Reports have emerged to say that Guerrilla Games is rebooting and reworking Horizon Hunters Gathering, removing core live service elements and shifting to a more traditional co-op adventure format and story mode.
Per Jason Schreier on Bloomberg, Guerrilla Games has been working on this reboot since June, following poor feedback to the version of the game announced in February and in private testing. Schreier’s sources are speaking anonymously following a meeting this morning that they have until December to reach a new milestone with the project and impress executives on the quality of this new direction. Some developers are also being moved across to a different project which will have a similar deadline.
Horizon Hunters Gathering was revealed in February, following years of rumours over Sony and Guerrilla’s efforts to create a Horizon multiplayer spin-off. Even without a gaming community which now bays for blood Sony to reverse course on killing of physical media on every trailer, Hunters Gathering received a cold reaction thanks to the live service direction, the change to a more cartoony art style, taking a several steps away from the look and feel of Horizon: Zero Dawn and Forbidden West.
At the time, the team said that Hunters Gathering was still deep in development and would be shaped by playtests, and if these reports are accurate, then that is exactly what is happening. That’s a good thing, given the ignominious failures of so many of PlayStation’s live service games and projects.
The biggest failure that everyone refers to is Concord, of course, but there’s so, so many more. London Studio was closed after their live service game was canned, Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us multiplayer game was canned and so it will now have been seven years between main releases from the studio, a Spider-Man multiplayer game was leaked to have been in development at Insomniac, Bend Studios and Bluepoint had their games cancelled (the latter eventually being shut down), two projects led by Jason Blundell were cancelled and his studios closed. And then there’s Bungie with the folly of cancelling future development of Destiny 2 (or a sequel), and wilting player counts for Marathon.
Of the projects that remain with a live service and a multiplayer focus, Fairgames is still an unknown after studio founder Jade Raymond left last year, there’s 4:Loop from Left 4 Dead creator Mike Booth which hasn’t had much buzz to it since its announcement, and now Horizon Hunters Gathering is having a major revamp. Hopefully they are able to pivot and release something engaging, fun and worthwhile.
For now, the only real high point for all of this has been Helldivers 2.
Source: Bloomberg