make a movie about it. Even HBO’s Raised by Wolves has many of the same themes. Do you feel as though Horizon has had an impact on the creative community?

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BM: So, I don’t have a lot of insight into how Hollywood works. I will say that at one point in the aftermath of the release of Zero Dawn we ran into the Duffer brothers, who created Stranger Things, and they confessed to being big Horizon fans and that was like one of the greatest things ever. So if you start to see mechanical dinosaurs show up in Stranger Things, you know that there was an influence.

But I do see influence within the realm of games, and I’ll give you two examples. It does seem like since Zero Dawn and Aloy entered the public consciousness that there has been a transition to more female protagonists in video games, which I think is great. I’m not saying Horizon is solely responsible for that in any way, I’m just saying that it’s been a hugely encouraging trend.

And then the other thing that I think I do see more of — and I attribute this to our art team and the work that they did — is that there’s more emphasis on nature and beautiful environments, like we’ve sort of all graduated from this idea that the video game has to be a sort of grim battlefield and we’ve kind of gone into this wonderful imagination of what fantastical worlds can look like. Clearly Horizon is not solely responsible for that, but I think it has played a part.

The preceding interview was edited for length and clarity.

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