Development on Guerrilla’s multiplayer adaptation of Horizon represents a “massive shift” for the studio “almost on the same level as doing the first [game in the series]”. That’s according to studio director Jan-Bart van Beek, who was talking at a keynote during the Develop:Brighton conference in the UK earlier today.
The veteran, unsurprisingly, wouldn’t comment too much on the co-op game, but said the team is excited about the project and relishing the opportunity: “Building out a two-player experience is a whole new challenge for the studio,” he revealed.
Van Beek added that the Dutch developer has approximately 16 “plans” for the franchise “clicking on”, including the aforementioned multiplayer game. There had been talk of some kind of MMO in partnership with South Korean studio NCSoft, but it’s unclear whether this is in active production or not. Either way, we assume “plans” here means various non-game projects as well, including the upcoming Netflix show.
Technically, there have already been two new Horizon releases this year alone: PSVR2 launch title Horizon: Call of the Mountain and DLC expansion Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores. It doesn’t look like Sony will be pumping the brakes on this fledgling franchise any time soon, then – and nor should it, as it’s gone on to become a huge seller for the Japanese giant.
[source gamesradar.com]
Comments 42
Anyone else noticed they said 2 player coop experience, kind of confused if it's only two players than why did they have to switch to a stylised art style?
I'm very curious and excited abt the multiplayer game coz HZD literally brought me back into gaming after a decade.....
@Americansamurai1 I guess we'll find out when we see it. Maybe they wanted it to stand apart from the mainline games?
This Horizon co-op game is one of the extremely rare live services I'm looking forward to since this is something a few of my friends and I have wanted for years. I hope they stick the landing.
@RBMango I'm looking forward to it, too. Has the potential to be very good.
@get2sammyb maybe, but to me part of horizon identity is the stunning graphics.
Hearing that its 2 player Co-OP is interesting. I had 4 player Monster Hunter x Fornite in mind after seeing the leaked gameplay footage from a few yrs ago but 2 player co op is great too. I'm very excited to see this!
I'm very excited about this.
More so about 2 player co-op than I was about the mmo.
People will complain about "more Horizon," but roughly 40 - 50 of the games on my favourite games shelf all have either "Resident Evil" or "Final Fantasy" in the title, and both of those franchises are doing fine.
@Americansamurai1 I agree, perhaps that's why it's a separate project. That way they dont have to compromise the fidelity of Horizon 3 to accommodate Co op.
Yea a massive shift that no one wanted.
@Americansamurai1 I think if they tried to do a coop game with the same fidelity as the Aloy games, the PS5 may well struggle to run it at a consistent framerate. Having two live players or more in a possible open world environment would be very taxing.
@AdamNovice maybe or might have a smaller budget than the single player versions.
I have a weird history with the franchise. While I very much enjoyed Zero Dawn, I didn't LOVE it. And I expected the same with Forbidden West. However, and now please don't laugh at me, I totally fell in love with FW, not only because of the world, but also due to the gyro aim option. It totally elevated the game for me and let me play it how I always imagined it. I have the platinum and roughly 150 hours in this game. There's nothing any more for me to do. Yet, I refuse to leave this world and still play it every now and then. Just wandering around taking the world in. Needless to say, I am very curious now what the future holds for the franchise.
@Americansamurai1 That's possible too. Hopefully it won't be long till we find out.
I hope its not a forced co op game, similar to it takes two which you can't play the game unless you have another person to play with.
@AdamNovice if we get another showcase, I think it might show up. It's been in development for so long, you would think it would be ready to release by next year.
Not for me, but hopefully for others. But 16 more bits of horizon in the works seems like overkill and the fastest way to KILL a franchise. First rule of show-business: always leave them wanting more!
Rather than focusing on multiplayer, maybe sony should make single player online games, like genshin impact.
@Ken_Kaniff speak for yourself. Color me intrigued. And go packers!
@Wheatly a good point. I think we see the influence of Sony's late to the party demands from the shareholders through this bizarre spinoff to cash in on a franchise by throwing it into a gacha model.
I think this will implode just as factions 2 has due to Sony pressure to yield recurring revenue through these schemes.
Mmmmm as long as Jim doesn't give Guerrilla the "Naughty dog's treatment"..
