I understand how 'commitment to the bit' is a powerful driving force behind some of the most insane ideas known to man, but at some point Guerrilla Games needs to realise that they aren't serving anyone by forever feeding into the most ludicrous meme in the industry right now. Because at this point it has to be intentional. There is no way that the same company accidentally stunts the potential of one of their releases by trying to go up against the might of a vastly more established brand time and time again- you would have to be managed by absolute villains or be shooting for cheap laughs on Twitter. But something tells me that in those moments, the actual developers sinking their blood, sweat and tears into making these genuinely fantastic games are not the one's laughing everytime their mentions are swept under the tide of everything bigger.
To be clear, I'm of course talking about their work caretaking for the 'Horizon' brand name, the surprisingly decent action adventure about post-apocalypse technologically futuristic but socially tribal societies beset by cybernetic dinosaurs. I say 'surprisingly' for how little of a footprint the games seem to have on the landscape of gaming despite how high quality they are in most every aspect. These games feel the kind that should be going up for Game Of The Year everytime they drop, but people always seem to forget about them by award season despite the incredibly interesting nature of the setting and the ever noticeable art direction and the tactile world building, and the lovable- okay, so most of the side characters aren't that lovable, but the protagonist Aloy is always a blast! What could be going wrong to keep this franchise down?
Well, that isn't even a matter of speculation- we all know what they keep doing. They keep releasing the game with a week, or sometimes a day, of some massive other game release that totally gobbles up the hype around the game in the matter of a few days and leaves it a relic. The fact the franchise is still profitable despite doing this time after time is a testament to how good the games actually are. Word of mouth manages to secure just enough interest to stop the games from being outright scrapped despite not being the year flagships that, to be utterly honest, they largely deserve to be. Look at their review scores- those aren't exaggerations! The games really are that good and compare pretty well against the slew of so-so open world titles that have littered the space since the 2010's. These games deserve so much more for the effort they clearly display.
And yet Horizon: Zero Dawn released on the 28th of February 2017, and Zelda: Breath of the Wild was released on the 3rd of March. A game which nailed so many of the open world checklist tropes that Ubisoft's AC games had infected the genre with, versus a game that totally forsook those cheap tactics to drag players about their world space and instead created a artistic masterpiece designed to encourage natural exploration at every turn. Zero Dawn had so much to offer but Breath of the Wild was like 'innovation incarnate'. There was no way Zero Dawn was going to steal the cultural zeitgeist in that head to head. And yet, Zero Dawn probably earned the most traction for this release than any subsequent Horizon ever would in the releases to come.
Horizon's most questionable entry was the VR title, Call of the Mountain, which at the very least gave itself a few weeks of distance from Hogwarts Legacy, only to release a day before Atomic Heart. To be fair, I would have taken those odds but Atomic Heart was an actual game and Call of the Mountain was a VR game so... the match-up was never going to go in their favour. Of course the real follow-up to the original game was 'Forbidden West' which still pretty definitively holds the crown of one of the most beautiful games ever made. And it dropped a week before Elden Ring. I mean, wow... you really can't make this up at this point, can you? It's like when Mad Max tried to take on Metal Gear Solid V- do you want to assassinate your opening week?
I bring all this up as a prelude to the fact that the PC version of Forbidden West, which I am actually excited to get around and play once I finally finish the first one (and open up my packed back catalogue) came out one day before Dragon's Dogma 2. First one's on you, second one's on us, third one and your taking the piss- fourth one? The jokes gone on for a bit, wouldn't you say? Is it really the end of the world to push back a release by a week or two? I'm not asking them to find some magical week occupied by no other games, because such a thing does not exist- they should just try not going up against majorly hyped super games that, whether they're good or not, are going to suck all the air out of the room on release! It's a fools gambit!
And here's the thing: I actually think this has a noticeable effect on the reach that Horizon games have had. I don't think any have been financial washes, which is good because for the amount of quality work that goes into them that would be a tragedy- but when was the last time you heard Horizon brought up in conversations about relevant modern games? Sure, part of that is the fact that Horizon isn't ground-breakingly innovative in the way it handles open worlds or monster battles or narrative storytelling or really any individual aspect of it's design. But it is exceedingly competent to a commendable degree. Hunting robot dinosaurs feels great, exploring the world feels decently rewarding, the narrative feels grand and world spanning- that alone should set the franchise apart as an example.
But Guerrilla Games, or whoever is making release decisions on behalf of Guerrilla Games, refuses to let the games shine. By pitting them up as the constant underdog, it's almost as though no one believes these games can stand the unbridled criticism of a full month's inspection, and I don't think anything could be further from the truth! The Horizon franchise has it's hang-ups, but I truly believe that Aloy's journey will go down as one of the greats in the Games Industry- whether or not this whole train crashes or not, and the more people who find a blank spot in releases and shrug-purchases a Horizon game, the more effort can go into making the next one an even better game!
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