Gamescom 2015: Sony Had Long and Intensive Discussions Over Horizon: Zero Dawn

Potential game of the year?

So a studio with a proven track record making a third person action game with RPG elements and a a fairly large nod to Monster Hunter is a risk? Really? We're hardly pushing the envelope here.

Still nice of a major games company to admit they put profit above creativity and allowing developers to be true to an artistic vision. Is this the same company that brought us Vib Ribbon, Parappa the Rapper or the Souls franchise?

In truth Sony knew that it was financially risky to fund another pretty and playable but fundamentally meh Killzone game.

Cynicism aside though it does look amazing and I cannot wait to play it.

The fact that you play as a female protagonist was the first thing that peaked my interests. I pretty much always play as a female in RPG's when giving the choice.

I dunno. It is a 3rd person shooter so calling it something "totally different" is a stretch in my opinion. Clearly Media Molecule is now where all of Sony's real creative risk is invested. I'm very much looking forward to seeing more on their next project.

@dnky666 Vib Ribbon only released in Japan and Pal regions and was a commercial failure in Europe. Due to this the spinoff games vib rabble or something was only released in Japan.

The same person who made parrapa the rappa made vib ribbon initially as a side project for a character to be put commercials due to the unique look of parappa the rappa. It then became a game in its own right. I bought vib ribbon at launch and I had little to no money at the time so buying it was a big deal and done some research, ps mags at the time gushed over the game pre release 'it will change the industry'.. Unfortunately its one of the worst games ever. Your cds making levels just didn't work cohesively and its just no fun at all. The game came in with a wave of enthusiasm but I'm sure magazines gave it 6 or 7s unlike the 9s for parappa. I can remember the bitter taste clearly, honestly the game is terrible.

To be fair your avatar is a Prinny so you know good games. But vib ribbon looks like it was made by the team behind tower of guns.

I know I will catch he'll for this, but would be nice if there were a character creation element, or even just a choice of male or female. For whatever reason just not feeling the main character even though the game looks amazing. Maybe it's just me but I would prefer a male lead for this type of game. Let the bashing commence.

It looks like story will be non existant here. Judging how they developed main protagonist =).

It's cave (wo)men fighting goddamned ZOIDS! How could this ever fail?

I like Killzone but Shadowfall bored the socks off of me, both online and the campaign, and stripping out spiltscreen was a terrible choice. This looks far more interesting, I'll be interested to see where they take it.

We could have the next super iconic female protagonist here. Remember Lara Croft when the first Tomb Raider games came out? Incredibly inspired. In my house it was either a new Tomb Raider game or Final Fantasy game that had us jumping up and down in excitement. Not seen much of this game yet, but it looks like it has a lot of potential.

@themcnoisy Thought I was the only old person round these parts. Cool. I cited Vib Ribbon as an example of a major studio releasing something that was different and adventurous. I certainly wasn't citing it as an example of fun and game design although comparing it to Tower of Guns seems a little harsh. That and it was the game that Shawn Layden cited at his first E3 to win "hardcore gamers" over and show how Sony differ as a company and he as CEO or whatever he is.
I just though the comments gave a mixed message. On one hand Sony are "dropping the mic" at E3, pushing their indie message, employing Executive of the people Adam Boyes and all round trying to seem the very antithesis of their competition. Full disclosure I own and equally love ALL the consoles. So to then reinforce in comments to the press how non gaming money orientated suits have a say in the creative process seems decidedly off message. Surely he would have been better saying that both Sony and Guerilla were excited to break the cycle of the annualised franchise. Not for Sony a 5th FPS (A slight dig at Halo? Surely not) but instead they were letting one of their flagship developers introduce a new, exciting and forward thinking IP. Doesn't that seem a bit less passive aggressive than what he actually said. Although after the mauling The Order:1886 got you can understand that they may be a bit nervous.

I did find it a bit odd that they said developers like Naughty Dog and Media Molecule have creative freedom and yet Guerilla Games had to have a big discussion about Horizon. I wonder if Sony had a big discussion with ND when they opted to take a break from Uncharted with the Last of Us and lets be honest 'Media Molecules' games are are not what you call 'expected' or 'formulaic'.
I still can't get over the fact that a female lead character was actually questioned!
I like the fact that Sony Developers are not tied to a franchise exclusively, that they have the freedom to create other games too. Unlike MS with 343, the Coalition etc. Whilst its good to keep existing franchises going, I think its bad for creativity if the developers are 'locked' into a franchise. Its slightly different with Call of Duty as the 3 separate studios have each other to push them and draw inspiration from. For example as bad as AW is, Sledgehammers 'Uplink' is now in Black Ops 3 - something Treyarch would never have thought of.
I am sure that Horizon: Zero Dawn and Guerilla Games experiences with making this will have a benefit to Killzone in the future too. I do wonder if Sony will feel the need to have 'big discussions' with them when Horizon is a big success..

