While we’re sure there are a plethora of reasons why Horizon Forbidden West has looked to leave the Playstation 4 behind for the upcoming Burning Shores expansion, Guerrilla Games has now published a new Playstation blog post, touching on one of the biggest reasons why Playstation 4 won’t get the add-on after launch.
And it is because of the clouds that make up Los Angeles that Aloy will travel across. We’re told that the development team has created and used new techniques to offer richer and more detailed cloud systems, and that the older console simply couldn’t handle the data needed to render the clouds they wanted to serve. Andrew Schneider, Lead FX Artist at Guerrilla said:
The cloud systems that we developed for Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West were fast because they didn’t store clouds as 3D objects, but rather instructions on creating 3D clouds from limited 2D information. The PlayStation 5 can handle larger datasets. So, after Forbidden West wrapped, we set to work writing a voxel cloud renderer prototype that could live up to our standards for quality, and actually allow the player to fly through highly detailed cloud formations.
Aside from just looking better, the clouds in the Burning Shores expansion are planned to be explorable as well. Schneider goes on to say:
It was important to us to make the experience fun and joyful on its own outside of the main gameplay. The clouds are not simply immersive scenery but an explorable landscape in themselves. Among the clouds, players will be able to explore tunnels, caves, and other surprises that make for fun flying.
Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores is coming to Playstation 5 on April 19th.
