We probably shouldn’t expect to see it this side of the PS5’s release.
Released in early 2017, Horizon Zero Dawn kind of came out of nowhere, taking everyone by surprise with its post-apocalyptic open-world story of a retro-future hunter and a world of robotic dinosaurs following in the footsteps of evolution that biological creatures have been doing for millions of years.
It is original, intelligent and exciting, something that feels rarer and rarer in the world of AAA games. Games are either a sequel to something we already know works – no shade, but GTAV and RDR2 fall into that category – or original ideas that either feel like variations of something that is already successful (looking at you Anthem), or so original that it feels like they get completely overlooked (see: Control).
So… while the potential, sorta, kinda news that a sequel is on the way now puts HZD2 into that first category, we will forgive it, because it was clear that there was still SO much more of that world to uncover.
Guerilla Games (the developers of HZD, as well as the Killzone series) posted a job title on their website, and in among the details of the position is the following description:
“Within Guerrilla, we have four teams dedicated to creating the stunning environments of Horizon. One team focuses on the creation of lush and stunning vegetation. We build these 3D models from scratch, so our world dressing teams can deliver our immersive world with industry-benchmark graphics.”
So, that does seem to say that they still have a team dedicated to Horizon, right?
The new position, one of several added to the games developer’s website in the last few days, is for a Technical Vegetation Artist and, as you’ll remember, a lot of the first HZD featured the many characters taking cover in a series of different vegetation that had consumed cityscapes all around the world.
Odds on, considering they’re still hiring for the game, that we won’t be seeing the Sony exclusive ahead the PlayStation 5’s current release date.
And if you’d like a little reminder/introduction of what the first game was about, here you go:
Clip via PlayStation
