Horizon Zero Dawn’s Aloy has returned for a follow-up adventure that aims to squeeze the last watts of power out of the now-aging PlayStation 4, while simultaneously letting the PlayStation 5 flex its shiny new muscles. You can check out IGN’s Horizon Forbidden West review to find out how this sequel stacks up gameplay-wise, but here we will focus on technological improvements – as well the balance and sacrifices made to deliver a PS4 version and how much better the PS5 version is. But no matter where you play, Forbidden West’s visuals and performance more than manage to impress.
First thing's first: the numbers game. Forbidden West’s resolution on the PS4 tops out at 1920x1080, but that’s not the whole story as it appears to use checkerboarding or other reconstruction techniques to hit even that level. This results in some half pixel width counts, i.e. 960 and even a reduced 900p height at times – although this may be a drawback of any reconstruction technique similar to checkboarding as well, which are almost impossible to decipher from the outside in. The reduction in pixel shading is the big performance saving this provides, but I will talk about image quality shortly.
Forbidden West on PS4 Pro looks like a more refined version of the PS4 version, pretty much as expected, offering the sharper and cleaner image quality as it now renders at an increased 3200x1800. While better, that’s notably still a reduction from the 3840x2160 checkerboard resolution of Zero Dawn, and it likely relies on that checkerboard method to achieve its sharp and clean final output. Regardless, the Pro’s improvement is substantial and resolves many of the issues that crop up in the PS4 output.
But before we get to that, there’s the big boy to cover. The PS5 uses its phenomenal power hike to offer two options: the first is native 4K via its 30fps resolution mode, which is clearly the sharpest and most visually impressive of all the options and resolves any image quality issues with a sharp and stable picture that generally blurs the lines between offline (pre-rendered) and real-time rendering. If you want 60fps, as many Horizon fans might now be used to after the Zero Dawn backwards compatibility patch last year, then the performance mode has you covered. The cost of that increased frame rate is that Forbidden West reverts to a checkerboard output like the Pro, still at 3200x1800p but now resolved via this temporally accumulated method. Moving in the larger open world it also appears to be using a dynamic solution, with a low of 2880x1620 noted in dense views. The drop in pixel clarity is very minor but can be seen in areas of the screen with lots of movement, especially within certain textures, thin foliage, reflective surfaces, and post-processing effects such as screen space reflections. That said, the doubling of the framerate more than makes up for this loss, and within a minute or so the resolution difference becomes less noticeable.
That’s largely helped by Forbidden West’s use of a minimal Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TAA) solution that reconstructs a single previous frame back at a higher output. It is not egregious with its coverage either, with no ghosting trail or image blur that is usually the Achilles heel of such AA methods. The solution is similar to Zero Dawn, which uses FXAA + TAA, and that does mean it can leave a shimmering and unstable image on PS4 in areas with dense foliage and thin, specular edges. Because Forbidden West has a lower base resolution than Zero Dawn on PS4 and a larger amount of small screen elements, it’s ultimately a visually striking but unstable image quality on the last-gen console, even on a 1080p screen.
That said, the sacrifices to image quality are minor compared to the additions. Volumetrics are much better (including its gorgeous cloud system) and more stable, and they now receive projected shadows from characters. Post effects are more abundant with much higher quality screen space reflections, although these seem to be mixed with dynamic projected cube-maps in outdoor sections to balance the GPU load. Possibly the biggest improvement is the sheer increase in flora and fauna density. The previous entry was already dense, but here developer Guerrilla Games have filled the world with a vast amount more.
Even on PS4 the interaction levels have been increased, with the team clearly working on shortcomings myself and others highlighted in the first game. Long reeds of grass still collide and sway as you walk through, but almost all other bushes and even grassy areas now push aside and move when Aloy runs, rolls, or crawls into them. This brings Forbidden West more inline with the high settings of Zero Dawn on the PC, and is testament to both the benefit of that GPU resource reallocation and the sheer technical ingenuity of Guerrilla.
The PS4 Pro resolves most of the image-quality crimes you may have on PS4 whilst enhancing the rich, vibrant, and almost dreamlike world that has been crafted here. The low sun blooms out into the distance, lens flares trail across the searching LED gaze of its machines, a soft peripheral blur focuses Aloy and the areas of concern nicely. That last part was a particularly great look in the original, and here the subtle improvements can leave sections looking like you’re playing with toy figures or watching stop motion rather than polygonally constructed characters and levels, even on the base PS4. I am sure this also helps performance with the foveated elements of your eye mirrored on the screen, helping to reduce pixel shading load at the extremities.
The PS5 just ramps all of this up across the visual menu, with sharper and more detailed textures, cleaner image quality, faster frame rates, even denser fauna, more effects, and higher detail with polygon objects. With a further increased level of detail, it can be almost impossible to notice any pop in and interactions within the world are made even more dynamic –that’s something I always hope for and am optimistic is an improvement we’ll see even more of this generation. Forbidden West on PS5 is already giving us a peek into that future, something Guerrilla is notorious for.
It does not stop at the world and its lush and vibrant colors, motion, and density either as characters are also ramped up across the visual spectrum. There are higher polycounts across all versions (already sky high in the previous entry), and animations are a mixture of refined old routines and new ones that expand Aloy’s repertoire with a greater level of versatility, grace, and confidence. These range from the extra dynamic attacks that carry her weight and momentum, to the detailed and dynamic contextual animations that kick in from takedowns to power moves. Her movement not only looks impressive, enhancing the significantly improved combat system further, but it also feels satisfying, giving you an even better look at just how detailed these new models are.