Upon attending Guerrilla Games’ studio in Amsterdam last week, I got a studio tour which showcased how one of the Horizon: Zero Dawn robot creatures are created from pre-concept, all the way through to appearing in the final game, with artificial intelligence and sound effects.
However, the most interesting thing to come out of the tour was the fact that one of the robots takes heavy inspiration from both a Kangaroo and an Emu in combat. The robot named the Bellowback, which you can see below, and takes heavy inspiration from an Ant Eater too, with its fire-breathing snout.
One of the character artists showed us a video that he took inspiration from which was an iconic video featuring a Kangaroo and an Emu fighting. The specific instances that he showed us on-screen matched up almost perfectly with an Emu. The violent motion that an Emu makes with its neck whilst attacking, was the perfect motion that the developers wanted, before the Bellowback would spurt out fire.
Further to this, it also has a long tail which is akin to that of the Kangaroo. Thankfully, it doesn’t hop around too much.
Unfortunately in my gameplay, I was unable to perfectly get the beast to do what I wanted. This was especially because there was 3 of them and only one Aloy, and they’re incredibly tough to beat.
There’s over 24 robots in the game, which are all based on real creatures such as birds, deer, wolves, eagles and even a crocodile.
Horizon: Zero Dawn releases exclusively on PlayStation 4 on March 1st. Press Start visited Guerrilla Games in Amsterdam as a guest of PlayStation to go hands-on with Horizon: Zero Dawn.
You can find more of our impressions HERE.
