You might not think that making a “LEGO version” of a popular franchise is that hard. After all, it’s a game about characters being bricks and just “breaking apart” those who stand against you. We’ve seen this kind of title with multiple franchises in the past, and they’ve honestly played mostly the same way, with some small gameplay differences being the “hook” in some cases. However, with Lego Horizon Adventures, things were a little bit different because of the game world, the characters within it, and how the rather mature storyline had to be “LEGO-fied.” To that end, the teams at Guerrilla and Studio Gobo decided to break down what it was like to make this game possible.
On the PlayStation Blog, Senior Producer Kat Woolley discussed what it was like to make this game happen with the team at LEGO:
“There’s a layering of talent, passion, creativity and just joy – there’s such joy in working on a LEGO game, and especially something likeHorizon where there is an effort to bring something quite serious from the world of Horizon over to LEGO Horizon Adventures. We needed to give it that element of funny, of light-hearted, of silly, of play.”
Guerrilla Art Director Roy Postma went on to note that they truly took a “brick by brick” approach to recreating the game’s world in the LEGO style:
“We started out in a very realistic way, by rebuilding the original Old World buildings from the Horizon games… Then someone sneaked in an official LEGO set in the background, I believe it was the LEGO gas station, and we were looking at it like ‘ah this can work, this is fun!’ It totally made sense for the Old World to be our LEGO world.”
As noted, there were a few challenges in making things “flow” like they should. After all, the machines that Aloy and her comrades fight aren’t what you would call “typical creatures” that can easily be built with LEGO. That’s why multiple team members explained how they pulled it off:
“Throughout development, we started by imagining what a LEGO version of each machine would actually look like. For every machine, we looked at the traits of the machine, how it would behave in the game, and how can we make it work best with all the LEGO bricks?”
Clearly, they were able to make everything work, as the title comes out on the 14th. Should it succeed, we’re sure there will be a LEGO sequel in the future.
