Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered review: A dino-sized PS5 upgrade
Everybody walk the (robot)-dinosaur, again
The post-apocalypse with robot dinosaurs.
It wasn’t exactly a hard sell that Sony had to pull off to grab your attention with Horizon Zero Dawn back when it first released on PlayStation 4 back in 2017.
A gorgeous open-world title with solid stealth-action sequences and some very cool enemies to master, it became a jewel in the crown of PlayStation’s exclusive line-up, spawning a PS5 sequel (2022’s Horizon Forbidden West), and a number of spin-offs including a PSVR 2 title (Horizon Call of the Mountain) and the soon-to-be-released LEGO Horizon Adventures.
Sony and developers Guerilla Games really want to make sure you’ve got every opportunity to jump on with this now-flagship, system-selling franchise. Not content with a PC re-release, and a PS5-supporting update, it’s now gone and put together a fully-fledged remaster.
Eyebrows raised? Fair enough — 2017 isn’t all that long ago, Horizon Zero Dawn even on PS4 still looks a treat, and the PS5 update gave it a framerate boost to make it feel almost a match for modern contemporaries in the genre. What can a remaster bring to the table?
Quite a lot, actually. Remaster co-developer Nixxes has done a remarkable job, polishing a game already so shiny so as to blind you with a new layer of visual brilliance — enough so that even those done with the game have a good reason to return.
The core game is still great
We’re going to assume that, if you’re interested in Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, you’ve probably already got a good idea of what the game offers from its previous releases. So we’re going to point you in the direction of our friends at GamesRadar for their original 4.5 star verdict on the PS4 release.
That’s still a relevant score — the core game remains unchanged. Though you get the Frozen Wilds expansion thrown in here, there’s no new content added for this remaster. It’s a faithful reworking of the original, rather than a full blown remake with all-new bits added on — a visual tune-up rather than a mechanical shake up.
No problem — Horizon Zero Dawn feels as good to play in 2024 as it did in 2017. You play as Aloy, an outcast from a tribe learning to live in the remnants of a robot apocalypse that saw mechanised dinosaurs take over the planet. Humans live relatively technologically-free in this new era, sent back to the stone age by the failings of earlier generations. How exactly we got here is a bit of a mythological mystery as the game begins, but is a driving beat of the story that follows.
An action-oriented open worlder, Horizon Zero Dawn feels like the halfway home between Assassin’s Creed stealth and open-world Zelda’s exploration and combat playfulness. You’ve got a fun toolset with which to track and tackle the game’s ferociously cool dinosaurs and less-friendly humans, with a snappy melee-and-bow combat system that can make you look like a super-cool huntress with ease. It’s not as mechanically dense as Nintendo’s open-world Zelda, or as gigantic as a modern Assassin’s Creed — but Horizon Zero Dawn’s more focussed gameplay results in a tight and rewarding action adventure that keeps you only ever a few breaths away from an exciting reveal or set piece scenario, beautiful to look at with a unique and well-told narrative.
So then, what’s changed?
A visual overhaul
If you scoffed at the thought of one of the best-looking PS4 games needing a spruce up for the PS5 era, that a PS5-ready patch would suffice, well… so did we. And you know what? We were wrong — what Nixxes has pulled off in the visual department here is a remarkable job — though definitions of ‘remaster’ vs ‘remake’ are always blurry, whatever is considered the more superlative take on a classic game’s touch-up is definitely what Horizon is leaning towards here.
Foliage, textures, lighting, character models, the general density of onscreen action — it’s all being pushed further than the PS4 original or initial PC release could muster.
In a game world that’s been rewilded by the absence of human interference, vegetation and foliage plays a big part of Horizon’s world-building aesthetic, as the remnants of mankind are reclaimed by nature. All the plant life, bushes, trees and grasses look far more dense and detailed now, with improved shaders, geometry and interaction points — Aloy moves through the overgrowth all the time, and each variation of greenery reacts to her presence in a believably dynamic way.
Similar attention has been paid to the main characters too — while supporting cast and NPCs haven’t had quite the glow up, Aloy, Rost and other key players have dramatically improved textures and details. Skin quality in particular appears far more life-like, with light cast on Aloy’s face revealing true-to-life peach fuzz.
