STACK #149 Mar 2017

GAMES FEATURE

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What exactly are the challenges in bringing an entirely new game like Horizon Zero Dawn to life?We spoke with senior producer at Guerrilla Games, Joel Eschler, about the nitty gritty of crafting a new IP. Words Alesha Kolbe

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those early visions of her, and her and HZD had always just gone hand-in-hand with each other. Internally, everyone’s been really happy, and we’re ecstatic with the response to Aloy so far.” While the inclusion of this strong, female presence may have seemed straightforward to the studio, that certainly doesn’t mean that the inception of a new IP is without its trials and tribulations. Eschler explains that the team faced a number of challenges during production. “Internally, the first big challenge is getting buy-in from the team. For a game that’s going to be in development for so long, there are always risks involved, especially when it’s a new intellectual property. For us to take on something so much bigger than what we’d previously done was a big ask. The first step was definitely convincing everyone in the studio that the next six or so years of their lives was going to be worth it. The games industry can be a difficult place to work in at times. It was made

It was cool of Sony to sign up to us choosing the most difficult pitch that we could come up with.” Once they had decided on the direction they wanted to take the game, they needed a protagonist. According to Eschler, Aloy was

M eet Aloy. A huntress estranged from her people, she must fight

to regain their trust and save her world from the Machines that now ravage the post- apocalyptic terrain of Horizon Zero Dawn. Back before development even began on the new project, the team at Guerrilla were itching to create something different to their Killzone games. They wanted something new, and Horizon Zero Dawn [HZD] was the last man standing after a exhaustive pitching war. “There were a whole bunch of different ideas at the start,” acknowledges senior producer Joel Eschler. “A lot of the team had been working on fairly similar style games. We wanted to challenge ourselves. HZD was the most difficult pitch, but it was the one that resonated most. There was this fascination with a lot of members of the team, and a lot of people in general at the time, with the whole ‘what if?’ scenario: what if there was this apocalypse? The artists wanted to create a beautiful world that was kind of broken, and an apocalypse was the perfect setting for that.

Joel Eschler

We wanted to challenge ourselves. HZD was the most difficult pitch

one of the most organic decisions the team has ever made. “For HZD, there were these three pillars we were working with, even in the pitching phase. First was that it had this kind of natural, lush environment that has taken over the world, and then there were of course the Machines, and finally there was Aloy. She was less of a conscious effort, or a focus-tested decision, in that she existed for as long as HZD existed. Everyone in the studio just kind of latched on to

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MARCH 2017

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