On April 19, it was launched Burning Shoresthe expansion for the PlayStation 5 version of Horizon Forbidden Westallowing us to pick up Aloy’s story right where the main game left off, discover a new location, tinker with new weapons, and test new methods of movement.
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Horizon Forbidden West Burning Shores – Launch Trailer
After playing it and completing it (if you haven’t read it yet and you are interested in our opinion, here is the analysis), we have had the opportunity to speak with two of its managers: Richard Oud (Studio Animation Director) and Misja Baas (Senior Art Director), both of Guerrilla Games.
Richard and Misja told us very interesting details about the technical aspects of Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores, an expansion that has smoothly become one of the graphic exponents of PS5.
Entrevista Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores
The first question is… How? How did you get such an impressive graphic section? Because it is inevitable to think that you have resorted to black magic.
Misha Bass: We’re pretty proud of our technology, and because we focused on PlayStation 5, we were able to give it our all. It is thanks to this hardware that we were able to carry out all the things we set out to do.
We guess it must be difficult to make a DLC, since you have to work with the core of the main game. So… how do you make Burning Shores stand out? How do you make it stand out from Forbidden West?
Richard Old: I think it’s because we’re not really treating it as a DLC or an expansion, but as a kind of extra chapter of Aloy’s journey. From there, we get the foundation of something that will work separately from Forbidden West and at the same time stand alone.
And I think the idea of this expansion was pretty widespread among us. We wanted to do this. It’s one of the reasons why we chose Los Angeles as the setting, as it’s like an extension of the Forbidden West.
Starting from the idea of Los Angeles, we wanted to use a Hollywood-style storytelling; we are all fans of epic movies of giant monsters and destruction. And this is the perfect setting to tell it. He was very ambitious from the beginning. And everything worked thanks to that.
So this is not just a DLC or something additional, but a standalone content. Basically, it’s Aloy’s next story. And I think that has helped a lot in production.
One of the things that impresses us the most about Burning Shores and Forbidden West are the animations of the NPCs during conversations: they move their arms, their heads, they get up, they sit, they walk… It feels like a natural conversation. We suppose that involves a lot of work?
Richard Old: Yeah, it’s something we already introduced in Forbidden West, where we wanted to get away from aesthetic storytelling. We wanted to make sure that these characters that you come across are realistic. And that’s when we made the transition to motion capture.
So instead of having a static character, we basically capture the entire performance of the actors doing the dialogue.
And as you can see it’s a lot of work because instead of just doing the cutscenes, you also have to figure out the whole conversation, you have to clean up all of that.
But in the end it’s worth it, because it allows the game to reach a new level, makes you feel like you’re talking to believable characters. So yeah, it’s a lot of work.
Let’s talk about spoilers for Burning Shores… The final boss of the expansion is simply amazing; we have never seen anything like it. It was the moment that he made us think: “okay, this is not moved by a PS4”. What can you tell us about it? Was it difficult to design and animate?
Richard Old: We’ve been talking about this internally and it’s basically a takeaway from the last three games. Players had been wanting to see this thing come to life for a long time, so expectations were high and the challenge a bit daunting.
But once we got down to it, it was also a lot of fun to create and it was very exciting to see it come to life; the whole experience was, in fact. Perhaps, given enough time and resources, we could have squeezed PS4 and fit it, but it would never have looked as good as it does now.
And being able to focus solely on PS5 has really allowed us to invest our time and energy into adding more content, extra effects… And basically getting that final fight.
Misha Bass: If we had to focus on PS4 as well, it would have taken away time that we could have used to do something better. And roughly we rebuilt the entire “horse” for this DLC. So the amount of detail there is now is much higher than what we saw in the previous game. And we got it because we focused on PS5.
So, we assume that it is easier to develop the game for a single platform. What would you say is the biggest advantage of developing for PS5 compared to PS4?
Misha Bass: performance, obviously. But I think that in each generation you can always take everything much further. This answer won’t surprise you, but I think the point is that time spent making a game for PS4 is also time spent making it work on PS5.
That is where the real value lies. And it is what allows us to be focused and not distracted by limitations.
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Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores – Conoce a Seyka
Richard Old: Specifically, during the development of Burning Shores, we didn’t even take limitations into account anymore. Sometimes we thought we couldn’t do something, but then we’d fall “oh shit, that’s right, we don’t have to worry about that anymore”.
At that point, is when you start to refine and push things a bit further to test the new limits, or see how much detail we can include without losing the style we want to maintain.
Misha Bass: of course, in order to make the battle as spectacular as possible, with the most particles, the most effects and all the animation data, we were smart in choosing the place where it takes place.
So we chose a good place, an open space to move freely, that would not be affected by other missions so that you can take your time to complete the work.
And up to here our interview with Richard Oud, Studio Animation Director, and Misja Bass, Senior Art Director, from Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores. Have you had a chance to play Aloy’s latest adventure? What do you think?
