I think few would dispute the fact that when Horizon Zero Dawn leapt, shot and rode its way into our hearts back in 2017, that it also happened to be one of the most opulent titles on Sony´s illustrious last generation console. Skip a few years later to the release of Sony’s PlayStation 5 console in November 2020 and the release of a 60 frames per second patch for Guerrilla Games opus, and what was already an extremely handsome title now looked even better thanks to the buttery smooth visuals that the patch enabled. Even by contemporary standards Horizon Zero Dawn still remains a roundly impressive effort from a visual standpoint, which of course begs the question, what could Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered offer to justify its existence? Well as it turns out, quite a lot actually.
Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered PS5 Review
A True Labour Of Love That Goes The Extra Mile Beyond Its Remastered Tag
First, let’s get the economics out of the way. Though it exists as a separate product with a £44.99/$49.99 price tag to match, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered can also be nabbed by folks that have the existing PlayStation 4 version of the game for a much more easily swallowed £10/$10 upgrade fee, while all existing save data can be easily brought across as well. Certainly, this is something that Sony hopes will work in its favour in regards to upselling existing players on this shiny new version of the game. It’s also worth noting that in addition to the sizable audiovisual uplift, this is a content match for the previously released Complete Edition of the game. This means that in addition to the base Horizon Zero Dawn game, you also get the rather natty Frozen Wilds expansion thrown in there, too.
Instead of another studio being brought in from the outside to handle the duties, as was the case with Sony bringing in Ballistic Moon to produce the most recent Until Dawn remake, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered instead finds itself under the extremely talented attention of Nixxes, an outfit that originally was brought into the PlayStation Studios fold to handle PC conversions of PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 titles.
Given how strongly the skill set of Nixxes aligns with the realisation of subtle, precise detail, as well as a mastery of nailing down the broader fundamentals of overall image quality and performance, it should come as little surprise to discover that in Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered the devil is very much in the details. At a high level, the mandate for Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered has clearly been to bring it into technical parity with the much more recent sequel, Horizon Forbidden West and certainly in that sense Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered can be considered to be a rousing success.
Though Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered doesn’t boast anything in the way of fancy, newfangled ray tracing techniques, much more thoughtful and worthwhile improvements have been implemented elsewhere in its visual offering. Horizon Zero Dawn, much like its 2022 sequel, is an open-world action adventure odyssey where a reverse apocalypse has taken place. Instead of the world ending in fire, ash and brimstone, Horizon Zero Dawn instead depicted an earthly realm where nature reclaimed its domain, overwhelming the structures of humankind with its leafy tentacles, flourishing growths and dreamy blue skies.
In Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered the spectacle of all of this wonderous flora finds itself greatly magnified, with foliage that now properly bends and contracts as Aloy makes contact with it and a generally higher level of geometric complexity and density, the environments now feel much more in-line with the increased sophistication offered by Horizon Forbidden West. Indeed, when you start traipsing through the thickly forested area of Valleymeet, such improvements are much more keenly observed and make the world of Horizon Zero Dawn feel much richer as a result and, somewhat unexpectedly, made me want to explore the world more readily than I felt when playing Horizon Zero Dawn on PlayStation 4 all those years ago.
Bodies of water are now much more reflective and opulent than they were before too, with Nixxes imbuing Horizon’s various lakes, rivers and ponds with the sort of sizable uptick in reflection detail that just wouldn’t have been possible on the last generation PlayStation 4 hardware. Indeed, Horizon Zero Dawn’s idyllic sphere which teems with all manner of flora and fauna has never looked as good as it does here.
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If the natural world of Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered feels invigorated in the dimensions of complexity and sophistication, then so too have the human denizens which inhabit the world benefited from the boon of both the PlayStation 5 hardware and Nixxes expertise also. Not only do the character models in Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered enjoy the benefits of improved facial detail which ends up resolving fine physical elements such as wrinkles, freckles, minor scars and more, but so too have the numbers of NPCs increased along with a range of unique animations for each depending on their environment, resulting in a much more convincing cast of folks which in turn help to immerse you in the world further.
There’s also been a lot of work done in terms of additional animations too, with Aloy now properly reacting to the weather around her (if you leave Aloy idle in a snowy region she’ll casually outstretch her palm to catch some falling snowflakes), for instance. Though it’s really during the downtime and quieter moments in Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered that these improvements really grab your eye, Nixxes has also been hard at work entirely remodelling some areas too, with the bigger townships like Meridian boasting entirely remodelled ground detail, wall decals and more besides.
Speaking of character models, perhaps none of them look better than Aloy herself who now looks much more similar to her appearance in Forbidden West because of these improvements. Somewhat surprisingly, Nixxes has also elected to revamp many of the motion capture performances too, which gives the interactions you have with the various NPCs, in addition to their presence in cutscenes, the sort of naturalistic behaviours some of them were missing before. This essentially means you won’t have NPCs glancing away mid-conversation or staring at things randomly, but rather behave in a much more natural and believable fashion.
That commitment to believability extends to how lighting is handled in Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered now as well, with environment and character lighting that is much closer to what we’ve seen in Horizon Forbidden West, providing an odyssey that bears a greater resemblance to its most recent entry than the standards of lighting when it launched all the way back in 2017.
As one might expect, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered also brings a number of different visual preset modes for players to choose from which each place an emphasis on different technical aspects. In Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, Nixxes offers up three modes – performance, resolution and balanced, with the latter only available to folks who are lucky enough to have a 120hz compatible TV. That said, honestly the visual differences between the three are minimal and considering how rigid the performance mode is at sticking to 60 frames per second, I would strongly endorse it as being the best mode of the three because the image quality trade off is hardly noticeable.
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If there is one knock against what those wizards at Nixxes have wrought here, it would be that the pre-rendered videos remain locked at 30 frames per second regardless of your visual preset choices and look visibly worse than the actual real time visuals. It’s a minor gripe, sure, but considering the otherwise stellar technical showcase that Nixxes have put on here it stands out all the more.
Of course, this being a remaster of previously released title, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered plays identically to its non-remastered, older sibling, so our original review of the story, gameplay and mechanics still very much stands some seven years on. Also , if you’ve gotten this far, then you’ve probably come to the conclusion that Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered is the sum of a great many added and improved smaller details that all contribute to a greater whole and that’s very much the case here, as it’s clear that Nixxes debut PlayStation 5 effort has been a labour of love for all involved.
If by dumb luck or some other unique set of circumstances you have yet to play Horizon Zero Dawn, then this is arguably by far the best way to experience one of the best open world efforts out there that still holds up extremely well even today. Perhaps most encouragingly, Horizon Zero Dawn Remaster also heralds the fact that Nixxes is a force to be reckoned in the console porting space too, representing an added feather in the cap for Sony and its burgeoning PlayStation Studios portfolio as we barrel towards the fourth anniversary of PlayStation 5.
Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered releases for PS5 and PC on October 31, 2024.
Review code kindly provided by PR.