Horizon Zero Dawn For PlayStation 4 Wasn’t Always a Great Game

Ever since its release last year, Horizon Zero Dawn has gone on to become one of the most critically acclaimed games for the PlayStation 4. But it didn't always look like it was going to be a success.

According to U.S. Gamer, early play tests for Guerrilla Games' open-world adventure actually came across as less than positive. In the case of the first test, it was "absolutely brutal."

The information recently surfaced from a Game Developers Conference session, where the game's designer, Eric Boltjes, hosted a postmordem for it. In it, he explained that when the first playtest of the game was underway, it left those that tried it out with negative feelings galore. And this was less than a year from its release.

"I truly felt panic," Boltjes admitted. "It's tough to read 'your game is boring' in capital letters. Especially since we brought this idea from scratch with so little to go off of."

This was just part of the growing paints that the game went through in its development time, with a number of bugs reported, along with balancing issues and one of the game's core mechanics not performing as well as intended. As a result, Guerrilla Games needed to take a closer look at it in general and get things fixed.

That said, some things were left unresolved, like the resource economy within the game. "We really didn't fix this," Boltjes explained. "We really failed. He felt that the open-world structure of the game made it easier to collect from a number of sources, but individual resources were left out in the cold as a result. He also noted some slight issues with the mythos of the game, noting a "difference between the world language and the player language," which he feared would be confusing.

But fret not, as Guerrilla Games still managed to get a lot right in that year's timeframe, as the game has become a hit seller since its first year of release, despite what occurred during that playtest. It actually shows quite the impressive turnaround as a result.

We're pretty sure that Guerrilla will be devoting a great deal of time to its inevitable sequel, which we'll hopefully hear about soon enough.

Horizon Zero Dawn is available now for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 4 Pro.