How Las Vegas Inspired a Horizon Forbidden West Quest

Horizon Forbidden West continued the story of Aloy, a young woman 1,000 years in the future. Earth looks very different in this future with humanity losing technology while giant mechanical beasts still roam the ruins of society. Aloy is on a mission to find a piece of equipment called Poseidon so that she can save the terraforming technology that keeps life on Earth, well, alive. In this newest journey, she ventures into the desert of the U.S., where the flooded remnants of the former Las Vegas are hidden under the sand. This new city is called Dunehollow, and the quest is called The Sea of Sands.

That being said, SPOILER ALERT: This article shares details and spoilers for The Sea of Sands quest.

Guerilla quest designer, Samantha Schoonen, sat down with Bo de Vries, the community lead at Guerilla, to discuss the creative inspirations behind one of the most popular quests in Horizon Forbidden West. The process of designing a quest is a long one full of collaboration and trial and error. Schoonen said first she begins with the core story from the narrative team before creating a design document that breaks down the story into beats and quest objectives. Then she adds in maps and as much detail as she can get out of a 2D layout before creating a 3D model to work with. The key is iteration. The team works through flow and design until everyone is satisfied with the quest design.

Schoonen describes how excited she was to base Dunehollow on the famous Las Vegas Strip. She looked into the city’s current positive attributes from a design level, like the water features and the way the buildings light up the night sky. Then she looks forward. In the future, what would these buildings look like? What would be built up just to eventually break down as time moved on?

Based on this thinking, she says she pictured things like broken-down roller coasters and rooftop pools, and even the occasional broken-down pirate ship. Casinos, of course, were a huge inspiration. In fact, when Aloy enters Dunehollow, she does so through an elevator shaft that leads her directly into a huge, underwater casino. She said she wanted players to first see the lobby of the casino with its columns and showy doorway before swimming through to reveal an enormous open space. She likened it to a “grand opening.”

After the quest is completed, Vegas comes back to life in a dazzling display of lights. The sky is filled with the holograms like “ghostly outlines of buildings that collapsed long ago.” This scene alone involved the whole design team, and we can see the fantastic results. The image was just too pretty not to share below!

Schoonen says that fans responded really well to the entire quest. Hearing how much work went into the setting and general structure really makes us appreciate our game makers. If you haven’t had a chance to play Horizon Forbidden West, maybe now is a good time to give it a try.

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