STACK March 2017 Issue 149

52 / 97

Meet 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.
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
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
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
We wanted to challenge
ourselves. HZD was the
most difficult pitch
50 MARCH 2017
visit GAMES FEATURE
Broaden
your horizons
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
Joel Eschler