Guerrilla Games boss Hermen Hulst revealed some interesting details about Horizon: Zero Dawn’s scope  in a recent video interview with Game Informer.

The interview talks about various things, but one thing in particular of note is about the complexity of the game, and having to hire entire new teams to take on a genre (open-world RPG) the studio had previously never touched.  

“It’s a monster of a project. I mean, in terms of the number of features it’s probably four times as complex and huge as any Killzone game has been. The challenge for us is that it’s a bigger game but it’s also a new IP, so all the game rules will have to be established. Then it’s a new genre for the studio, so as a studio we had to actually hire entire new disciplines. We didn’t have a quest team, for example.”

“On the technical side, this project has probably been the most challenging so far, because of the open world. I mean, it’s a huge accomplishment the fact that we get that much detail on the screen and it’s that vast a world for you to explore.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Hulst talked about that while Horizon is it’s own thing it still has maintained some core principles from Killzone. Those core principles being: a science fiction world that is still grounded and believable, and the tactical and intense combat, with the ability to prepare and engage in different ways.

Horizon: Zero Dawn is set to release on February 28, 2017 in North America, March 1st in Europe and March 3rd in the United Kingdom.

My Opinion:

The more I hear about Horizon the more confident I grow that this is going to be the game to put Guerrilla in the top echelon of developers.

Tyler Fischer is a Senior Writer for MONG who plays video games when he’s not busy researching alien conspiracy theories at 2AM. You can find him on Twitter.