Guerrilla Games reveals the creative thinking behind shaping its epic open world
It’s here! The jaw dropping world of Horizon Zero Dawn awaits on PS4 – and while developer Guerrilla Games is no stranger to stunning visuals, this leafy yet deadly domain comes is an intricate piece of open world design, packed with a huge array of story threads to follow and unpick. Ahead of launch, we sat down with Guerrilla’s writing team to find out how they crafted the game’s ambitious narrative.
1. Guerrilla takes story seriously
Creating a memorable tale was paramount for the development team. In fact, there were four major drafts of the overarching story before they started working on the actual script.
“Story development took place over a number of months, so by the time we had it designed, it was fully achievable with the time and resources we had,” explains Lead Narrative Designer, John Gonzales.
“Usually at other studios you create the story and two days before ‘script lock’ they tell you they have to cut the game in half, asking if you can ‘just go ahead and adjust the story,'” he laughs.
“That’s not what it was like here. It was a studio wide commitment from the very beginning to raising the bar on narrative achievement.”
2. Pacing the unpredictable
Creating a sprawling saga while keeping a sense of freedom was also hugely important. And despite Horizon being the company’s first open world title, the team knew exactly how to approach this tricky balance.
“Quests had to be responsive to players just walking away at a certain point, or leaving to come back,” explains David Ford, Lead Quest Designer. “What if they come over a certain hill rather than the one you expected, or they have a different set of items or power levels?
“Narrative pacing was also vital, so we were constantly working out when we need to have the character comment on something, when we need to have an interaction point, or where you need to be to move the story on if you go off a certain path. No matter what the player does, it has to be fun and feel smooth.”
3. Interaction starts with the player
Despite this dedication to plot and story, Guerrilla still knew what was most important to Horizon Zero Dawn’s experience – you. So you’re crafting your own narrative through a wonderful blend of procedural events and your own actions… especially when it comes to conflict.
“I’m proud that our combat has such a depth and variety to it,” says Combat Designer Troy Mashburn. “During testing, someone said they took down one of the bosses with a couple of shots, which didn’t seem right. They explained that they upgraded one of their weapons to max, then uncovered the boss’ weak spot, and froze it. They then shot a three-in-one arrow into that weak spot and that did it!
“I laughed and said: ‘That’s amazing, that’s not a balancing issue, it’s just pulling all these gameplay components together,” and that’s very cool to have in the game.”
4. You’re always in character
With many open world adventures, you’ll be tasked to do random things to help prolong the game – but Guerrilla wanted to make sure nothing like that broke the immersion of the story.
“We focused on creating objectives that made sense for the narrative,” explains David. “We didn’t want minor extra mission objectives like ‘first go and kill six of these things before you can do X’.
“We preferred to look at relevant goals, like finding someone, or engaging in a specific battle, which we thought would be more interesting.”
“One of the hardest things in the beginning was to figure out how much content there should be, and the density of the open world,” says Game Director Mathijs De Jonge.
“That was challenging and fun. We built prototypes, shifted a lot of stuff around, checking travel times on foot and using a mount, and experimented with what felt right before we built out the full world.”
5. It’s not all story, quest, fight
While Guerrilla has packed Horizon’s world with content, the team has also created many spots to encourage you to just stop and admire the beauty – like President of Sony Worldwide Studio, Shuhei Yoshida, did.
“I had a chat with Yoshida-san when he was playing through the game,” says Managing Director Hermen Hulst. “And to him it was like being in a vast park… he just wanted to explore and go for a walk!
“As it turns out, afterwards he wanted to go after all the wildlife and do everything that there could be in the game – he’s a big completionist!”
6. Enjoy the little things
The impressive Machines may be the show stealer of Horizon, but the deft touches tell a tale, too. From a narrative standpoint, certain details had to be thought through before they were woven into the story.
“So much had to be developed from scratch, so we had to ask ourselves what are the rules of this world in every aspect,” says Hermen. “For example, there’s no photographic material left in their world, so we looked and took inspiration from older, tribal activities and references.”
And then there are the minute visuals details to keep an eye out for.
“Look out for the little ants, crawling up trees,” reveals Art Director Jan-Bart van Beek. “One of our effects artists put that together for assets that are used in the jungle environment, and our artist loved it so much that there’s actually one at the very start of the game. It’s a very cool detail.”
Bonus round:
True, creating this vast narrative has been a massive task for Guerrilla (which has paid off), but that doesn’t mean the team are afraid from having a little fun, especially when talking about Aloy outside of Horizon Zero Dawn’s story. When asked whether PlayStation’s newest icon could hold her own against Colonel Radec from the Killzone series, the question is met with good humour.
“Radec has that teleport ability, true, but Aloy is smarter,” laughs Troy. “That’s what so cool about Aloy, she’s smart and curious about her world, so she’s going to use everything to her ability to overcome her enemy.
“She doesn’t necessarily believe in the superstitions of other tribes she encounters, who believe that some of the Machines are demons, but she knows that they’re things that have a function and purpose. So Aloy would outsmart Radec and have him teleport into one of her traps and then it’d be game over,” says Troy.
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