Game director for Horizon Forbidden West, Mathijs de Jonge, says that developing the game for both the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 has not been limiting "in any way."
de Jonge shared this sentiment in an interview with HardwareZone. He was asked if there was any big differences between the PS4 and PS5 versions of Horizon Forbidden West, and if developing for both platforms at the same time was holding them back at all.
"I don't think the cross-generation development was limiting in any way," de Jonge said. "When we started with the concept of this game, we had so many great ideas that ended up being included - to the point that we didn't really think about hardware limitations or anything, we just wanted to design a really nice, unique experience for the player. An awesome adventure. That's how we also brainstormed all the quests and events the player is going to go through."
"I think that the big delta between these two consoles, apart from the 3D audio, quick loading and DualSense of course, is on the graphical side of things. On the PlayStation 5, we can add so much more detail graphically. We can see the tiny hairs on Aloy’s face, for example. You can also see a ton of detail from far away."
"I think that the big delta between these two consoles, apart from the 3D audio, quick loading and DualSense of course, is on the graphical side of things. On the PlayStation 5, we can add so much more detail graphically. We can see the tiny hairs on Aloy’s face, for example. You can also see a ton of detail from far away."
On the other side of the coin are those that welcome these cross-gen releases with open arms. Next-gen consoles are still very much in short supply and will be for the foreseeable future. The weird thing is that these cross-generation releases really did not seem to be as big of an issue back in the transition from PlayStation 3/Xbox 360 to the PlayStation 4/Xbox One.