PlayStation SEA unveils Horizon Zero Dawn in PHL

Sony Interactive Entertainment and its PlayStation brand have a lot of heavy hitters on their plate when it comes to exclusive releases this year.

One such title is Guerilla Games' long awaited open-world action ROG “Horizon Zero Dawn” - a game that was literally years in the making and comes from the same creative forces behind the critically acclaimed “Killzone” franchise.

On February 15 at the Makati Shangri-La hotel, gamers and media alike were invited by Sony PlayStation Souteast Asia to participate in the “Horizon Zero Dawn” press event – a first impression and glimpse into the post-apocalyptic world where nature has reestablished itself over buildings, mankind has lost touch with machinery and technology, and mechanical beasts wander around freely in the wilderness.

As a PlayStation 4 exclusive title, Horizon Zero Dawn lets players control Aloy – a young woman skilled in the hunt as she explores the wild and learns about the world around her.

Representing Guerilla Games and attending the press event to give more insight and expectations about the game was lead concept artist Roland Ijzermans, who was pretty excited to share some information during an interview session. 

Coming from Holland and taking up industrial design, Roland’s first ambition was to enter the movie industry.

“Initially I wanted to do movies. Somebody then suggested I should try computer entertainment, and I wanted to work my way through there. I joined the biggest company in Holland - Lost Boys Games, which is now Guerilla Games, and I graduated there. I’ve been there ever since, working with the concept art team. From three guys working there, I’m now running a team of about 30 people at the peak of production,” Roland said.

He added that he’s been working on games for nearly two decades now. “When I started there, they had just started on the first Killzone game. So it’s a long time invested on Guerilla Games, and it’s been a great adventure.”

Now that Horizon Zero Dawn is literally “on the horizon” with a release date set for the end of February, Roland gave more insight on the challenge he and the studio undertook to make a game so vastly different in direction from the Killzone series.

“At the end of development of Killzone 3, we asked ourselves “What else can the company do”? We asked everyone to make pitches and develop ideas for future projects, and one of them ended up being Horizon. It was deemed to be too risky and we looked at other options, but in the end the emotional response from the entire team was so positive that we decided to take the challenge and make this game. We changed the team structure and brought in some new expertise that have worked on Action RPGs to help us face the challenges in making an open world game.”

True enough and based on the look of the gameplay videos and trailers released, Horizon Zero Dawn is a very big and ambitious game. It’s daunting presentation and open-world RPG setup gives players a lot to look forward to, and Roland couldn’t be happier to see the excitement in gamers faces as they anticipate the game’s release.

“There’s enough to do in the game, and it really depends on your playstyle. If you want to get to the end of the story as fast as possible, you can do that. But if you want the full game experience and follow whatever you’re interested in, whether it be sidequests or the lore, you can do that. The main hook of the game should be the player wanting to know more about why these things are here and the relation of different characters and groups, especially what happened to Earth.”

As the excitement sank in, I then asked Roland to be his own worst critic and give some feedback after playing the game himself on whether he would have wanted to add more to the game.

“That is a good question. From my perspective and my feelings as a concept artist, there is a lot in the game already. But there are moments when we asked ourselves how much can we create with the given spacing of entertainment or things to do that we want to grant the player. We set out a map dictating how much content we could create to fill out that area, and we had created a lot of ideas that didn’t make it into the final product. Due to some restrictions and time, we had to sacrifice some things that we would have wanted to tell and add to the rich story this game has in more detail.”

With little than two weeks left until it hits retail for PlayStation 4 units worldwide, Horizon Zero Dawn is a pretty bold and daring game that has such beautiful and rich production values behind it that easily makes it one of the most anticipated action RPG games of the year, and with good reason too.

Thanks to Sony PlayStation SEA, a lot of us in the press and media got to try the first few chapters of the game first hand, and without spoiling things it literally lets you experience Aloy’s journey from the beginning all the way to when she becomes a skilled hunter exploring the vast wilderness of a post-apocalyptic Earth. You can hunt, craft weapons, use stealth, and explore your surroundings – making your own decisions and deciding how you want to play the game through your own merits.

Horizon Zero Dawn will be released for the PS4 on February 28, 2017. — TJD, GMA News