Horizon Forbidden West’s first (and only announced) major DLC expansion is coming very soon, with Burning Shores set to launch on April 19th.
One of the key details for this particular expansion is that it’s exclusive to the PlayStation 5, despite the base game still being available on the last-generation PS4.
While the PS5 version of Forbidden West is easily one of the most visually stunning video game experiences around and includes a number of new-gen graphical features, the game was also still designed around optimisation for the older hardware which means that the folks at Guerrilla weren’t firing on all cylinders when it came to presenting something only the PS5 was capable of. The good news this time around is that Burning Shores will do things that weren’t possible before, as evidenced in a short chat with Game Director, Mathijs de Jonge over on the PlayStation Blog.
When quizzed about how the studio is taking advantage of the power of the PS5 for Burning Shores, de Jonge says:
“One of our key priorities with Horizon games is to add a ton of detail and richness to our environments. On Horizon Forbidden West, everything we added or increased was something we’d need to have a plan around how to optimize for PS4 as well. On Burning Shores, since we can just focus on PS5, we’ve been able to charge forward and we’re really excited about what we’ve been able to pull off in creating this stunning post-post-apocalyptic version of Los Angeles.
The cityscape ruins of LA and its surroundings are highly detailed and require a lot of processing power as well as fast streaming technology to run properly; especially when the player is flying over the lands and can see a lot at once. One of the settlements is situated in and around those detailed ruins, and we were able to squeeze a lot of activity in there.
Another notable one is a particular battle scene that requires a LOT of memory and processing power! To achieve this grand vision both technically and creatively, we definitely were thankful for the many advantages that the PS5 hardware brings.”
Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores is coming to PS5 on April 19th, 2023.
