This week at CES, Sony revealed that it is adding more video games to its already large list of adaptations, including Guerrilla Games’. The horizon franchise. After the planned Netflix series was dropped following allegations of abuse against showrunner Steve Blackman, Sony decided to turn it into a feature film.
Among the lineup of the original PlayStation team, The horizon it takes a strange place. Although its two flagship games appear to have sold well, the series has gained an online reputation as an “industrial complex” developed by PlayStation Studios CEO Hermen Hulst, who once managed Guerrilla as it did. The horizon Zero Dawn. There’s also the usual backlash against Sony’s attempts to grow anything into a franchise, too The horizon You are sure to take steps to increase it. Along with a third single-player game in development, there was a game The cry of the Mountain VR game, at least two rumored multiplayer spinoffs—one co-op, one MMO—along with last year’s double whammy of a Lego spinoff game and a PlayStation 5 re-release of the original game . Next to Naughty Dog’s For our last, this might be PlayStation’s most persistent franchise in terms of constantly reminding you that it exists, and if you know how people feel about that franchise’s tendency to not go away, you’ll know that’s far from commendable.
The horizon it has always been an odd duck, much to its credit when it exists. Previous PS titles of the first group as God of War Ragnarök or Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 they came out during busy times, but at least they had the ability to carve out their niche. Seeing promos of Kratos and Atreus taking down a wolf, or the two Spideys doing the same with Venom, made you want to set aside their time. PlayStation makes blockbuster games with those two titles, as well as For our last, command your attention like blockbuster movies often do, whether they come in summer or Christmas time. To Guerrilla’s credit, both are fundamental The horizon The games tried to attract the same attention, only their intensity was completely, pleasantly reduced.
Zero Dawn was released in February 2017, three days before the Nintendo Switch launched alongside The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The impact of that game can only be described as meteoric, both for Nintendo and the industry as a whole. Wild Spirit changed the way critics and gamers viewed games from that particular franchise and open world titles in general, and dominated much of the conversation in 2017. Come 2022, Guerrilla is unleashed Horizon Forbidden West, released a full week early Elden Ring. Love breathing, Frockware’s gothic roguelike was a game changer that people couldn’t stop talking about, sucking all the oxygen in the room. It helped that the profile of things from Factory grew throughout the 2010s because of it Dark Souls games, 2019 Sekiro: Shadows Die Double, and a PS4 minigame named after it Blood.
So yeah, things never went in Horizon’s photo is quickly becoming popular, and sometimes it can feel like it’s a step or three behind the open-time people or RPGs. But the games are great in their own right. Zero Dawn again The Forbidden West both were considered worthy critically and commercially, and if anything, their ability to persevere despite being frustrated by intense competition may have endeared them even more to players. This series is no mean feat among the PlayStation pantheon—that honor, depending on who you ask, could go to him. Days Gone-but managed to feel like one in part because of how different it is from its first-party peers. In 2017, the latest Unusual 4 and those who come love it God of War or Marvel’s Spider-Man it had a built-in audience that all had an idea of ​​what to expect. The horizon was a significant departure for Guerrilla, which had spent the late 00s and early 2010s in its series of The Killzone shooters, so the pivot from military sci-fi to post-apocalypse thriller was attention-grabbing.
There is always something compelling about it The horizon that resonates well with the audience, as the series continues to tap into the divide between Indigenous and non-native. Maybe it was the look of the robotic animals or the fun of scoring them, or it was the games that took the most bonkers (but still reasonable) out of their stories. It could also be the lead series Aloy, which came to the fore as triple-A developers were starting a new, ongoing (and increasingly diverse) wave of female-led mega-games. That it took almost a decade and the public criticism against E3 2014 for studios to make games with more women … it’s very depressing, but even so, this is how things tried. Guerrilla gave PlayStation a first-party franchise driven primarily by Aloy’s relationships, both platonic and romantic, with women of different stripes, and that approach has become part of the triple-A playbook.
For a solid amount of general interest Horizon’s photo able to build, investing in that makes sense. But there are challenges ahead for these various projects, namely the growing risk of multiplayer games going forward and Sony’s tendency to get in the way of their movies. So far, the series has faced off against two major gaming competitors, but those are different monsters compared to an entire genre that slowly closes in on itself or a parent company that reverses its previously (and soundly) set in stone. However things are moving, at least we can not got Guerrilla caught in a loop when it rebooted and remade the games half a decade ago? Please?
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