The year 2021 will have been the year of all postponements, with a health crisis which has disrupted the functioning of the studios and which will have caused many delays in the calendar. Horizon Forbidden West comes out today, but it was initially expected for a little earlier, and on the occasion of the game’s release, Guerrilla Games is finally a little bit more talkative about the development of the title. In an interview by the Dutch site NU.nl (retransmitted by Games Radar), Mathijs De Jongedirector of this second opus, tells us a little more about the reasons that led to the postponement of the title.
No crunch at Guerrilla?
In order to ensure a release at the end of 2021 for Horizon Forbidden West, only one solution was possible according to Mathijs De Jonge: the crunch. It is to avoid this that the game would have been postponed :
” Forbidden West could have been released late last year, but we should have worked overtime […] It also played into our decision to release the game now. »
He then declares that the studio is clearly aware of the harmful effects that crunch can have and even offered a real break to its teams during Christmas, despite entering the final stretch for the development of the game:
” To give an example, at Christmas we said that there would be no work to do, and that everyone could have two weeks of vacation. The premises were closed, you couldn’t even go to work. »
Hoping that investigations do not come to prove the opposite, Guerrilla Games would therefore have obviously offered a slightly healthier end to development than other AAAs, and given the result of this second opus, it succeeded.
Horizon Forbidden West is available on PS4 and PS5. You can also check out our full guide to learn more about the game.