Behind the Scenes of Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered: How Nixxes and Guerrilla Brought the World to Life
The highly anticipated Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered has been reimagined for PS5 and PC, featuring groundbreaking enhancements in visuals, sound, and gameplay. Developed in collaboration between Nixxes and Guerrilla, this remaster aims to provide players with an enriched experience while staying true to the beloved original. Let's dive into some of the fascinating improvements made by the Nixxes team.
Breathing New Life Into Nature
Nature plays a pivotal role in the Horizon Zero Dawn universe, especially the foliage that defines the post-apocalyptic world. To elevate these natural elements, the remaster incorporates cutting-edge procedural technology and redesigned shaders. According to Senior Environment Artist Patrick Blankenzee, hundreds of plants, bushes, and trees were upgraded to mirror the visual standard of Horizon Forbidden West. The team also paid special attention to biomes like the rainforest, significantly improving biodiversity, particularly along riverbanks, to match the original concept art.
Julian Hofman, another Environment Artist at Nixxes, remarked that this enhanced foliage helps the game feel more alive. From moss-covered surfaces to denser forests, the world now aligns more closely with the vision set by Horizon Forbidden West.
Enhancing NPC Realism and Immersion
Another standout feature is the enrichment of Horizon Zero Dawn's living world. Senior Technical Game Designer Brian van Nunen explains how the additional memory of the PS5 allowed the team to populate cities, villages, and outposts with more NPCs. Characters now have varied schedules and increased interactivity, making cities like Meridian feel bustling and realistic.
Nixxes’ team even added small, charming details, such as a woman feeding geese at a well, which reuses an existing animation creatively. This attention to detail deepens the immersion, encouraging players to explore these vibrant spaces.
Terrain Overhaul and Building Blocks
For the remaster, Nixxes focused on enhancing terrain and building materials, incorporating features like deformable snow and sand. Senior Technical Artist Sander Bronkhorst notes that new materials from Horizon Forbidden West were utilized to replace the original textures. This overhaul led to remaking environments like Meridian and Daytower from scratch, using new high-resolution textures and geometries that better reflect the world’s intricacies.
Buildings received particular attention, with custom tools designed to enhance geometry and create more detailed structures. The result? Players can now see bricks and other materials in much higher definition, further bringing the ruins of a long-lost civilization to life.
Livelier Conversations Through Mocap
Nixxes also improved conversations by incorporating over 10 hours of new motion-capture data. This livelier animation, directed and captured by Guerrilla, adds emotional depth to the game's 300 conversations and 3,100 dialogue options. Senior Technical Artist Mark Bazelmans describes the development of custom pipelines to integrate and refine this new mocap, allowing animators to work efficiently on enhancing expressions and gestures in both conversations and cinematics.
Lighting the Way
Lighting plays a vital role in setting the mood of Horizon Zero Dawn. Nixxes Lighting Artists worked alongside Guerrilla to recreate iconic atmospheres using technology from Horizon Forbidden West. Nixxes Senior Lighting Artist Myvanwy Broers shared that world lighting was rebalanced to match the physically based rendering (PBR) system, giving areas such as caves and ruins greater depth and realism.
For cinematics, the lighting setup was revamped from the ground up. New rigs with five lights instead of two now highlight characters more dramatically, creating more visually appealing moments.
Elevating Character Models
Character models in Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered have received a significant upgrade. Enhancements to skin tones, hair quality, and outfits give characters a new level of detail. Using techniques learned from Horizon Forbidden West, Nixxes brought the characters closer to modern standards, ensuring they react better to lighting, look more lifelike, and fit seamlessly into the reimagined world.
From meticulously improved foliage to more engaging conversations and striking lighting effects, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered brings a wealth of new experiences for both longtime fans and newcomers. With the combined efforts of Nixxes and Guerrilla, this remaster is more than just a visual upgrade—it’s a testament to the love and care that went into preserving and enhancing the magic of the original game.