Guerilla details the new tech being added with Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores

Despite being a cross-gen title, Sony announced that Horizon Forbidden West’s Burning Shores expansion would be released exclusively for the PlayStation 5, with the team promising that its current-gen exclusivity would allow for the implementation of new technology. Now, ahead of the expansion’s launch next month, the team has detailed some of this tech.

Taking to the PlayStation Blog, Guerilla Games’ Senior Community Manager ‘Narae Lee’ spoke on the new cloud tech being implemented with this expansion thanks to the added power of the PS5, saying:

“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.”

Dubbed ‘Frankencloudscapes’, this new tech introduces “large cloud formations so that the sky could be treated like as a landscape would by a terrain modeler” meaning that “the cloudscape acted as both a background element and an environment to explore.”

We saw similar advancements with the expansion for 2017’s Horizon Zero Dawn, with the DLC introducing impressive snow deformation for added immersion. It seems the team at Guerilla Games are taking a similar approach with Burning Shores – except in focusing purely on the PS5 they are able to not only improve visuals but the world design and gameplay ramifications itself.

It will be interesting to see what is in store when Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores releases on the 19th of April. The full blog post – including much more in-depth details on the cloud tech – can be found HERE.

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KitGuru says: What did you think of Forbidden West? Are you excited for Burning Shores? Let us know down below.

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