During a keynote hosted yesterday at Develop Brighton's event, a few key Guerrilla Games developers shared a long list of plans for the Horizon franchise. According to Studio Director Jan-Bart van Beek, there's sixteen of them. van Beek added:
We're going to be continuing it for a very long while.
That's a surprising long roadmap, even if it also likely includes non-gaming Horizon projects such as the Netflix TV series adaptation that was announced nearly a year ago to be in the works by The Umbrella Academy showrunner Steve Blackman.
However, the first order of business for Guerrilla Games is pretty clear: they're working on a Horizon multiplayer game. The first rumor on the project appeared on the Web on October 2nd, 2022. A month later, a South Korean outlet published a story about a partnership between Sony and NCSoft for the creation of an MMO based on the Horizon IP.
In December, following a string of self-explanatory job openings, Guerrilla Games finally confirmed to be working on an online project with the following statement:
Featuring a new cast of characters and a unique stylized look, friends will be able to explore the majestic wilds of Horizon together.
In January 2023, an early build leak of the online project provided fans with the first glimpse at the controversial stylized look.
At the Develop Brighton conference, Guerrilla Studio Director Jan-Bart van Beek highighted the challenges posed by the online game.
As people probably already know, we're also going to be working on a multiplayer game. It is a massive shift for the studio, almost on the same level as doing the first Horizon. Building this all out to a multiplayer experience is a whole new challenge for the studio.
It is unclear when the Horizon online game will be released. However, fans of the single player adventures can rest easily as the multiplayer project is being handled separately by a new team of developers.
2023 was a big year for the franchise between the release of the Burning Shores DLC for Horizon: Forbidden West. Moreover, Guerrilla partnered with newly acquired Sony studio Firesprite to release a launch title for PS VR2, Horizon: Call of the Mountain. This spin-off game differs from the regular series in several ways, such as the first-person perspective and the protagonist, who is a former Shadow Carja rebel. He eventually meets several returning characters, including Aloy herself.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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