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I was not sold on the idea of Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered. The original remains one of the best PS4 games, but with Sony's PS5 strategy focused more on upgrades than new games, I was extremely cynical about yet another single-generation remaster. Having looked a little closer now, however, I'm a little more faithful. Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered is a peculiar sell, but if you're looking at that $10 upgrade fee and wondering if it's worth it, you may be pleasantly surprised.
I'm not going to try and convince you to buy Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered if you've never touched the series before. If primitive tribes hunting post-apocalyptic robot dinosaurs weren't enough to convince you in 2017, they won't be enough in 2024, even with the shiny coat of pain that comes from the remaster. Elsewhere, Sony's pricing shenanigans – raising the cost of the base version after announcing the upgrade pathway – are hardly an incentive either. I was quick to show my skepticism about whether Aloy really needed a remaster, and I still don't think this is the best way in for new players.
But if you're a proud owner of the original, the upgrade fee feels like a decent investment, especially if you're still yet to go beyond Horizon Zero Dawn's base game. The remaster contains (and borrows technology from) the excellent Frozen Wilds expansion, while bringing the original game in-line with the visuals of Horizon Forbidden West. I'm actually yet to check out the sequel for myself, but this is such a good PS5 upgrade of the original that it had me reflexively reaching for the glider that I know Aloy unlocks in her second outing - Zero Dawn Remastered feels so much like a current-gen game that it had me inventing current-gen features for this last-gen release.
Over the Horizon
Horizon Zero Dawn review: "A world that begs you to explore every corner"
I feel like I should clarify something: I am not someone generally impressed by visual tech in my games. I am not someone who agonizes over Performance Mode versus Quality Mode, or who particularly cares about 30 vs 60 fps. I am not interested in the chase for photorealism, because stylization is more interesting, more sustainable, and more future-proof than realistic graphics.This is true to such an extent that the entire time I was playing Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, my brain was telling me that this was exactly how the original game had looked on my base PS4. Clearly that wasn't the case, but it's funny how quickly you can mentally overwrite the past.
Thankfully, I knew going in that my brain was wrong. I knew that remaster studio Nixxes had done hours of new mocap and enhanced the lighting to make cutscenes more vibrant and lifelike. I knew it picked over the parts of the world that even Guerilla had run out of time to get to to ensure that every inch of it was up to scratch. I saw the way snow and sand now deformed under Aloy's feet, how the denser plant life reacts to her touch, how the streams and rivers that criss-cross her world are clearer than before, reflecting their world far better than in the original game.
There are some points where I think Nixxes has overdone it . Some of the cutscene mocap is doing a little too much given how stationery Aloy is by comparison, and while the hero lighting that spotlights the main focus of a given scene is an enhancement overall, it can be a little distracting in extreme closeups. Given the huge amount of work that's gone into highlighting those characters, I was also a bit disappointed to see a few places with clipping issues around cloth and hair. But Guerilla's world was already beautiful, and this handful of nitpicks certainly don't detract too much from how spectacular it looks now. Even something as simple as a lens flare blaring across the screen as the sun rises over the Embrace now looks astonishingly good.
Admittedly, I still had to have most of these changes pointed out to me, but that's what comes from having a brain that still believes Just Cause 2 on the PS3 remains the peak of open-world technology. Most people won't see most of the improvements for most of their playtime, but that's mostly because even though they look great, they blend so seamlessly with what I actually expect of a PS5 game that you're more likely to be swept along by the action than spend a huge amount of time stopping to smell the salvebrush. That's testament to how good this remaster is – an excellent game brought alongside its sequel, and a believable nextgen upgrade to a game that already looked beautiful. Is Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered a reason to reinvest in the base game at its inflated price? I don't think so. But is it worth $10? Easily. This is no thin coat of paint or simple frame-rate boost, but a careful, deliberate upgrade that rebuilds so many aspects of its world that it stretches the very definition of a remaster.