With more memory available to the PS5 than the PS4, Nixxes has been able to go back and repopulate the open world and its outposts with more wildlife and people, too. NPCs are more numerous in camps, but also have more to do — additional places to sit, more complex routines to be followed. As such the areas feel more lived in and alive, rather than the pedestrian static behaviours of the original game.
Terrain has been able to take advantage of improvements found in the Horizon Forbidden West sequel too — most notably in icy or desert terrains. Snow and sand now deform and flow naturally as characters, robots and wildlife pass through them. You’ll even notice snow accumulating on Aloy’s clothing as she passes through the tundra.
And though Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered continues for the most to opt for baked lighting rather than dynamic ray tracing, it too is a marked improvement. The game’s been re-lit from scratch throughout to account for more densely-applied volumetric effects and finer gradients to the in-game sun clock, offering a greater intensity and variety of sun shades and night lights.
If you’ve wondered how far video game graphics have come in the last seven or so years, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered answers with a resounding “loads, mate.”
Options, options, options
The remastered version of the game is also happy to let players experience the game, from a technical standpoint, to their preferences. Want the best visual fidelity possible? A Favour Resolution option aims for a 4K native output at a consistent 30fps, and looks gorgeous. The more popular Favour Performance mode targets 1800p at 60fps, and to the naked eye manages that demanding task without a hiccup. VRR is also supported with an unlocked frame rate, for those with supported displays. Whichever you go for, it’s an improvement over the original, and a stunning, smooth experience.
Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered will also be ready to sing on the PlayStation 5 Pro when it launches next month too, pushing more consistently-high frames at 4K resolution. It’ll make for an interesting test bench when that powerful console finally reaches players, letting you see two-and-a-half generation’s worth of improvements across a single title.
More natural conversations
Despite its relatively-robust levelling and crafting system, Horizon Zero Dawn is more an action adventure than it is an RPG. But it does blur the lines with plenty of conversations between Aloy and the inhabitants of the Horizon’s world. Cutscenes have always looked good in the game, but the optional chats that could be had out in the open world were a little more ropey, with canned animations and fixed lighting sources undermining the quality seen elsewhere.
These encounters have been revamped for the remaster. The Nixxes team went back to the motion capture stage and reworked thousands of files tied to 3,100 dialogue options. It’s clearly evident side-by-side with the original version — stiff and stilted encounters with secondary characters are now more lively and natural, making for a more seamless transition between the game’s scripted and open elements.
DualSense support and immersive audio
There are loads of other smaller improvements littered through the game too, lost in the razzle-dazzle of the visuals. The upgrade to the DualSense controller is surprisingly transformative — there’s a greater sense of immersion delivered by its haptics (yep, those triggers tense up for every pull of the bow string), and I still get a little kick out of the pad’s speaker chirping when the Focus enemy-scanning tool is activated.
To my ears, the audio mix seems improved too — I don’t want to put too much emphasis here as it may as well be down to different audio devices I’m using since the 2017 release. But the sense of spatial, 3D surround in the remastered edition feels profoundly more useful than with the original title, letting me pull my auditory senses into the sneaky-sneaky stealth sections as I evaded robot beasties I could hear creeping around off screen.
Upgrade at a great price
Perhaps the best bit of all? The price. Sure, you can buy Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered at a reasonable £44.99 when it launches on October 31st. But chances are you’ve already got Horizon Zero Dawn, either purchased for PS4, or part of Sony’s massive Play At Home initiative, when it gave the game away for free very generously during the pandemic. If you fall into either camp, you can upgrade to the new Remastered edition for a mere £10 / $10 — and even pull your old saves along for the ride. It’s a bargain at the price, and well worth taking a punt on even if you feel you’ve seen all the game has to offer already.
Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered: Final verdict
It’s a dinosaur-sized upgrade for Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered then, and one that feels surprisingly vital, given how unlikely a pitch the remaster seemed upon first unveiling. The underlying game remains incredible — an epic adventure fusing sci-fi futurology with epic beasts and mythological storytelling, one that’s aged surprisingly well, and actually benefits from some breathing space in its current release window. Remember, Horizon Zero Dawn’s initial competition was Breath of the Wild back in 2017, a game that sucked all the air out of gaming discourse for an eternity. If for whatever reason you’ve passed up Horizon Zero Dawn in the past then, there’s never been a better time to jump on board — and chances are you can do so for the price of a pizza and a pint. Roar-some.
