Horizon 3 May Suddenly Be Under More Pressure Than Any Other PlayStation Exclusive

Horizon Zero Dawn was an unprecedented success for Amsterdam-based developer Guerrilla Games. The action-adventure game managed to outsell the combined sales of every game in the company’s previous franchise, Killzone, over the span of just six years. After seeing such immense profitability from the game, Guerrilla Games unsurprisingly decided to dedicate pretty much all of its development resources to Horizon. Following the release of Horizon Zero Dawn, the company released a sequel to the game, titled Horizon Forbidden West, in 2022. It then launched two spin-off titles, the VR-exclusive Horizon Call of the Mountain and the multi-platform Lego Horizon Adventures, in 2023 and 2024, respectively.

Now that Guerrilla Games has wrapped up work on all of its formally announced projects, some are wondering what the company will do next. So far, Guerrilla has confirmed in interviews and blog posts that it is working on two other Horizon titles. The first of these games is a multiplayer live service spin-off game that will have a stylized, cartoony aesthetic. The other game, meanwhile, is going to be a sequel to Horizon Forbidden West and, thus, the final installment in the Horizon trilogy. Not much is known about Horizon 3 at this point in time, but the game already has a high bar to reach compared to any other upcoming PlayStation exclusive, due to one recent factor.

One Massive Horizon 3 Change Would Be a Risk Worth Taking

A key element of the Horizon franchise, expanded in Horizon Forbidden West, could be the albatross around its neck, and a third game could scrap it.

Horizon 3 is Going to Have a Hard Time Beating Death Stranding 2’s Graphics

The Death Stranding and Horizon Games are Both Made Using the Decima Engine

The mainline Horizon games, as some players may already know, are made using the Decima engine. Since Decima is proprietary software that Guerrilla Games made by itself, it is not utilized by third-party companies all that often. Even Guerrilla’s sister studios under the PlayStation umbrella, like Santa Monica Studio and Insomniac Games, don’t use the engine at all. There is, however, one major exception to this rule, and that’s Kojima Productions.

The last two games that Kojima Productions has developed, Death Stranding and Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, both run on the Decima engine, despite the first Death Stranding now being a multi-platform game. Even though it didn’t make the games itself, Guerrilla Games provided some support work for both titles, perhaps by helping Kojima Productions get to grips with the Decima engine. Like Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West, the Death Stranding games are stunning visual showpieces, but Death Stranding 2, in particular, takes things to the next level.

The Graphics in Death Stranding 2 are Some of the Best Out There

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach was released a few days ago, and early impressions of the title have been incredibly positive across the board. While the game’s gameplay mechanics and story have been widely praised, one aspect of the title that really stands out is its sheer visual fidelity. Death Stranding 2 is arguably the most graphically impressive game of this generation, rivaling even the likes of Hellblade 2. The game manages to depict dangerous Australian biomes, dynamic bodies of water, tons of texture details, impressive particle effects, and lifelike facial animations with extreme realism on a base PS5, all while maintaining a stable 1440p resolution at 60 FPS.

It’s worth noting that the Horizon games have a somewhat more stylized, colorful aesthetic compared to Death Stranding 2, which opts for sheer realism. Therefore, Guerrilla Games may not want to copy DS2‘s visuals one-to-one in Horizon 3.

While They Look Great, the Horizon Games Haven’t Matched Death Stranding 2’s Graphics Yet

Given how technically impressive Death Stranding 2 is, the next Horizon game will have a tough time surpassing it in the visuals department. Although the Horizon games have all looked amazing, none of them really come close to the sheer level of realism that DS2 provides. Horizon Forbidden West, for example, was one of the PS5’s first graphical powerhouses, but since Forbidden West was a cross-generation title designed for the PS4, it wasn’t able to use all the power of the PS5.

Compared to Death Stranding 2 (in which loading is pretty much instantaneous), the game also had considerably longer load times, and its water physics were a tad less dynamic, among other things. By the time Horizon 3 is released, technology will probably improve considerably, so if the game doesn’t live up to the graphical standards established by Death Stranding 2, then some fans may be a little disappointed by it.