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This week at CES, Sony revealed that it was added even more video games to its already large list of adaptations, including Guerrilla Games’ Horizon franchising. After intended Netflix series collapsed after allegations of abuse against showrunner Steve Blackman, Sony decided to turn it into a full-length film.
Among the first part of the PlayStation line, Horizon it occupies a strange space. While its two main games apparently sold well, the series gained a bit of a reputation online as an “industrial plant” spurred on by PlayStation Studios CEO Hermen Hulst, who previously managed Guerrilla while making it. Horizon Zero Dawn. There was also just a general pushback against Sony’s efforts to grow all that can in a franchise, and Horizon certainly made moves to expand. Along with a third unique game in development, there was the Call of the mountain The VR game, at least two rumored multiplayer spin-offs – one coopthe other year MMO– and last year’s double whammy of a Lego game spinoff and a PlayStation 5 re-release of the first game. Next to Naughty Dog’s The last of us, This might be the most persistent PlayStation franchise in terms of being frequently reminded that it exists, and if you know how people feel about that franchise’s tendency to not go away, you know that’s far from a compliment.
Horizon has always been an odd duck, much of which may be due by the time it exists Previous first-party PS titles such as God of War Ragnarök o Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 came out in busy periods, but at least they had the potential to carve their own niche. Seeing promos of Kratos and Atreus facing off against a wolf, or the two Spideys doing the same with Venom, made you want to put in the time for them. PlayStation makes blockbuster games and those two titles, plus the The last of us, it commands your attention as blockbuster movies often do, whether it’s summer or Christmas. To the credit of Guerrilla, both of the heart Horizon games have tried to command similar attention, it’s just that their moment was completely, hilariously undercut.
Zero Dawn released in February 2017, just three days before the Nintendo Switch launched alongside it Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The impact of that game could only be described as meteoric, both for Nintendo and the industry as a whole. Breath of the Wild changed how critics and players viewed games from that particular franchise and open world titles in general, and dominated much of the conversation in 2017. Come 2022, Guerrilla released West forbidden horizon, which only released a full week earlier Elden Ring. As well as breath, FromSoftware’s gothic roguelike was a game changer that people couldn’t stop talking about, in turn sucking all the oxygen out of the room. It helped that the profile of things From had grown throughout the 2010s thanks to his Dark Souls games, 2019 Ax: Shadows Die Twice, and a little PS4 game with the name of Bloodborne.
So yes, things have not always been in The horizon immediate favor, and sometimes it feels like a step or three behind the contemporaries of the open world or RPG. But the games are good in their own right. Zero Dawn and The West Forbidden They were both pretty well regarded critically and commercially, and if anything, their ability to survive despite being overwhelmed by bigger competition may have endeared them to players even more. This series isn’t really an underdog among the PlayStation pantheon – that honor, depending on who you ask, could go to Days Gone-but it manages to feel like one in part because of how different it is from its early peers. In 2017, the then-recent Uncharted 4 and future ones like God of War o Marvel’s Spider-Man he had a built-in audience who all had an idea of what to expect. Horizon was a notable departure for Guerrilla, who had spent the late 2000s and early 2010s in their series of Killzone shooters, so the pivot from military sci-fi to a lush post-apocalypse was an attention.
It has always been there something compelling look up Horizon which clearly resonated with the public, even as the series continued to pass Native and indigenous appropriation. Maybe it was the look of the robot animals or the fun of sniping off their points, or it was throwing out the toys more crazy (but still quite logical) twists to their stories. It could also just be the flagship of the Aloy series, which debuted just as triple-A developers were starting a new, ongoing (and more and more different) wave of leading games led by women. That took almost a whole decade and public criticism against E3 2014 for studios to make games with more women is…extremely depressing, but whatever, that’s how things shook out. Guerrilla gave PlayStation a first-party franchise driven primarily by Aloy’s relationships, both platonic and romantic romanticwith women of various stripes, and that approach has since become part of the triple-A game playbook.
With the solid amount of general goodwill The horizon was able to build, cash in it makes sense. But there are challenges ahead for these various projects, namely the growing risk of ongoing multiplayer games and Sony’s tendency to get in the way of their movies. So far, the series has withstood two major gaming competitors, but those are different beasts compared to an entire genre slowly. closed in on himself or a parent company scaling back plans first (and strong) set in stone. However things shake out, we can at least not Get Guerrilla caught in a cycle where it is remastered and remaking games for half a decade? Please?
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