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GAMES
How long has the game
been in development for?
JOEL ESCHLER:
The full
development of the game
was six years, but back at
the beginning it was just a
small team, initially around 6-30
people during the production. It wasn’t
until around after we really finished with
Killzone Shadowfall that the whole team
really jumped on HZD.
Can you tell us what the title means?
I definitely can’t. It’s something that
you’ll discover when you play the game - if
I gave that away now I would have some
very angry writers.
Was Aloy a female from the beginning?
From the very beginning, when the
pitches were being made, for Horizon
in particular there were these three
pillars. One was this kind of natural,
lush environment that has taken over
the world, and of course the machines.
Then there
was Aloy - she
was less of a
conscious effort
or a focus-tested
decision, than that
she existed for as
long as Horizon existed.
Everyone in the studio
just kind of latched on
to those early visions of
her. Internally, everyone’s
been really happy, and
we’re happy with the
response so far.
What was it like working with Ash
Burch?
Unfortunately, I didn’t actually directly
work with her. I’ve worked with her in
the past on the Borderlands games, and
she’s such a pro. She has this great kind
of range that she can just deploy willingly.
Some of the writers that were in the
recording room when the sessions were
going on just had really positive things to
say about her; she really helped bring Aloy
to life.
How did the story come to life?
There’s two stories in the game, in the
sense that our lead writer joined a little bit
after the main game started development;
there’s the background lore of this world,
what happened, who these tribes are, and
we built up those backstories so we
could build the concept art, to try and
We caught up with Guerrilla Games’ Joel Eschler to chat about
everything
Horizon Zero Dawn
in the lead-up to release.
Words
Alesha Kolbe
Joel Eschler