@Americansamurai1 You're in need of some context realignment:
Stylized Art Style: Nothing is mentioned about this. The Art in the title has little to do with the subject beyond the chibi art that you can get from sony and fans. I forget what the above image is from, but there is no style switch.
Co-op: The discussion of Co-op has to do with the fact that the original game Zero Dawn was planned to have it. This new co-op game in development is likely spawned from that idea. It was removed because it didn't make sense, but they still wanted to do a multiplayer robot hunting game with more complex mechanics. I guess they circled back to this concept now that Horizon has traction.
This seems like overkill. 16 projects? We haven't even finished the core trilogy yet and we're talking 16 projects. How well is that PSVR2 game doing, I'm hearing most have trouble finishing it. Wasn't even done on decima.
No one asked for a live action netflix show, so that seems like a waste of time and money.
Look I was super stoked for the original. I really enjoyed that game, but I'm ready to move on. After the second game it already feels like they are trying to throw the kitchen sink in, that isn't even getting into the woke nonsense and the wannabe left behind dlc that is burning shores. I enjoyed the second game, but it just kind of fell flat in a lot of ways. The board game was just a waste of time and made no sense narratively, maybe in the first game it would hvae worked, but the story of the second just made it seem like "I'VE GOTTA GO NOW" then suddenly "oh hold up a minuted, lets play a board game". Someone at GG plays too much fricken witcher. This was not needed and made no sense. Then there is the games combat and resource gathering.... can't honestly say this was an improvement, but rather a step down. Again the rush rush narrative didn't help, but the lack of a driving force to get the player key'd into how all that worked wasn't very well thought out. Felt like most of the game you were being forced into weapons that were under powered, by placing a lot of resources too far out of reach. Which would make sense for end game equipment, but not the start of the journey. Just didn't feel very well thought out.
These things didn't kill the game for me, I enjoyed it, but you could tell GG is losing steam like so many franchises before it. I don't know that there are many places left to go for things like an MMO, Multiplayer, co-op, etc. I'm almost at the point that I'm ready to start asking for a new Killzone game over another horizon.
@KaijuKaiser huh?
well first off Horizon isn't a MP game. it's like shoehorning gameplay that doesn't fit. ND's Uncharted 2 was lightning in a bottle, it just magically worked, but even that franchise has a hard time maintaining a captivating multiplayer experience, by time we got to Uncharted 4, people were done with it, the changes that were made forgot what Uncharted MP is supposed to feel like. So why Horizon? does it makes sense here? I honestly do not think it does.
You reference CoD. I don't think you understand how much the premium core product makes for the company. Yes MP and WZ make a ton of money, but as much as people insist that the Single Player campaign isn't needed, the data Activision collects suggests the contrary. Part of the reason Black Ops 4 got so much flack and did not do that well. CoD is a different animal than horizon.
That's why. No one wants their single player IP being turned into a multiplayer one that is in service to the Multiplayer Mode. This franchisification isn't good for Sony's IP.
As far as spinning up something new for this sort of thing. Well Sony could stand to do work in this area.
I really hoped for it to be like Monster Hunter. A handful of friends playing together, coordinating and teamwork against machines. That'd be hugh. Especially, also in the Asian territories. Where Sony seem to struggle to sell their first party games. Hope it's more than just two players.
Guerilla did Killzone 2 right? Man I miss that game, that was a good time. Especially the multiplayer!
The Radec boss fight wasn’t fun though
@Cutmastavictory Okay a massive shift to live service for most titles that most don't want...and yes Go Pack Go! ✊️ lol
The co-op thing might actually be kind of cool, I pictured squads but 2 players could make it cool if the monetization is in check, but "16" Horizon related things ongoing seems like about 13 too many at minimum, and I'm a huge series fan. Same happened when Ubi overdid AC, I was a huge fan but kind of fell off a lot after the oversatuaration period. A lot of people did. We're probably 5 years away from part 3 at best and there's 15 other things going on? I'd be down for a more complete VR2 game though. Somehow I don't think that's happening.
@Wheatly Rocksteady, Crystal Dynamics, Arkane Austin, Naughty Dog....... the whole multiplayer "massive shift" thing hasn't seen much success these days. Or ever. Though Guerilla has at least some multiplayer pedigree from KZ, but it's a very different thing.
@NotSoCryptic @KaijuKaiser Honestly the first time I played Horizon I remember saying to my friends that it would be perfect as a 2 - 4 player Monster Hunter type game.
