Update: A PlayStation PR reached out to GamingBolt and clarified that the “second” project was merely a concept and not something that was under active development. We have updated the original post and the headline to correctly indicate this information.
Original Post:
PS4 exclusive Horizon Zero Dawn looks visually stunning, specially on the PlayStation 4 Pro and the gameplay looks very intriguing as well. It’s quite obvious that Guerrilla Games have put a lot of work and effort into the game. However in order to give it their all to Horizon Zero Dawn, the developers had to cancel a concept for a second project it had.
In an interview with Gameinformer, Game Director Mathijs de Jonge revealed they initially had two prototypes, one was Horizon Zero Dawn, and another was an unknown concept. They also had several ideas pitched by staff, but Horizon Zero Dawn won out.
“[We] worked on those prototypes for like, half a year or so, and we did some testing with some external people from Sony, and internally as well and it was kind of 50-50 at some points,” he stated.
He further stated that they put these two on a graph and asked themselves what excites them the most and the answer was Horizon Zero Dawn. “It was certainly not the least risky, but definitely the one where everybody that saw the original pitch they said, well, we got to make this.”
“This is an action RPG. Open world. We didn’t have any tools. We didn’t have an engine that supported open world. At the same time it was such an exciting concept, so we canceled all work on the second project and continued just on Horizon [Zero Dawn].”
May be Guerrilla Games can pick up that canceled concept after Horizon Zero Dawn is done. Horizon comes out on March 3rd 2017 on the PlayStation 4.