'Mind Boggling' Horizon Forbidden West Has the Best Console Image Quality Ever on PS5 Pro 1
Image: Push Square

Horizon Forbidden West, and its recently remastered predecessor Horizon Zero Dawn, is comfortably one of the best looking games you can play today. And it’s no surprise to see it already pushing the PS5 Pro to its limits, as developer Guerrilla Games have always been tech wizards.

Speaking about the upgrade in a recent Digital Foundry video, tech expert John Linneman couldn’t hold back his enthusiasm for the enhancements.

“I think they might have achieved arguably just about the best image quality I’ve seen in a console game,” he smiled. “It’s so good. When you consider the density of the visuals [and] how much detail is in them, the way it resolves it so clean and attractive that it’s honestly mind boggling. It looks really, really good. It feels like you’re playing a high-end PC game now.”

While an undeniably attractive game, Horizon Forbidden West did look a little rough at 60fps on the base PS5 at launch. The Dutch developer eventually released a patch to improve this, but there was still some shimmering and artefacting caused by the sheer density of detail on display.

Many of those problems are a thing of the past on the PS5 Pro.

Linneman explained: “There’s so much granular detail in the distance: the grass, the rocks, everything. The game is very visually busy, right? This does it justice in a way that the original modes did not – especially the original and its updated Performance modes. It’s lightyears beyond that.”

Ironically, this game isn’t using Sony’s proprietary AI-based upscaler PSSR, and has instead opted for Guerrilla’s own in-house upscaling solution. Presumably this is designed to get the most out of the Decima Engine, and is really bearing fruit here. We’re fairly confident the team at Guerrilla Games will share its technology with its parent company.

Still, if you’ve been waiting to play Horizon Forbidden West, or jump into Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, it seems like it’s the series to play on the PS5 Pro. Prepare to have your face melted by the “mind boggling” visuals on display.

[source youtube.com]