ESRB has revealed a remaster that we were already expecting to happen.
The official ESRB site has a rating for a new title called Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered. The game has a rating of T for Teen, for PC and PlayStation 5. We aren’t going to share the rating summary anymore, but suffice to say it is word for word the same rating the game received when it originally released for PC and PlayStation 4.
Last May, Sony removed the original Horizon Zero Dawn from the rotating PlayStation Plus library. As a first party game, it was really unlikely, if it is ever possible, that the game needed to be pulled because of licensing issues.
Perhaps there’s a song or artwork in the original game that had a license that expired? Fans did not pursue this line of thinking, though. They believed that this game was removed in anticipation of an upcoming remaster of the game.
But now that that seems to be the case, we won’t be surprised if fans view this as another disappointment. While Horizon Zero Dawn originally released in 2017, it did receive a feature rich port to PC. In 2020, it even came to GOG, DRM-free, with all the DLCs and other enhancements completely. That release felt like it was the definitive version of the game.
So is there a reason for this remaster to exist? It’s true that there are new technologies that could be utilized on the PlayStation 5, that were not available on the PlayStation 4, and that could be the opening for even more improvements.
But one generation seems way too early to make such a rerelease. It seems like this would make more sense as a launch title for the PlayStation 6, if not a few years after that.
Perhaps Sony looks to make this remaster a showcase for the PlayStation 5 Pro. We can imagine that it will be optimized at 4K 60FPS, with improved graphics and performance. But this won’t really help with the early impressions that console gave fans, that the PlayStation 5 Pro seems expensive, with not enough on offer to justify that price.
But then again, this could very well be the harbinger of the final years of the PlayStation 5’s lifespan. Sony can very well remaster more of their first party titles in the future, and use them as selling points for the PlayStation 5 Pro.
Ultimately, this has the vibes of The Last of Us Part II Remastered. We know that many fans will also see this as an unnecessary rerelease. But unlike this game, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered is arriving with even more baggage behind it. That may lead to an unfair verdict on its quality among fans, but maybe Guerrilla Games can prove the doubters wrong when they finally get to playing it. With a fresh ESRB rating, we imagine an announcement is not going to be far behind.