Of all of the PlayStation 5 games that were officially revealed at last-week’s PS5 reveal event, few are as highly-anticipated as Horizon: Forbidden West, a game poised to be the perfect PS5 game. As such, fans have been eager to know when exactly they’ll be able to play it, and luckily for them, Sony and Guerrilla Games have officially narrowed down the release window.
First off, the bad news is Forbidden West won’t be out this year, which probably won’t be too surprising given that most of the first-party PS5 titles like Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and Gran Turismo 7 aren’t rushing to make the PS5’s holiday 2020 launch window. The good news, however, is that it won’t be much farther off, as it was confirmed in a new promotional video that Sony is targeting a 2021 release for Aloy’s next big adventure.
“2021” is as specific as the release window gets for the time being, so it remains to be seen whether the game will be out earlier or later in the year. But while that remains up in the air, game director Mathijs de Jonge had more to say about Horizon: Forbidden West itself in the promotional video.
Providing additional insight into what Sony teased during the game’s reveal trailer from last week, de Jonge promised that players will be treated to a larger, deeper, and more detailed world this time around, one full of new machines and tribes for Aloy to encounter. Furthermore, he stated that the game will take full advantage of the PS5’s quick-loading capabilities, assuring fans that there’ll be “virtually no loading screens.”
Since Horizon: Zero Dawn is one of the most highly-acclaimed PS4 games, it’s no surprise that excitement is high for the PS5 sequel. Zero Dawn laid a strong foundation for a franchise to be built off of, and while little has been shown of Forbidden West so far, it nevertheless suggests that Guerrilla is taking extra care to build something just as strong, if not stronger.
Zero Dawn came out at an interesting time back in 2017, just a few weeks before one of the biggest open-world games of the last few years, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, dropped onto the scene. It could be argued that that game stole some of Zero Dawn’s thunder back then, but rather than take offense at that, Guerrilla seems to be taking inspiration from Breath of the Wild with Forbidden West. Given how well that game was received, that could hardly be considered a bad move.
Horizon: Forbidden West will launch sometime in 2021 for PS5.
