Horizon Forbidden West has been shown running on the base PS4 for the first time

Sony Interactive Entertainment has released the first gameplay footage of Horizon Forbidden West running on the base PS4 console, which you can watch below.

The ‘Shrine Walk’ PS4 clip is brief, offering less than 20 seconds of footage as Aloy traverses a sun-kissed environment.

Earlier this month, Sony published the first Horizon Forbidden West PS4 gameplay footage via a series of clips showing it running on PS4 Pro.

UPDATE 10/02/22: Guerrilla has released additional footage of the game running on the base PS4, which shows Aloy fighting a Tremortusk.

ORIGINAL STORY CONTINUES: Sony announced Horizon: Forbidden West for PS5 in June 2020 before confirming a PS4 version three months later.

Developer Guerrilla Games said last year that Horizon fans shouldn’t be worried that the PS4 version of Forbidden West has been compromised by the studio’s work on the PS5 one.

While the power of PS5 has enabled Guerrilla to add extra levels of detail to the game on the newer console, in September lead character artist Bastien Ramisse told the PlayStation Blog that the studio is aiming to deliver an equally engrossing experience on both platforms.

“We actually developed and tested the game simultaneously on both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, because it’s very important to us as a studio to ensure PlayStation 4 players get an equally immersive experience,” he said.

“With our knowledge from Horizon Zero Dawn, we knew that we still had some unexplored resources that could push the realism and quality of our character assets forward; it’s great to now be able to tap into that knowledge and experience for the sequel.”

He added: “The most noticeable differences and improvements for Aloy in terms of technology is the push of facial and body capture accuracy, allowing more realistic shapes and surface details on characters as well as the careful increase of polygon density to capture handmade and used outfits.”

In an interview published last June, Horizon Forbidden West director Mathijs de Jonge also 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 said.

“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.”

Related

Horizon Forbidden West PS5 is $10/£10 cheaper when purchased on a browser

Horizon is the final first party Sony game which will offer a free upgrade

Sony recently delayed the Horizon Forbidden West release date to February 2022. It also U-turned on plans not to offer free PS5 upgrades to users who purchase the PS4 standard edition of Horizon Forbidden West.

Players who visit the PlayStation Store via a browser are given the option to purchase the PS4 version of Horizon Forbidden West for £59.99 / $59.99, which includes a free PS5 upgrade.

However, when viewed on a PS5 console, users are only given the option to purchase the PS5 version of the game for £69.99 / $69.99 or the Digital Deluxe Edition for £79.99 / $79.99.