Sony’s stretch of remasters is set to continue with the release of Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered for PlayStation 5 and PC.
Confirmation comes from an ESRB rating for the unannounced game, which was heavily rumored to be in the works after Sony pulled Horizon Zero Dawn from PS Plus earlier this year.
The rating, still live at the time of this article’s publication, reads:
This is an action/role-playing game in which players assume the role of a hunter (Aloy) surviving through a post-apocalyptic world. Players guide Aloy as she learns to hunt robotic creatures and animals in the wild. Aloy uses arrows, spears, and explosive traps to injure and kill machines, boar, and occasional human enemies. Animals and humans emit small puffs of red blood when struck; one sequence depicts an abandoned camp with large blood stains on rocks and trees. The game contains a brief reference to sexual material (e.g., “Eighteen months hard labor in exchange for thirty years lounging around Elysium watching porn?”). In text/audio files, characters sometimes reference fictional drugs, overdoses, and getting high: “…not even out of junior high and already a drug addict”; “…I ran across a pusher who was selling Razorwing for eight bucks a tab”; “I’d spend a few days getting high, then OD on Overcast.” The word “sh*t” appears in the text/dialogue.
Horizon Zero Dawn is Guerrilla Games’ action role-playing game that launched in 2017 on PlayStation 4 and then on PC in 2020. It stars Aloy who battles dinosaur machines in a post-apocalyptic world. Horizon Zero Dawn is one of the best-selling PlayStation Studios games of all time, shifting over 24 million units since launch.
This remaster is sure to spark a vociferous debate about whether it’s needed in the first place, not just because Horizon Zero Dawn remains one of the most impressive-looking PlayStation games around, but because it received a PS5 update in 2021 that added a 60 frames per second mode and 4K checkerboard resolution. Word of the remaster’s imminent release comes ahead of the launch of the PS5 Pro in November. Guerrilla may be updating Horizon Zero Dawn as part of that console’s release.
It’s a busy time for the Horizon series. Spin-off LEGO Horizon Adventures launches later this year, and Guerrilla is still working on a multiplayer Horizon game.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
