Guerrilla Games has penned a lengthy article on the PlayStation Blog, discussing the machines that’ll make an appearance in the upcoming Horizon Forbidden West.
Some of Zero Dawn‘s robots, like the Watchers and Snapmaw, will return in Forbidden West. However, Guerrilla said that it’s expanding the catalog with unique new machines now that it has the opportunity to explore ideas that weren’t possible in Zero Dawn.
“During Horizon Zero Dawn’s development, we had a ton of ideas — of course not everything could make it into the first game, but now with Horizon Forbidden West we’ve been able to match some exciting ideas that previously weren’t feasible with new and interesting concepts,” said principal machine designer Blake Politeski.
Politeski revealed that Sunwing was born out of Guerrilla’s desire to have a flying machine bigger than the Glinthawk featured in the first game.
“We studied various flying reptiles and primitive birds for inspiration, and came up with the concept of their wings collecting solar energy during sunny weather,” he said. “This in turn created an interesting gameplay dynamic: Sunwings will be vulnerable when they are harvesting solar power, but are also more alert to potential predators when they are idle.”
With new foes come new challenges, but rest assured, Aloy will have new skills, abilities, and equipment to tackle those challenges.
“Aloy has many different types of weapons and ammunition available, and she’s going to need them all to beat the different machines!” said asset art lead Maxim Fleury. “Without spoiling anything, every machine has multiple ways to be defeated. We tried to make it clear for players through the machine design, and added textures to show the weak points or interactive components. You’ll need to study each machine closely to find different ways to approach it.”
Horizon Forbidden West will release on February 18, 2022.
[Source: PS Blog]
