The Horizon series has been one of the most beautiful, unique, and exciting open-world epics from recent years. Horizon Zero Dawn was a fantastic opening game that allowed us to explore a breath-taking world with wonderful robots and a nail-biting story, while Horizon Forbidden West took everything that was good with the first game and improved on basically all of it with great aplomb. And today, Guerrilla Games has confirmed it is working on a Horizon co-op game, which could have the makings of something quite epic.
How do we know this? The studio has advertised 17 job positions for a new “online project,” and the descriptions for these roles confirm that it will be set in the Horizon universe. This breakthrough was spotted by an eagle-eyed fan called JorRaptor who, as you can see below, took to Twitter to reveal the news.
Some of the roles include a Lead World Designer who can “help bring the expanding Horizon universe to a multiplayer audience,” so no pressure then. Another role advertised is for a Senior Combat Designer who can “help create a variety of machine enemies that are spectacular, challenging, and memorable to fight cooperatively.” That’s no easy task because the variety of monsters in this universe is already incredibly varied.
The idea of an online Horizon co-op game is an interesting concept, and it’s one that has apparently been planned for a long time by Guerrilla. Let’s look at it this way; if you’ve played the games then you will know Aloy is the fearsome protagonist that is trying to save these lands from catastrophe, but she can’t be the only worthy warrior of note, surely there’s lots more characters in this massive futuristic world. And if not, how about fully customizable characters that you and your friend can get creative with? Now that would be something.
The studio had originally planned on doing something of this ilk for the first game, but the idea was scrapped in the end. Sony also said it was keen to include some form of co-op mode in the latest game, but instead of going down that route, Guerrilla decided to save the concept and create a standalone game instead.
But before this online game actually comes to fruition, there are a couple of other Horizon titles to take note off. Horizon Call of the Mountain will be launched in February 2023, and it will be a PlayStation VR2 title, while Horizon Forbidden West’s first DLC, Burning Shores, is set for release in April and will be available for PlayStation 5 only. And don’t forget about the Netflix TV adaptation of as well, which we know is currently being worked on.