We already learned a bit about the kinds of changes Guerrilla Games and Nixxes brought to Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, but beyond noting how much more dialogue and mo-cap was recorded, there weren’t many specifics. A new PlayStation blog post has gone into more detail about the improvements, including how the teams worked to make the world feel more alive.
Nixxes senior technical game designer Brian van Nunen wrote in the post that one of those ways was to add more NPCs in villages, cities, and outposts, which they were able to do because of the PlayStation 5’s more powerful specs. And not only will there be more of them but they’ll have more varied schedules and will move around in a more realistic manner.
“Building the game for PS5 allowed us to leverage the increased amount of memory available, enabling us to significantly boost the number of non-player characters,” van Nunen wrote. “We added many more places for NPCs to stand, sit, work and fulfil their needs. We gave them more varied schedules to increase movement and liveliness in different areas. We also tried to make creative use of existing animations.”
One of the big improvements going from the original Zero Dawn to its sequel, Horizon Forbidden West, was just how the developers were able to utilize PS5 versus PS4. So there was a lot more activity in cities, with people mulling about and getting in Aloy’s way as she walked around. These details have become more important as open-world games get larger, so it’s nice to see Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered looking to compete.
To make NPCs feel even more lifelike, Nixxes also made changes to “skin tones, hair quality, and outfits,” which were carried over from Forbidden West. This also applies to Aloy, who got the full peach fuzz treatment.
Nixxes senior technical artist Mark Bazelmans also delved into more details surrounding how much new dialogue and mocap was added, and how the team took on that endeavor. There was over 10 hours of new mo-cap recorded by Guerilla, which made up about 2,500 new mo-cap files for Nixxes to process. Bazelmans said Nixxes developed a tool in Python to process them and replace the original files.
“Our tool referenced the characters and imported the dialogue audio, so the animators could time the movement better and create the camera cuts and layout,” Bazelmans wrote. Animator Alexander Georgiev added that one of the obstacles involved matching heights and build with the surrounding space.
“We made small, automated scripts to fix shoulders and arms clipping. All these tools gave the animators a way to focus more on enhancing the acting of the characters to support what they want to say,” Georgiev said.
The post is packed with anecdotes about how Nixxes made improvements to environments, textures, foliage, lighting, terrain, and more, so check it out if that’s of interest,
Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered was announced earlier this year at the September 2024 State of Play, and is set to release on PS5 and PC on October 31.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.