Since her introduction inside of Horizon: Zero Dawn back in 2017, Aloy has been a hot commodity as of late. The Nora brave has been featured in plenty of crossover events from hunting monsters in Capcom's wildly popular Monster Hunter World, to dropping in and building structures in Fortnite. Just recently, Aloy was featured in Genshin Impact as a special guest character, with access to a bow and gaining cryo abilities. As Aloy slowly nears her return to her own franchise in Horizon: Forbidden West, Guerrilla has given fans an update on how the popular PlayStation character has evolved.

In a new post on the PlayStation Blog, Guerrilla Community Lead Bo de Vries and Narrative Director Ben McCaw open up about Aloy's journey from Horizon: Zero Dawn to her upcoming game, both from a story perspective and also development as well. Mutliple teams were assigned to Aloy to attempt to balance the familiar aspects while also continuing to push the character forward. While a part of that was already shown with the redone combat mechanics, Guerrilla focused on more technical aspects like the rigging, animation, audio, lighting, and more to bring her to life on next-gen.

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In addition to moves and abilities, the blog post also goes into how Aloy's look has evolved as well. Obviously, with access to the more powerful PS5 specs, Aloy has gone under a few visual enhancements including more polygons to her character model. On a more technical level, Guerrilla has also been able to do more with every character in the game, including adding finer details like smoother contouring, the ability to add peach fuzz, and accurate materials expression.

horizon forbidden west aloy face detail

While the first Horizon game received some criticism for the way faces and expressions animated, Guerrilla has confirmed that the PS5 hardware has allowed the team to increase the number of skeletal joints in each character model. This in turn allows for much more realistic deformations and facial expressions, making them feel more credible and look more immersive than before.

horizon forbidden west aloy detail

Guerrilla also notes that the PlayStation 4 version of Horizon: Forbidden West has also been extensively tested. While it may not be able to boast the same visual push as its PS5 sibling, the team was able to find some unexplored resources to help push the character assets forward a bit from the first game.

Aloy's updated visual design wasn't always a hit with players, and came under controversy from those who didn't appreciate some of the more subtle changes. However, part of the issue was the comparisons were ebing made from last-gen screenshots and those from a next-gen machine, which boasts more polygons and access to better technology.

Horizon Forbidden West will release for PS4 and PS5 on February 18, 2022.

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Source: PlayStation Blog