The new patch for Horizon Zero Dawn PC, patch 1.02, is all about the crashes that have prevented some players from accessing the game at all.
The PC build of Horizon looks great, but it's prone to hard crashes which seem to vary greatly between individual hardware setups. Patch 1.02 targets these directly, and while it doesn't fix everything, developer Guerilla Games says it has addressed some of the "more frustrating" crashes around. Here are the key lines from the patch notes (which you can view in full here):
- Fixed an issue where some players would crash during their first game boot when the ‘game optimization’ screen is active and they ran out of disc space.
- Fixed an issue where some players would crash if they updated their video drivers after the game was already optimized previously.
- Fixed an issue where some players would crash during gameplay because of memory incorrectly being overwritten.
- Fixed an issue where some players would crash during gameplay due to a texture unstreaming bug.
- Improved crash report flow and messaging. Each crash now includes an identifier you can use to communicate with our Customer Support.
- Added more features to improve diagnostic data collection when submitting a crash report.
Patch 1.02 also addresses performance dips during auto-saving, locked V-sync in borderless windowed mode, facial animations breaking due to FPS limits, and excess memory usage tied to shaders. Guerilla Games previously said that improving the PC port would be its "highest priority" going forward, and as evidenced by its updated report system, it encourages players to continue reporting issues big and small.
If you're getting into Horizon for the first time, you're in for a treat - and you'll benefit from these Horizon Zero Dawn tips.
