PA: What specific features about Sony’s second generation of VR were you most excited to leverage?Īlex Barnes: I think the thing that blew us away most and became a real game changer for us was eye tracking. Once we had our protagonist we were thinking about the world in a different way, from the perspective of the inhabitants of the world.
That came to mind really quickly, especially when we’re talking about the verticality that the game has and the potential that we saw in climbing. We felt we wanted a new protagonist, a kind of master climber. That’s how our protagonist, Ryas, got developed. We also tried to think about the best perspective on this world to really take advantage of VR and the hardware. I remember thinking when I saw the watchers (raptor-like machines) - which are, in some ways, the most innocuous machines in Horizon - I was like, holy crap, these things are really big and scary! I mean, I think there’s something about getting tossed off the boat and seeing the snapmaw (a crocodilian machine) in the water, or the moment where the thunderjaw (a giant dinosaur-like machine) is stalking you later in the game, that deliver a more immersive and frequently more tactile experience than we get in third-person games. Did seeing the world you created through VR provide you with any fresh insights into how the characters who live there might feel living amongst massive machine predators?īM: Wow, that’s a great question. As the game opens, we’re gliding along a stream with machines everywhere, encouraging us to twist our heads and crane our necks. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. When you’re actually confronted with one of the machines and you’re doing it in first-person at scale in VR it feels like the machine is looming over you in a way that is just incredible. You could be hanging from a cliff and looking down and seeing the world from a totally different perspective than you ever could in Horizon Forbidden West.
There was this amazing sense of verticality and scale that you get when you play. There’s something about the visual spectacle of the franchise, the contrast between beautiful nature and the awe-inspiring machines that we felt would be a natural fit for VR.Īnd we were thrilled when we got hold of the hardware and saw the potential. We felt like Horizon would fit really well into VR. Post Arcade: Did Sony come to you about doing a PS VR2 game or did you approach them?īen McCaw: It was an ambition we had. The pair were excited to discuss their work, ranging from what virtual reality helped teach them about a world they already thought they knew (the machines are really, really big) to whether they prefer using VR’s gesture controls or traditional thumb sticks for movement. Post Arcade had a chance to chat with two of the game’s key developers: Ben McCaw, studio narrative director at Guerrilla Games, and Alex Barnes, game director at Firesprite, a British studio brought in to help develop the franchise’s first foray into virtual reality.
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