Speaking during an interview with TheSixthAxis, Guerrilla Games’ Samrat Sharma confirmed that the PS4 Pro version of Horizon: Zero Dawn is not maxing out the console’s impressive horsepower despite the game’s stunning visual quality.
Sharma noted that the PS4-exclusive open-world adventure game was not designed from the ground-up for Sony’s high-end system, although the Amsterdam-based studio nonetheless managed to squeeze an impressive amount of juice out of the PS4 Pro all the same.
“The machine has a lot of power, so we understand what it can do, but the game was already in place when we learnt about the Pro and got the dev kit. So what we’ve done is taken the power and tried to make the best improvements we think for our existing game. We didn’t design the game from the ground up for the Pro, but we tried to use that processing power to do the best things we could to make the experience look or feel better for you.”
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“I don’t think it’s fair to say we haven’t used it fully, but I do think it’s fair to say that if we’d designed the game from the ground up for the Pro, we’d have probably used it differently,” he added.
“In nitty gritty detail, this is a question for our tech director, but I think my two favourite improvements are the anti-aliasing and supersampling even on 1080p televisions so it just looks smooth and beautiful, and if you’ve got a proper HDR TV, the colours, especially in the lush forest regions, they just pop. Those are my favourite improvements that we’ve been able to squeeze in.”
Horizon: Zero Dawn was released on PS4 in the U.S. on February 28 and in Europe on March 1. The game topped the U.K. All Format Chart upon release, beating out competition from Nintendo Switch’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in the process. The game takes place in a post-apocalyptic earth overrun by mechanical behemoths, with players controlling seasoned hunter Aloy as she embarks on an epic quest in an attempt to fuel humanity’s survival efforts.