Here's why Horizon Forbidden West's rocks look so dang real, straight from one of the devs

Horizon Forbidden West Aloy Pride inspired face paint
(Image credit: Guerrilla Games)

In case you haven't noticed, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Horizon Forbidden West has very lovely rocks, and 💖now the franchise's c🌠reator has an insightful answer about why that is.

A lot of stuff in Horizon Forbidden West is visually exceptional, from the verdant forests of post-apocalyptic Utah to the rocky coastline of California, but a viral tweet from this week puts a s🥃potlight on the stunningly detailed rock formations in the game. "Horizon Forbidden West has some of the best textures ever created by⛦ man," writes @TrueGamer1111.

Indeed, if you didn't know better you could ea🍰sily mistake the screenshots shared for actual pictures of r🍨eal-life rocks. The tweet attracted enough attention that Guerrilla Games studio and art director Jan-Bart van Beek chimed in with a quick but technical breakdown of just what's going on here.

"HFW’s rocks use a very ꦛunique system of shading," van Beek explains. "Instead of a texture, it uses a complex shader network that takes the local ecotope, erosion factors, moss and lichen distribution, dustyness and many other factors into account to give every rock unique colors."

Listen, I'm not an animator or visual artist or anyone who remotely understands what an ecotope is, but I can tell you the same in-house engine that was used to build Horizon Forbidden West (and Death Stranding, notably) is being used to make several new PlayStat🎶ion Studios gꦿames. That means you can expect plenty of drop-dead gorgeous 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming PS5 games to grace your eyeballs.

Find out where Horizon Forbidden West ranked on our list of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best PS5 games available now.

After earning an English degree from ASU, I worked as a corporate copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. I got my big break here ꦰin 2019 with a freelance news gig, and I was hired on as GamesRadar's west coast Staff Writer in 2021. That means I'm responsible for managing the site's western regional executive branch, AKA my home office, and writing about🥂 whatever horror game I'm too afraid to finish.