Horizon Forbidden West first impressions published by IGN

Horizon Forbidden West had its first gameplay impressions published in January 2022, less than a month before launch. IGN released a 12-minute preview video, recorded after playing part of Aloy’s adventure:

The video shows several of the improvements promised over Horizon Zero Dawn, Guerrilla Games’ previous game. The main points highlighted by the journalist in this preview were:

• the side quests have improved a lot and seem to be part of a bigger story;
• the animations of the main characters and NPCs are on another level;
• melee combat saw a big improvement;
• the visuals on PlayStation 5 are impressive;
• the leap between the first and second game was described as the biggest he had ever seen in a sequel.

Forbidden West began development in 2018, a year after Zero Dawn, and uses Guerrilla’s same in-house engine, Decima. Ashly Burch returned to voice Aloy, and Lance Reddick Sylens, with Angela Bassett and Carrie-Anne Moss in the cast. According to Sony documents, development reached more than 300 full-time employees and cost about 212 million dollars, placing it among the most expensive games ever made.

The game was set for February 18, 2022, on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. For those who hadn’t seen it yet, Guerrilla had also released the story trailer:

What came next

Horizon Forbidden West came out on the planned date and received generally positive reviews, with praise for the visuals, combat, mission design and performances, and reservations about the story. It sold more than 8.4 million units through April 2023 and was nominated for Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2022. The Burning Shores expansion arrived on PS5 in April 2023, and the Complete Edition was released on PC, by Nixxes Software, in March 2024.

Source: IGN.