It looks like Horizon Forbidden West's Burning Shores expansion will be the game at its peak, as the game's developer looks to harness the power of the PS5 console.
Horizon Forbidden West Game Director Mathijs de Jonge took to the Official PlayStation Blog (Opens in a new tab) to briefly discuss what kind of experience the Burning Shores expansion will deliver when it launches on April 19. And, unsurprisingly, it all comes down to its PS5 exclusivity, ditching the last-gen PS4 entirely.
Set amidst the ruins of Los Angeles, Burning Shores will present new hazards and biomes for protagonist Aloy to conquer. Among these, there appear to be volcanoes, lava melts, and new oversized enemies to face.
“In Horizon Forbidden West, everything we added or increased was something that we would also need to have an optimization plan for PS4,” explains de Jonge.
"At Burning Shores, since we can only focus on PS5, we were able to move forward and we're really excited with what we were able to achieve in creating this stunning post-post-apocalyptic version of Los Angeles."
It seems that Burning Shores will be even more attractive than the base game, then. And that's especially exciting, given that Horizon Forbidden West isn't just one of the best PS5 games, but a stellar visual showcase across all current-gen consoles.
Another exciting detail from de Jonge alludes to the Burning Shores fight. Thanks to the PS5, it looks like gamers will be in for some particularly ambitious scenarios.
"Another notable example is a particular battle scene that requires a LOT of memory and processing power!" says deJonge. "In achieving this grand vision both technically and creatively, we are truly grateful for the many benefits that the PS5 hardware brings."
Are we finally done with next-gen support?
Several first-party PS5 games had to make various compromises to facilitate their respective PS4 releases. This includes God of War: Ragnarok and Gran Turismo 7. It's also not uncommon to see third-party publishers releasing titles across generations, like Capcom with Resident Evil Village and Street Fighter 6.
However, there seems to be a drastic change when it comes to cross-gen builds. Street Fighter 6, for example, doesn't launch on Xbox One at all. Meanwhile, Marvel's Spider-Man 2 will launch exclusively on PlayStation 5, alongside other highly anticipated games like Final Fantasy 16.
These are all titles set to release this year, and as the PS5 supply chain has become less of a bottleneck in recent months. We've argued that the latest generation is holding back the PS5 and Xbox Series X and it seems that publishers are more interested than ever in fully harnessing the power that current generation consoles provide.
That said, the PS4, almost a decade later, is still an incredibly popular console, and I wouldn't be surprised to see some cross-gen version appear on Sony platforms in the near future. But hey, it looks like Sony is at least easing its need to bring games to PS5 and PS4.