Running for 24 minutes, the above video from PlayStation features Naughty Dog Creative Director and Writer Neil Druckmann interviewing Guerrilla Games Managing Director Hermen Hulst about Horizon Zero Dawn, Killzone, and the studio.
“Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann sat down with Guerrilla Games managing director Hermen Hulst to discuss the studio’s shift away from Killzone, and the long process of bringing Horizon Zero Dawn to life,” the video’s description says. “Learn how the game changed through the course of its development, how Aloy came together, and what Neil thinks of the game.”
Beginning at 1:10 of the video, Hulst talks about how Guerrilla listened to 45 pitches from the team in late 2010, and ultimately took two forward: the idea that would ultimately become Horizon Zero Dawn and a steampunk idea that was similar to The Order: 1886.
Hulst said:
One was this steampunk idea that is remarkably similar to [The Order: 1886]. So very similar in many ways – the setting of it, some of the ideas for the gameplay of it as well. We took that and we actually transformed that a little bit more into a superhero kind of thing. It was closer to home for us in terms of the core systems being more in line with a linear experience. And the other one was Horizon Zero Dawn.
Back in 2012, Guerrilla’s Jan-Bart van Beek revealed that the steampunk pitch went from being a Steampunk Sherlock Holmes fighting monsters like Frankenstein, to a retro-futuristic ’70s-punk title called Dark Science where you play as a guy named Jake Crowbar and fight monsters. van Beek added that the idea ultimately didn’t pan out.
Also in the video, Hulst mentions that the first prototype for Horizon had Killzone M82 guns in it, creating the Thunderjaw took a year and a half, and they were working on Horizon for about four years before being able to say anything to anyone.
A story expansion for Horizon Zero Dawn is currently in the works.
[Source: PlayStation Blog, IGN via NeoGAF]
