Guerrilla Games applied self-critique to their own game.

Back in February, we wrote about how the PlayStation 4-exclusive game received more than 7.6 million sales, which is an outstanding result. (However, we believe that God of War will reach higher figures than Horizon Zero Dawn.) The success of the development was preceded by failure, though…

Initially, after Guerrilla submitted a prototype that was developed for two years, Sony questioned its feasibility, scope, as well as the appeal to the players. Angie Smets, Horizon Zero Dawn’s executive producer, talked about this subject at Nordic Game Conference (which was covered by Control Online in Dutch and translated to English by WCCFTech.) „We didn’t see this coming because we had become blind to the game’s weak points,” Smets said.

Horizon Zero Dawn was submitted simultaneously with Dark Silence, a brawler. The prototype’s world was even bigger than the retail version: it was more extensive than Grand Theft Auto V, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, and World of Warcraft combined! The result was that the team lost focus during development. The playtesting, which started after the game’s E3 2015 announcement: the testers found the game „beyond boring!”

Luckily, Guerrilla turned things around. Will they announce the sequel at E3 this year?

Source: WCCFTech