With Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, Guerrilla wants to achieve what it couldn’t on PS4

A remaster of Horizon Zero Dawn will be released on October 31, bringing improved visuals and gameplay improvements to PlayStation 5 and PC platforms. Produced by Nixxes in collaboration with Guerrilla Games, this remaster aims to deliver a richer and improved experience for both new and returning players.

Among the major improvements, the remaster details improved environments. Patrick Blankenzi, Senior Environment Artist at Nixxes, Highlights team work In reworking the vegetation to match the visual fidelity of Horizon Forbidden West. Hundreds of plants, trees, and other natural elements have been updated with improved textures, geometry, and interactions. This effort into the lush, overgrown game world aims to create a more authentic experience, allowing you to better appreciate the dense, vibrant environments originally envisioned in the concept art.

In addition to the wild environments, the remaster brings improvements to the living world of Horizon Zero Dawn. The design team, led by Senior Technical Game Designer Brian Van Nunen, worked to improve population density in villages, outposts and cities. Thanks to the increased memory available on PS5, the game can now support a greater number of non-player characters with more diverse behaviors and timelines, adding a sense of life to the game’s settlements. New animations, such as a woman feeding geese in Meridian, show the team’s efforts to increase realism.

Other technical advances include terrain and building improvements, with Nixxes applying the latest textures from Horizon Forbidden West to update the textures and geometry of the game’s landscapes. Additionally, deformable snow and sand, as seen in The Frozen Wilds expansion, are now integrated into the game, adding a dynamic element to the terrain. These updates required striking a balance between maintaining the original Horizon Zero Dawn aesthetic and using the latest technology for greater visual fidelity, says lead technical artist Sander Bronkhorst.

One of the most important features of the remaster is the addition of more than 10 hours of new motion capture data for conversations, which raises it to the level of Horizon Forbidden West. This improvement makes character interactions more fluid and expressive, supported by new facial animations and improved camera work. According to Senior Technical Artist Mark Baselmans, Nixxes produced custom tools to simplify the integration of these new animations, ensuring they were in keeping with the overall cinematic quality of the game.

Lighting has also been revised, both in world exploration and in cutscenes. The lighting system now includes physics-based display values, which adjust light intensity and improve atmospheric effects such as fog and sunlight, contributing to the realism of the game. Lighting during the talks received special attention, with more sophisticated equipment being used that allows greater control and consistency in the scenes.

Character models, including Aloy, have been significantly improved. Visual improvements such as more detailed hair textures and skin colors bring characters to life that dynamically react to the game’s environmental conditions, such as the weather. Blankens highlights that these changes are inspired by the original concept art, ensuring that the character designs remain faithful while benefiting from visual improvements.

For existing owners of Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition, the remaster will be available as a digital upgrade for €9.99, providing an affordable way to access these improvements. Pre-orders are open now, with the full release scheduled for late October on PS5 and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store.