Horizon Forbidden West Details Aloy Changes

By Rollin Bishop

When the Horizon Zero Dawn sequel Horizon Forbidden West releases for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 on February 18, 2022, it will bring with it a newly evolved version of protagonist Aloy. While that means new gear and the like for the character, it is also more fundamental than that as her model will be significantly improved from the original.

"Each generation of consoles brings extra power that lets us add even denser polygons to our character models, so we can create finer details such as peach fuzz, smooth contouring, or finer texture details and accurate materials expression, to name a few," states Bastien Ramisse, Lead Character Artist at Guerrilla Games, as part of a new PlayStation blog post about the upcoming title. "And not only do visual aspects benefit from the new PlayStation 5 hardware — we have also increased the number of skeletal joints to bring our deformations and facial expressions to a whole new level for more credible and immersive character performance. All in all, a dream come true for both players and developers!"

While the above might seem like it is geared specifically towards the PlayStation 5 version of the video game, Ramisse goes on to note that the PlayStation 4 version of Horizon Forbidden West will also see significant improvements over the original title -- and that it won't be compromised. "We actually developed and tested the game simultaneously on both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, because it's very important to us as a studio to ensure PlayStation 4 players get an equally immersive experience," Ramisse added. "With our knowledge from Horizon Zero Dawn, we knew that we still had some unexplored resources that could push the realism and quality of our character assets forward; it's great to now be able to tap into that knowledge and experience for the sequel.'

As noted above, Horizon Forbidden West is officially set to launch for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 on February 18, 2022. Despite initially announcing that the upgrade from PS4 to PS5 would require payment, PlayStation ultimately reversed course on that decision and it will be a free upgrade path instead. You can check out all of our previous coverage of the upcoming video game sequel right here.

What do you think about the changes to Aloy in Horizon Forbidden West? Are you looking forward to playing it when it releases early next year? Let us know in the comments, or feel free to reach out and hit me up directly over on Twitter at @rollinbishop to talk about all things gaming!

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