Game director Mathijs de Jonge has promised Horizon Forbidden West’s Burning Shores DLC will fully embrace the “power” of the PlayStation 5, in a bid to explain why the add-on is exclusive to Sony’s newer console.
Burning Shores will see Forbidden West’s protagonist Aloy heading out to the “untamed wilds of Los Angeles” following the events of Forbidden West’s main campaign.
However, despite the base game releasing across both PlayStation 5 and PS4 consoles, Burning Shores is a PS5 exclusive.
According to de Jonge, there is a very good reason for this somewhat surprising decision by Guerrilla.
In a new PlayStation blog post, de Jonge spoke about the “many advantages” of developing a game exclusively for the PS5. The director noted that everything the team “added or increased” to Forbidden West had to be “[optimised] for PS4 as well”.
However, with Burning Shores being a current-gen exclusive, Guerrilla has been “able to charge forward” with its development, thanks to the PS5 hardware.
“The cityscape ruins of LA and its surroundings are highly detailed and require a lot of processing power as well as fast streaming technology to run properly; especially when the player is flying over the lands and can see a lot at once. One of the settlements is situated in and around those detailed ruins, and we were able to squeeze a lot of activity in there,” de Jonge stated.
In addition to improved visuals, de Jonge also alluded to an upcoming battle in Burning Shores that, seemingly, would not have been possible on the PS4.
This is because it required “a LOT of memory and processing power” to pull off.
“To achieve this grand vision both technically and creatively, we definitely were thankful for the many advantages that the PS5 hardware brings,” de Jonge stated.
Horizon Forbidden West Burning Shores is set to release next month, on 19th April. You can see its initial announcement trailer in the video above.
