The Horizon games are set in a post-apocalyptic America, with Zero Dawn set in Colorado and Forbidden West in San Francisco.
However, gaming giant Tencent pitched Sony on an adaptation of the franchise that would take heroine Aloy to Asia.
The news comes courtesy of PlayStation’s lawsuit against the Chinese company, in which it’s accused the firm of plagiarising its property with Light of Motiram, an upcoming PS5 survival game with a remarkably similar art style.
Sony’s lawyers presented evidence of Tencent’s overall interest in the Horizon franchise, including the abovementioned pitch, which it ultimately passed on.
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The pitch itself is intriguing, though. It sounds like Tencent was positioning this as a mobile game, likely to appeal to the Asian market.
In it, it proposes the idea of Aloy travelling to a distant kingdom, recruited by a group known as the Orient. The proposed project would include an open world map inspired by Eastern aesthetics, and would have new “mechanimals” inspired by Asian lore, such as dragons.
One piece of artwork even shows the heroine scaling the Great Wall of China.
Sony ultimately passed on the pitch and now it finds itself locked in a legal battle with Tencent, but the idea of an Asian-infused Horizon is intriguing – even if it’s unlikely to ever happen at this stage.