Horizon: Zero Dawn Dev Talks Story and RPG Elements

When we caught up with Guerrilla Games at E3 this year, we asked the studio for more information on Horizon: Zero Dawn's story. We really wanted to know where the robot-dinosaurs came from and more about Aloy's backstory and the world of Hoizon at large, but the studio said it's holding back that information for now.

Now, a new report from Game Informer explains that Guerrilla is purposefully holding back information about the PS4-exclusive's story because it wants players to enter the world with a drive to explore and find answers to its mysteries. There will be a main storyline, as well as a number of extras for people who enjoying diving deep into a game's story and lore.

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"For people who are story junkies, for people who like to collect every audio log or text log out there, people who want to have a grand narrative to their game, I think they're going to be really surprised and delighted by what we have prepared for them," lead writer John Gonzalez said.

Game director Mathijs de Jonge shared some further details on Aloy when we spoke at E3.

"She's very curious and determined; she wants to explore the world; she wants to figure out these mysteries," de Jonge said. "And hopefully, we can give the player that same feeling. You want to know what's out there, you want to discover these new machines; you want to meet new tribes."

Also in Game Informer's report, de Jonge said Horizon: Zero Dawn's RPG elements won't be very deep--and that was a design choice so as not to overwhelm or confuse players.

"What we wanted to avoid is complicated menus," he explained. "We also didn't want to go too deep with the RPG features we were developing. We wanted to have a certain level of accessibility and understandability for players. We also didn't want to go too hardcore with stats, so at some point we just cut it off and said we weren't going to go any further because it would confuse players."

Horizon: Zero Dawn was originally expected to debut in 2016, but was delayed to February 28, 2017. A new trailer was released at TGS last week and can be seen here.