Horizon Forbidden West Developer Says Game Is Still on Track to Release This Year

PlayStation owners looking forward to the new Horizon Forbidden West game apparently won’t have to worry much about the game being delayed out of 2021. PlayStation boss Hermen Hulst indicated as much by saying that the company thinks its on track for a Holiday 2021 release for the Horizon Zero Dawn sequel while developer Guerrilla Games offered similar reassurances by saying the work being done on the game was on track even though it was being done under the unusual working conditions developers and others have found their work governed by.

Hulst spoke about the game first in a post on the PlayStation Blog site, the same post where he confirmed that the new God of War game had been delayed. Unlike God of War, Horizon Forbidden West is still on track for a 2021 release, though Hulst admitted that the anticipated timeframe “isn’t quite certain yet.”

“So we have, currently, two very big, very narrative-driven games in development: Horizon Forbidden West and the next God of War,” Hulst said. “And for both of those, they’re frankly affected by access to performance capture and talent. For Horizon, we think we are on track to release this holiday season. But that isn’t quite certain yet, and we’re working as hard as we can to confirm that to you as soon as we can.”

Horizon Forbidden West game director Mathijs de Jonge offered some similar but slightly more reassuring comments compared to what Hulst said. Speaking to Game Informer, de Jonge said “the development is still on track” and that the team simply wants to be “super confident” before announcing a definite release date. The game director referenced the pandemic working conditions people have found themselves in and said the team’s “never finalized and shipped a game under these circumstances” and that they therefore have to be constantly checking schedules and looking for unforeseen problems.

“We just want to be super confident when we announce the release date, that we’re actually going to hit it,” de Jonge said. “So we just need a little bit more time, and then we can come back with a final release date”

So, for the time being, it seems Horizon Forbidden West hopefuls can be confident in the game’s 2021 release. The new God of War game will take a bit longer, but we’ll get release dates for both of those games at some point in the future.