“What if they make something exuberantly beautiful?” van Beek mentioned, summarizing a recurring message of these critiques. “That inspired the studio to stretch our creative muscle, to extend our thinking in new ways again.”
In 2010, van Beek started creating an idea for a good looking however recovering post-apocalyptic Earth, through which the ferocity of nature was made manifest in the kind of massive robotic beasts, hunted by a scarlet-haired girl. That concept was thrown right into a studio-wide pitch course of for Guerrilla’s subsequent recreation — lastly, a break from the Killzone series. This pitch course of included recreation ideas in all kinds of genres, together with linear journey video games, puzzle video games and even a soccer recreation.
Guerrilla Games Director Mathijs de Jonge mentioned the studio started to unite round van Beek’s concept. But confidence in the idea was shaken a bit when “Enslaved: Odyssey to the West” launched in October 2010. That title, by British developer Ninja Theory, featured an identical aesthetic and world idea, and additionally starred a redheaded, feminine protagonist.
“That’s our whole list of ingredients,” van Beek mentioned. “If they were going to hit it out of the ballpark, we shouldn’t follow them and maybe we should start looking at something else.”
The studio went again to a different pitch course of, just for Hermen Hulst, the studio’s co-founder and now head of PlayStation Studios, to recommend they return to the Horizon idea. They discovered that the complete studio had quite a bit of affection for Aloy, the scarlet-haired hunter, and her journey. Moreover, Guerrilla workers believed they may construct a improbable open-world recreation — the sort of expertise they’d be excited to play.
“There was quite a big draw toward Horizon because of all the challenges that it brought,” de Jonge mentioned. “Let’s do an action role-playing game! We love to play those kind of games.”
Settling on van Beek’s idea meant staffing up with a story director, programmers and different expertise expert in the open-world and motion role-playing genres. Released in 2017, “Horizon Zero Dawn” turned the studio’s first try at a recreation telling a story over a big map, the place there was an opportunity gamers may miss substantial elements of the world — or, even worse, get bored throughout exploration.
“One of the initial things we discovered was pacing,” de Jonge mentioned. “By building prototypes, we discovered we wanted something to happen every 50 meters or every 100 meters or so. … We designed ‘Horizon [Zero Dawn]’ on paper basically with that pacing in mind, and it’s something we are still using today.”
The recreation was at all times envisioned to happen in a wild, overgrown and lush American panorama, despite the fact that the workforce briefly mentioned staying in Europe or the Netherlands. North America’s geographic range and iconic places (similar to San Francisco and different cities in the 2022 sequel, “Horizon Forbidden West”) make for easy-to-recognize landmarks in gameplay, in addition to a compelling stage for a science-fiction future the place humanity lacks any information of human achievement from most of their historical past.
Aloy was additionally at all times meant to be a girl. Like with the series’s themes of restorative magnificence, centering femininity in its heroism was a component of the studio recoiling from the loud masculinity of the Killzone video games, de Jonge mentioned.
“One thing we were also a little bit frustrated during the Killzone days was on our box cover, we had the enemy. We had the Helghast,” de Jonge mentioned, referring to the iconic, red-eyed Nazi-like troopers of Killzone. “We didn’t have a hero character. So this was a counter reaction. Let’s do a female protagonist, and put her on the box cover.”
The putting purple hair, too, was deliberate from the starting, mentioned van Beek; it was meant to catch the eye, like the hair of a Disney princess. While numerous completely different ideas of Aloy have been focus examined, the scarlet design at all times gained out.
“We had all sorts of Aloys there … we already knew which one we gravitated toward, and that was the same one as the focus tests,” de Jonge mentioned.
But whereas the Horizon story encompasses a numerous solid with many alternative ethnicities represented, Aloy as a personality does evoke the narrative trope of the “white savior,” through which a white character rescues non-White individuals from their misfortunes. The franchise’s costume design and aesthetic is impressed by Native American imagery and the picture of the basic American frontiersman; van Beek described Aloy’s story as “sort of like a Western story, with a girl riding on horseback traveling over the Great Plains.”
The first recreation’s script generated controversy by utilizing sure phrases to explain warriors that was seen as insensitive to Native Americans. The recreation’s narrative director, John Gonzales, mentioned the studio didn’t imply to offend, and that the artwork was impressed by cultures from throughout the world. Sure sufficient, distinguished characters like Aloy’s pal Erend appear impressed by the Vikings.
Because the burden of saving humanity’s probability for a future lies on Aloy, it was vital to the workforce that she and the characters round her appeared plausible and relatable, reacting how precise individuals may once they uncover San Francisco as historical ruins of their ancestors, whom gamers can think about as our close to future selves, destroyed by their very own expertise. Aloy and humanity’s relationship with their previous and current is additional elevated in “Forbidden West.” It’s a outcome of the studio doubling down on what made the first recreation’s story so memorable to its followers: the concept of “futurist archaeology.” In “Forbidden West,” for instance, the recipe and cooking methodology for pizza is a brand new and intensely intriguing idea for people a thousand years in the future who’ve misplaced contact with their historical past.
While the franchise’s first chapter answered many questions on how Aloy’s world got here to be, the studio was challenged to maintain that thriller by way of a sequel. Judging from largely constructive critiques of the newest recreation — together with our personal — it appears the studio met that goal.
“You don’t ever want to get to the stage where we have no more surprises, no more mysteries to speak of,” van Beek mentioned. “People now know the universe, so it’s one of those things we keep looking for, what else can we pull out of the rabbit’s hat.”