Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered continues the trend of big first-party PlayStation games getting upgrades they may not actually need - but that's no slight on the work of the devs bringing these upgrades to life. An independent tech analysis of the new version suggests it's a major improvement, and one that almost feels like a proper remake.
"The changes are significant enough that I'm not even sure the word remaster is the correct one here," according to Digital Foundry's John Linneman. "Horizon Remastered reminds me more of Bluepoint's work on Shadow of the Colossus and Demon's Souls. Perhaps not that ambitious, but it's more in that ballpark than not. There's this sense that the team went through with a fine-tooth comb, and made sure they redid basically everything in the game to look properly modern."
The visual upgrades are subtle in some cases, but striking in others - the improved water effects, particularly the reflections, are a particular highlight. Terrain is now far more detailed, and the foliage has seen a big revamp, actually reacting to Aloy as she steps through it. The most noticeable differences are to character models, which seem to retain the same level of polygonal detail as the original, but now have much more realistic skin and hair, which makes a downright transformative difference. Plus there's a ton of new motion capture adding far more life to the game's basic cutscenes.
I'll admit that even as a proper graphics snob with a PS5 Pro pre-order in, there are points in the comparison footage where I'm having trouble telling the difference between old and new. But then there's a shot of a dialog sequence with character close-ups or a dip into the water and the difference looks night and day.
Horizon Zero Dawn was already a fantastic-looking game, and in the seven years since its original release it doesn't really feel like there's been a graphical leap we can truly call generational. But this kind of close examination shows just how many improvements there are to be made to a game this relatively modern, and the results are impressive - if you know what to look for.
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One of Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered's biggest glow-ups is because of a malfunction in the original that got missed because the open world was too big for Guerrilla to check everywhere
Horizon Zero Dawn was the result of Guerrilla being "done" with Killzone, and wanting to make something that was "by choice, the opposite"
