Earlier this week, I had a chance to play LEGO Horizon Adventures hands-on. In addition to the other praise I have for the game, I really loved how there was an incredibly high level of detail that went into the creation of each component of the LEGO brick. This is no coincidence – the entire world is made of individual bricks, and it seems like it could be recreated in the real world from actual LEGO sets.
At the Summer Game Fest Play Days over the weekend, Guerrilla Games Narrative Director James Windeler told us how this strange collaboration between Guerrilla and LEGO came about. Guerrilla had originally been building prototypes of robot dinosaurs for Horizon: Zero Dawn in DUPLO and had a strong interest in model making. For their next project, the team wanted to create something more light-hearted. And so they had collaborated with LEGO Tallneck a few years ago. LEGO loved the bright colors and optimistic themes of the Horizon games, as well as the relatively inclusive fanbase. Put all this together and it’s no wonder the two companies found an understanding.
Most of the previous LEGO games have been made by a company now called TT Games, but TT isn’t involved with this one. Instead, co-development group Studio Gobo and LEGO are working with Guerrilla Games, a team that includes several people who worked on the original Zero Dawn. Windeler says that since Zero Dawn was released, many of those people have had kids, and those kids are now old enough that their parents want to play video games with them, which is what Horizon Adventures’ co-op features are for.
But different teams mean different approaches and capabilities, and for Guerrilla in particular, that meant a need for attention to detail in Lego: Windeler says the team wanted Horizon Adventures to be like a “playable Lego movie,” noting that every asset in the game is “built from individual pieces.” [LEGO] “Bricks.”
“They were designed by Master Builders,” he says. “The coolest elements of Horizon, the majestic nature, the machines, the characters, all of these things follow the rules of physical Lego. So even though they’re being made as digital assets, they could technically be made from physical sets… And that extends to the animation style and the way the characters move in the game. There’s a kind of stop-motion feel to all the characters. Yes, it’s like a toy. The word ‘toy-like’ was used a lot as a target, but it’s the idea that you have the possibility to play with your own figures.”
What Windeler is describing certainly made sense to me when I played the game. I pointed out that when a character falls off a high ledge, they fall comically flat like a Lego being pushed off a shelf. Then they quickly bounce up and start walking again with the kind of jerky movements you’d expect a child to make a Lego character walk on a playmat. There are other little nods like this to the overall feel of playing with Lego. For example, when I rescued Nora’s villagers in the demo, I noticed some generic Lego figures mixed in with their Horizon-themed outfits. What was that?
“When you play with Lego as a kid, you’re not necessarily building a completely cohesive world,” Windeler explains. “You’re using the Lego that comes in the set.”
Windeler couldn’t comment on whether LEGO Horizon Adventures’ highly realistic buildability means more LEGO Horizon sets will be released, or whether other PlayStation IP will appear in LEGO games. However, he said that LEGO Horizon Adventures’ story will be around 7-8 hours long, with a replayable element at the end, allowing players to revisit previously visited areas to unlock more customization and other things. As Windeler told me, Horizon Adventures is not planned to be a 20+ hour adventure like Horizon: Zero Dawn. It’s loosely based on Zero Dawn, but it’s something everyone can understand, not a 10-hour joke for existing Horizon fans.
“There’s a lot of homage and we’ve reinterpreted iconic scenes in a way that fans of the series will recognise and enjoy, but at the same time we want people who are completely unfamiliar with Horizon to come and see it.”
For more information about LEGO Horizon Adventures, Complete Hands-On PreviewOn that same Playstation pre-order, I also played the new Astro Bot game. There is also a preview.