@Splat I am the exact opposite.
In fact, playing as a female in RPGs actually detracts from the enjoyment.
I enjoy Tomb Raider and the like, but in a game designed around associating with the character, such as in RPGs, I will always choose a male.
Just my preference.
Which is probably why I have little interest in this game.

@professorhat Dude are you seriously calling this a 3rd paerson shooter ? There's no guns in this game.

@Dohv Yes I am. What would you call it when you walk around "shooting" at creatures? What you're shooting them with is irrelevant, the mechanics of the game at its heart is a 3rd person shooter.

@professorhat Thirdperson shooter you mean a thidperson game so skyrim was a thirdperson shooter 2 you had bow and arrows there???

@BAMozzy I think they all have to make a good sales pitch to get there games funded the prices of a new big IP are insane now.

@Flaming_Kaiser Honestly! I'm not having this ridiculous argument any more. Go away, watch that E3 trailer again, and please then come back and inform me what genre this game is if it's not mainly a 3rd person shooter?

@Flaming_Kaiser I know a lot of money is involved in the development but I found it funny that in the interview they specifically said they let Media Molecule do their own thing, have basically total creative freedom and yet had to have lengthy discussions with Guerilla Games over Horizon. I guess there is less 'competition' to MM's games as they are quite 'unique' but 'Dreams' (for example) is still a new IP too.

@professorhat By that argument, the Witcher 3 is just a 'hack and slash' game, Fallout 3 and 4 are what? first and third person shooter? These are all RPG's same as Horizon will be. Just because the combat style may be third or even first person, they are quite different from those. As Fallout can be played in first person, does that make it the same as CoD or BF? Pretty much every RPG these days has some form of combat - whether it has a shooting, brawling or Hack and Slash but that doesn't 'define' their genre but may help define their combat style.

Horizon is an RPG in terms of genre - same as Fallout is an RPG - and like other RPG's it has a combat style more akin to a third person shooter.

@BAMozzy Clearly lines are being blurred in genres these days. In my opinion, in a game where you will mostly be shooting at creatures from a 3rd person perspective, I would classify that game as a 3rd person shooter. Even though there will be RPG elements to the game, I would still classify that as the main genre. Perhaps others will play it differently, and would thus classify it differently. After all, you could easily just roam around the Far Cry 4 world, and not shoot a thing. Would that not still make it a 1st person shooter - I'd disagree, but hey, toma"y"to / toma"r"to.

The reason I suggested this argument is ridiculous is it's completely irrelevant to the point I was making. I said, "It is a 3rd person shooter so calling it something "totally different" is a stretch in my opinion". Okay, you'd call it an RPG - fine. So substitute that with "It is an RPG game so calling it something "totally different" is a stretch in my opinion".

Everyone happy now? Jeez Louise!

@professorhat The video could of course be slightly misleading. The classification of the genre though is an RPG but if we had seen some 'wandering' around and maybe more of the crafting and other RPG elements, it wouldn't have been quite so 'spectacular'. In the reveal they only showed a 7min 'snippet' of game and in that they had to try and sell us the game. I doubt we would have enjoyed it as much if they had showed a dialogue based scene, a tribal village with maybe crafting and trading or even mostly 'menu's' I doubt it would have been so interesting or spectacular

@BAMozzy Agreed, but given Guerrilla Games' pedigree, I'd suggest the "shooter" aspect will be the main form of gameplay. Anyway, as I said in my last post, I really couldn't care less what genre it is, the point is it's hardly "completely new" and "totally different" from a creative perspective. To see that, we're really relying solely on Media Molecule now (from a Sony 1st party perspective).

@professorhat well I guess its almost impossible to come up with something 'totally' new without incorporating 'elements' from existing games - even Media Molecule's Little Big Planet and even Tearaway has Platformer elements that are not original. I expect Dreams will have some 'unoriginal' elements too.
Obviously a lot of games have 'multiple' genres combined in to make their game but each game these days have 'elements' from others. Even CoD has RPG elements but that doesn't make it an RPG

@BAMozzy I agree, it's not easy to come up with something totally new - I never said it was. But that doesn't mean it should therefore be okay to go around saying something is totally new, when it's clearly not. Even if this was something a bit new, whilst incorporating existing genres, I'd give the guy a break. But it's not, it's an RPG cum 3rd person shooter - there's nothing new at all about it.

