A Horizon Forbidden West build has leaked, weeks before release

An early build of Guerrilla Games’ Horizon Forbidden West has leaked into the public domain, VGC understands.

On Monday images of what was claimed to be the PS4 version of the PlayStation exclusive sequel began circulating on social media.

VGC has since been told that the leaked build is indeed legitimate and, other than some missing art assets, contains the entire core content planned for the final game.

Following the publication of images claiming to show the leaked Horizon Forbidden West build on Twitter, the media was eventually removed hours later due to “a report from the copyright holder”, which adds further credence to their legitimacy.

At the time of publishing, the Forbidden West build does not appear to be circulating on file-sharing sites, though Sony will likely be wary of a situation similar to The Last of Us Part 2, which saw story spoilers circulate widely online well ahead of its official release date thanks to a similar build leak.

Horizon Forbidden West is not due to release officially until February 18. The sequel will be available for PS4 and PS5, with last-gen players able to upgrade to the new-gen version free of charge.

Publisher Sony announced Horizon: Forbidden West for PS5 in June 2020 before confirming a PS4 version the following September.

In an interview published in June, Horizon Forbidden West director Mathijs de Jonge claimed the game hasn’t been held back by the weaker of its two target platforms.

He told Hardware Zone the studio didn’t have to scale back its vision for the project due to PS4 hardware constraints. Aside from 3D audio, quick loading and DualSense support, the main difference between the two versions of the game is on the graphical side of things, he claimed.

“On the PlayStation 5, we can add so much more detail graphically. We can see the tiny hairs on Aloy’s face, for example. You can also see a ton of detail from far away.”

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2022 Preview: Horizon Forbidden West is the blockbuster the PS5 needs

It's been a while since Sony's last first-party offering, but Aloy's coming to fix that

At CES 2022 last week, Sony revealed the PlayStation VR2 specs and the hardware’s first game, Horizon Call of the Mountain.

The title is being developed by Guerrilla Games in partnership with new PlayStation studio Firesprite.