3/17/2023 0 Comments Games like horizon zero dawn![]() "We've gone from designing rollercoaster rides to designing theme parks, and that's what excited us." It would have got really fucking boring even after an hour because you'd have spent so much time running around. "We began with a sketch of the map and quickly found that certain distances were way too far to travel. "Initially, it was daunting because you don't even know where to start," van Beek recalls. Upping the ante from rollercoasts to theme parks meant a lot more work than the team were used to, but Guerrilla Games took their time with Horizon and studied other titles in the open-world genre to see what new ideas they could bring to it. So we've really gone from designing rollercoaster rides to designing theme parks, and that's what excited us." Where Killzone was designed as a dystopian nightmare, the world of Horizon has been infused with a sense of hope and adventure That's much more exciting than crafting these very narrow experiences. "From a design perspective, we were more interested in these sort of systemic games where you set things free to interact with each other and there's more emergent gameplay, where the player can do things you didn't expect as a designer. They're really expensive to make - you have a 150-man team making a six to eight-hour experience, and that's where all the effort goes. They're very well scripted, very well crafted but the moment that it's done, the rollercoaster ride is over. "When you're making a first-person shooter, the whole magic trick is controlling every single heartbeat of the player. "We were excited about things that aren't as contained," van Beek explains. We wanted to do something we could really shine at." "When your next door neighbours are Call of Duty and Battlefield, you become an 'also-ran'. The scale of Bethesda's post-apocalyptic gun-toting RPG appealed to the team, as they sought new ways to give players both agency and freedom. Instead, it began as an exploration of what Guerrilla could do beyond what the team calls "wide linear shooters" like Killzone.īack in 2010, the two-year-old Fallout 3 particularly intrigued the art director. When asked how he came up with the concept, van Beek says it "wasn't necessarily an attempt to do a 180" from everything the studio had previously worked on - even though it eventually became that. Van Beek's original concept already had many of the ingredients that define Horizon: Zero Dawn in its final state: robot dinosaurs, a post-apocalyptic world reclaimed by the beauty of nature, and even protagonist Aloy. That's a once in a lifetime opportunity." "We had about 30 to 35 pitches that came in, and one of those was Horizon - my pitch. So we decided to move away from our bread and butter - making first-person shooters - and work on something the studio was excited about making, something new. "They're nice titles to make, but when your next door neighbours are Call of Duty and Battlefield, you become an 'also-ran' and we wanted to do something we could really shine at. Jan-Bart van Beek, Guerrilla GamesĮven seven years on, van Beek remembers the pressure of meeting that original brief: "We wanted to something that was action-orientated, character-driven, something that was an exciting leap away from Killzone, because we'd been doing Killzone for about 15 years. Horizon: Zero Dawn launched back in February to critical acclaim, as has this month's standalone expansion Frozen Wilds. As well received as the Killzone games were, the studio recognised that the shooter genre was becoming too competitive and it needed to branch out in order to survive.įast forward to 2017, where van Beek meets with at the annual View Conference in Italy to reflect on what has been a pivotal year for Guerrilla. ![]() ![]() He's the reason for its very being.īack in 2010, with Killzone 3 nearing completion, every employee at Guerrilla Games received a challenge: to come up with ideas for new game designs or, better, new franchises. Jan-Bart van Beek isn't just the art director for Horizon: Zero Dawn. ![]()
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