Despite the base game releasing on both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores is only coming to PS5. Guerrilla Games has explained that pivot and detailed what that extra power means for this upcoming expansion.
Game Director Mathijs de Jonge talked about these improvements on the PlayStation Blog. The team was able to add more detail, a 60 frames per second option, and faster load times in the base game, but de Jonge brought up that everything in Forbidden West had to also be optimized for PS4. But being able to focus just on PS5 this time around means that the team can “charge forward” and create a “stunning post-post-apocalyptic version of Los Angeles.”
“The cityscape ruins of L.A. and its surroundings are highly detailed and require a lot of processing power as well as fast streaming technology to run properly; especially when the player is flying over the lands and can see a lot at once,” he said. “One of the settlements is situated in and around those detailed ruins, and we were able to squeeze a lot of activity in there.”
He was also a little more specific, calling out a battle scene that required “a LOT of memory and processing power,” implying it wouldn’t run as well or even be possible on PS4 without major cuts or compromises. He didn’t say what fight it would be, but the trailer and some of the art shows a giant mechanical being known as a Metal Devil. These titanic robots were key in destroying humankind during the Faro Plague, and their remains can be seen in various Horizon games.
The rest of the post calls out other aspects that are already in the core game on PS5, such as the higher resolution, faster frame rate, 40 frames per second mode, special lighting that always surrounds Aloy, and better draw distance.
This is the most Guerrilla has talked about this DLC, which is still slated to come out on April 19. It’s still unclear what else is new in this expansion, how much it will cost, and what its rendition of Los Angeles looks like outside of the trailer from The Game Awards.
