Guerrilla Games Scrapped an Unknown Project in Favor of Horizon: Zero Dawn

Mathijs de Jonge, the current director of Guerrilla Games, has revealed that the studio had a second project in development, but cancelled it to work on the upcoming survival science fiction game, Horizon: Zero Dawn. 

In an interview posted by Game Informer, de Jonge disclosed that Guerrilla Games was working on prototypes for two new games that were considered going into development. The first one is obviously Horizon: Zero Dawn, while the other project was never revealed. However, it is highly likely that the unknown title was another Killzone sequel. Speaking with Game Informer, de Jonge revealed how they decided what game would make the cut:

“We started out with a smaller team to look into exploring what those concepts would mean if we were to develop them. At some point we took two forward, worked on those prototypes for like, half a year or so. And we did some testing with some external people from Sony that are not in our office, and internally as well, and it was kind of 50/50 at some points.”

It seems like Guerrilla Games had a bit of a competition going. They were unsure of which game would be best for pursing development, but eventually, Horizon: Zero Dawn was the most favored.

“We actually put all the feedback that we got into an Excel sheet. And we had these two graphs: What excites you most and what do you think is the most risky one? The project that [stood] out on both charts was Horizon.”

Everyone was clearly more interested in taking a different approach. Even Hermen Hulst, the managing director, commented on the decision to pursue Horizon: Zero Dawn by saying:

“This is maybe incredibly risky but it’s something that is so radically different and so inspiring that it actually took me very little time to convince the team to jump behind it. We wanted to make [Horizon] straight away.”

We’ll never know for sure what the other project was. Although these directors have both said that Killzone was “beautifully gritty,” they are more interested in taking a different approach by making something more “beautiful in a majestic way.” Fans will have to wait and see if this is true with Horizon: Zero Dawn.

Due to the lackluster performance of Killzone Shadow Fall, it was most likely a sequel to that game, but Guerrilla Games has seemingly moved on from that franchise and is now focusing on another one. Let’s hope that it lives up to the hype.