After the successful launch of Horizon Zero Dawn in late February, fans were blown away by the scale and beauty of the vast open world, the outstanding visuals, the fierce character Aloy and so much more. One such fan was none other than Neil Druckmann, Creative Director of Naughty Dog, who found himself immersed in this lush environment so much so that he made time for a sit down with Guerilla Games Managing Director, Hermen Hulst.
“The graphics are staggering. I don’t even think of it as graphics, cause it’s like I’m in the woods. I’m in this overgrown environment and I’m like, how are they getting so much foliage, so much density in an open world game?” said Druckmann of Horizon Zero Dawn’s post-apocalyptic world.
During their conversation, Hulst gave us insight on what obstacles stood in the way during the six-year development cycle of Horizon Zero Dawn, like the lack of necessary tools for making a open world RPG game; In the beginning of development, they were actually using the Killzone toolset and had to make an entirely new toolset from scratch. Hulst and Druckmann soon begin to share a good laugh over friendly competition over the new standard that Horizon Zero Dawn has set for the two game companies which leads me to believe we can surely expect some great looking games to come from these two widely celebrated devs.
Also, Horizon Zero Dawn was almost a first person shooter interestingly enough! Though I feel that would have caused the game to fall flat for some. Who woulda thought that a single enemy could have taken a whole year of development? Or that Aloy is essentially a culmination of three separate people?
You can listen to the full conversation here:
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