I love the single player Horizon games. I've played through both multiple times. I'd confidently say there's not a square meter of the game world in both games that I haven't looked at.
I'd love a co-op adventure with my friends in the same world.
Sony could just make amazing single player games forever but they need to diversify. Every good company knows when to do this.
I know this point has been made many times by now, but the third party Gaas games fund the budgets for the amazing first party single player titles that bring people in to the PlayStation ecosystem.
Sony have to assume now that any third party publisher or partner can and most likely will be bought, so they can't rely on income from any one third party Gaas title being around indefinitely.
They need their own live service/Gaas/multiplayer games and they need them up and running in the next ten years.
Before CoD is gone.
As for the 16 projects, I'm assuming this is filler like manga and comics, anime, probably another boardgame, novels. Stuff Ike that.
I can see some MH similarities and they did killzone…seems like a good fit.
Hmmmm. It’s a hard one because the game has a lot of well-polished systems that I think would translate well to multiplayer. But then Monster Hunter does a lot of them better so Horizon really only has an edge in terms of cinematic story sequences, which would obviously be lost if they made a multiplayer game like this. I worry that they’ll end up populating a sparse world with tiny little notes of ‘lore’ to take the brunt of the story which is just a recipe for disaster.
@NotSoCryptic the art style I'm referring to is the leak footage that was floating around a few months ago.
I love the Horizon series, and it's a big reason why I'm primarily a PlayStation gamer, but I could care less about this. I don't play multiplayer games anymore, so bring on Horizon 3.
@Shepherd_Tallon I agree on a diverse catalog of games. But turning all of your ip into mp games is not how you do it. That's the kind of bastardization that leads to first soldier, apex legends, and nosgoth. You might end up with a winner like apex, but you lose a fantastic single player game with a traditional mp mode as a result. You give your franchise a black eye. Or worse Bury your franchise. The latter has a larger volume of victims. One God of War was almost a victim.
They need new ip, new franchises, they need to stop being so skittish when some of these experiments fail. How many sequels in playstation all stars battle Royale would we have been up to by now. How successful would the game have become.
@KaijuKaiser yet that isn't horizon. Go play monster hunter. Several games in that genre space and even tried to expand upon it. How does it make sense to theme park your ip that waters down your franchise.
There are some great moments in Burning Shores that feel like a test run for a 2-player co-op game. That said, I hope they won't need to sacrifice fidelity if it's 2-player co-op.
PS4/PS5? Seriously? Not just PS5? I find this hard to believe.
@InsaneWade as much as I enjoyed the uncharted 2 and 3 mp, I'm to this day not convinced of its overall merrit to have a standalone title built around it. Which is I understand it is what they are trying to achieve with horizon. I feel a standalone ip might be better suited. We've had online titles stand on their own. Overwatch, Warhawk, etc. I think that can be done again. Without having to sacrifice the integrity of an ip in the process. Slapping horizon on the box may get the single player crowd interested at first and maybe jump start it, but it won't pull in hard core online players. The sort that spend 200+ hours a year playing them nonstop for the cool and social factor. Not for horizon. Probably why I feel exoprimal from Capcom is far more interesting than horizon multi-player or coop.
@Wheatly exactly what I was thinking. Crystal Dynamics came to mind as well.
sorry i think the new style looks awful
@NotSoCryptic People think everyone plays online. I don't think that true at all. I just play the single player portion because I like a good shooter. Which is why I wait years before buying COD and pay the cheapest price I can find for it.
@knowles2 No offense, but if you like to play a good FPS and you happen to play CoD just for the SP and get it for as cheap as yo ucan. You're kind of stupidly hurting yourself.
The initial numbers help in many ways. The determine the bonus' developers get from that project after 3 years of work. They play a part in determining the direction of the franchise. It's also the sort of thing that lead to the debacle that was Blops4.
Not saying you shouldn't wait a few months and see if you can shave a few bucks off, but it does sound like you're waiting till the game is on the bargin bin of a used games store, missing its case, and comes in a paper sleve, with the name timmy scribbled on the front of the disc with a sharpy. At that point you're telling the developer and publisher that you do not care about the single player and they should stop making it. It's self defeating. Which in turn gives them the idea and others, that people only care about the MP, because they are the ones paying full price.
Just based on what you're saying, you don't care about the single player, you just care about getting your fix every now and again.
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