This week, several screenshots and some gameplay footage from a Horizon multiplayer game leaked online. The leaked content is supposedly from an alpha build of this multiplayer project, dating back to sometime in the Summer of 2020.
A multiplayer Horizon has been in the cards for a while now at Guerrilla Games. In December 2022, the studio announced that they had a team working on an online project that would feature "a new cast of characters and a unique stylized look." It was that "stylized look" that confused a few people given that the Horizon games have always leaned rather heavily into the more grounded and realistic visual designs.
With this leak, we now have a better idea of the sort of direction Guerrilla meant by stylized look. This leak appeared on both Reddit and ResetEra. Reddit is where the video footage was shown and ResetEra is where the screenshots popped up. What was shown features models that seem like they would be more at home in Sea of Thieves than a Horizon game.
As this is all from a mid-2020 build of the project, there is really no saying just how different the project looks now in 2023. It's also not particularly clear what this multiplayer project will end up being. Guerrilla wanted some sort of a co-op mode as far back as the original Horizon: Zero Dawn. There is also a potential MMO that Guerrilla Games teased back in 2022.
It's also possible that this multiplayer project could be something similar to Monster Hunter. A piece of concept art was pulled from the alpha build in which the footage and screenshots were taken from. In this art, it sure looks as though players would be teaming up with other players to take down big robotic dinosaurs.