LittleBigPlanet, whilst essentially being a platformer, did revolutionise the player's ability to actually create their own levels from scratch, without needing a year's course in computer programming. That was something totally new. Horizon, whilst it looks like it's going to be a great game, really doesn't offer anything like that. Unless of course there's something amazing which hasn't been revealed yet, in which case I'll happily eat my words

@professorhat Whilst certain game play aspects may not be 'unique', I cannot think of any other 3rd person prehistoric style RPG with obviously advanced technology in the Dinosaur Robots. Whilst there has been a few post-post apocalyptic games in the past, I bet the 'story' will all be new. Its still an all-new IP too.

Little Big Planets level creator was not totally new either - other games have enabled players to create there own levels before and they certainly didn't require any programming knowledge. I guess the ease to share those levels which was more down to the advances in technology and internet made that more popular but games before certainly had creation tools in them to design and play your own 'levels'. Even still its just a 'Platformer' which certainly wasn't 'new'

I guess if you want to be cynical, then we have NO new games to play. Every game has some elements that we have seen in gaming before. Personally I am really looking forward to playing this. I want to see why civilisation has been set back so far and why there are obviously technologically advanced creatures roaming now and experience the story that has been created to explain this. I am also interested to see how they handle the RPG elements too. Whilst 'shooting' may be a part of this, I doubt it will be the over-riding gane-play aspect - in the same way that Fallout is not specifically a 'shooter' either.

@BAMozzy Yes there had been level creators in games before. But nothing like the scale of what you could do in LittleBigPlanet. You could literally make your own games in it (one person made a clone of Gradius in it!). If you haven't seen them, I'd recommend looking them up. That was revolutionary and totally new (in my opinion).

Horizon doesn't look like it will offer anything like this in terms of originality (though as I said, if they reveal something that is completely new, I will happily eat my words - I just seriously doubt it's going to happen). And that's not a bad thing - I have no issues with this. Not every game has to be completely new, by a long stretch. But if it isn't offering anything creatively different, then don't go around bandying those terms (again, in my opinion).

Dreams looks to be the next MM incarnation of this originality, and I'm really looking forward to seeing that!

(original reply deleted, and this one edited as I was being needlessly silly with my own self righteousness!)

As I said before, there has been level creators and even game creating software in a game that maybe Little Big Planet borrowed from. However as most of these were before everyone had online and could 'share' their creations, these were limited to your own imagination rather than the community. It maybe the first also on console. It wasn't that revolutionary really as its basically a 'mod' tool.

Horizon may have some generic aspects associated with an RPG and Third Person Shooters but like I said before, name one that has a prehistoric type setting in a post-post-apocalyptic world with robotic dinosaurs. The story, I bet, will also be unique and 'new'. Its difficult from the brief video to ascertain what else they could be bringing to the game but it is still an 'all new' IP.

Looking back at some of the best games (those that have won awards for best games), all had some element that had been seen before. Often though, its not just the game mechanics, be that a third or first person style with shooter, RPG or linear, but the unique 'story' that combined with those created something special. You can't tell me that the Last of Us for example is 'new' with its game mechanics itself, but because the Story and world created were incredible, it sets this game apart from many others with similar mechanics. The same can be said for MANY others too. I can't think of any game in the last 10 years to be totally unique but I can think of many that have given me a new experience - even if that is 'just' the 'story'!

Dreams does look like it offers something 'different' from a lot of other games but it also looks like it borrows elements from others too. It looks like it borrows from 'art' based software just for starters. Again its to early to see exactly what the game offers - no doubt it will be a 'new' experience - but I bet it will still have certain aspects from other games too.

My whole point is that just because a game has elements, like an RPG or third person, it doesn't mean that the experience itself can not be 'new'. Just because I have played Fallout 3 - an RPG with 3rd person shooter mechanics (I know it can be first person too) doesn't mean that Horizon: Zero Dawn will be the 'same' experience. Much the same way that because I played a CoD game, BioShock wasn't the same experience, or Tomb Raider and Uncharted, Gears of War, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier and Max Payne - similar elements but the story, the character interactions etc all created a 'new' experience.

Its the same with all media, In terms of movies, there are certain genres (Action, comedy, love, horror etc) that have kind of generic plots or Music (Rock, Pop, RnB etc) that have a lot of similarities too and there is 'crossovers' in both of these (action/comedy, RomComs, rock/rap etc) but just because you have played/watched/listened to any of these genres before, it doesn't mean they can't offer something 'new'.

For Guerilla Games it is a whole new project and something they have never tried before. Its quite a departure from Killzone too. I cannot think of any Sony owned studio making a RPG of this type (I know they have had exclusive JRPG's before) but again I stil can't think of any that have this setting or combination of prehistoric type humans up against technologically advanced robotic dinosaurs in a post-post-apocalyptic world which of course opens up a lot of story possibilities too.