PS4's Horizon RPG Elements Somewhere Between Assassin's Creed and Skyrim

When Sony announced Horizon: Zero Dawn, the next game from the creators of Killzone, back at E3, the company confirmed it would have some role-playing game elements. But how much of an RPG is it really? Will it offer the same kind of depth as a game like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt or The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim?

GamesRadar put that very question to Guerrilla Games co-founder and managing director Hermen Hulst as part of a new interview.

"I guess you're wondering where we are on that spectrum of, on the one side more action-orientated games like Assassin's Creed, and on the other hand you have your Elder Scrolls and these kinds of series," Hulst replied. "I think we're in-between. We have elements in both directions, and that probably puts us somewhere in between."

Hulst went on to say that it's "really difficult" to explain the depths of Horizon's RPG elements without being able to show it off. This will come later.

"Once we have something to show we'll talk about it in more detail," he said.

Also in GamesRadar's interview, Hulst reveals that Guerrilla fielded 35-40 pitches from its employees as part of its brainstorming session years ago for a new IP. A couple of ideas were considered before Guerrilla ultimately settled on what would become Horizon.

"We looked at certain trends in them and certain core elements, and we decided to take some of that forward into a prototyping stage," he said. "We actually, at that point, still took a couple of concepts further, but the Horizon concept was, even from very early on, already appealing to all of us and so we decided to concentrate on that."

The ambitious-sounding Horizon has a full day/night cycle and players will get to explore forests, mountains, and "atmospheric ruins of a bygone civilization." Oh, and there are also robot dinosaurs.

Horizon launches in 2016 exclusively for PlayStation 4.