Horizon Forbidden West released on February 18 to excellent critical reception as both fans and critics alike heaped praise on the game. Players have commended the significant amount of detail in the world of Horizon Forbidden West as many of them have noticed small details such as the way Aloy reacts to warmer environments in the game.
It has been a while since a particularly detailed game has come along with the most recent most likely being Red Dead Redemption 2. The game had a ridiculous amount of attention to detail, one notable example of this is the way in which molotov cocktails explode in Red Dead Redemption 2. A fan of the game used photo mode and was able to see glass shards exploding and bouncing back up into midair, with each individual shard refracting light realistically.
Horizon Forbidden West seems to be nearly as spectacularly detailed as Rockstar's cowboy game, as one player noticed that the protagonist sweats in real-time. It seems that when Aloy is in the warmer areas of the game sweat forms and pours down her face. This is an impressive detail as it shows how Guerrilla Games put the horsepower of the PS5 to good use when designing Horizon Forbidden West.
One fan even showed in a recent video that Horizon Forbidden West's visual details have actually been improved when compared to the demonstration of the game shown at a State of Play in 2021. Guerrilla Games seems to have particularly improved the visual quality of water in the game, as the retail version of Horizon Forbidden West is a deeper blue and reflects light more realistically than in the State of Play demonstration.
Despite the high level of visual detail in the game, Horizon Forbidden West still runs so well on the PS5 that Guerrilla Games had to slow down its load times. The developer decided to do this as the PS5's SSD did not allow the game to load long enough for players to be able to read tips on the loading screen. Guerilla Games also decided to implement a skip button in the case that players were not interested in the tips and wanted to get back to the action quicker.
The impressive state of the game can likely be attributed to the fact that Horizon Forbidden West was delayed to avoid overtime crunch. This allowed Guerrilla Games all the time it needed to release the game in a polished and visually impressive state.
Horizon Forbidden West is available now on PS4 and PS5.