00:00Knowledge has its rewards, don't you think?
00:06Well, let's begin.
00:08DLC
00:27When we started DLC, right from the beginning, we knew we wanted to do something with the Horus.
00:32Because it's a machine that we've seen throughout both games, this seemed like the perfect moment to bring it to life.
00:37The Horus was an interesting design. Right from the get-go, it served two purposes.
00:42One is to show the end of the world as it happened.
00:45We also wanted something that would look impressive and amazing in the landscapes.
00:49We settled on this ginormous insectoid machine that's at the same time also a mobile factory.
00:59The goal of the first section was to establish the Horus as a force of nature.
01:05But we also wanted to give ourselves some potential to escalate, to build up slowly.
01:10So starting with a stealth section felt really good to us.
01:14It also gave the characters the option to formulate a plan to collaborate with Seika along the way.
01:28To make the beach encounter feel a lot more spectacular and dramatic,
01:32we kind of had to do completely the opposite from what we always did.
01:35Horizon is very much about celebrating beautiful nature, and everything is lush.
01:39But here, because we're dealing with this final moment, we decided to do a 180 and go for just grey and dark.
01:46A very, very different mood from what we usually did.
01:49We wanted to structure the fight, and to do that we separated the player and the Horus
01:55to give the player the opportunity to observe the Horus in its entirety.
02:00It really gives you an impression of its power.
02:02And of course, the beach gave us a reasonably flat space for that big guy to stomp around and splash around in the water.
02:11When we had to figure out the movement theme for the Horus Titan, it's basically a zombie.
02:17You'll see this in the beach transition as it crawls its way down the beach.
02:21It's clawing with its tentacles, pulling itself along, lumbering forward like a shambling zombie would.
02:26This was a very, very different content from what we used to build.
02:31We needed a new approach.
02:33We had to create a strike team of specialists from all departments, tech, art, animation,
02:40to come together and create this experience in the production environment of a DLC.
02:46It allowed us to put all the focus on a single encounter and make it as awesome and as epic as we could make it.
02:53Horus was the most complex machine we ever made.
02:56It contained 1,300 joints.
02:59This required updates for engine to handle that complex skeleton.
03:04One of the challenges was making climbing on the moving machine.
03:08We already had the support for climbing on moving objects,
03:12but we had to improve quite a lot to make it look better for a Horus.
03:20The Horus is massive.
03:22It takes up so much of your screen.
03:24Quite a lot of Seika's actions that are tied to what the Horus is doing often go unnoticed.
03:29Seika is actually up there flying around like this sort of aerial ballet.
03:34He's dodging tentacles, taking missile fire,
03:37and the player's not really looking because they have to contend with the Horus itself.
03:41One of the biggest animations we actually had was when Seika causes the Titan to trip.
03:45She actually flies under the Titan, causing the tentacles to crash into its legs,
03:49becomes entangled, it's incredibly hard to animate, and most players miss it.
03:53But Seika actually will help Aloy in every section of the fight, even if you don't see it.
03:59The fight builds up towards something as the Horus starts to become more and more overheated,
04:05as the fight becomes more and more intense and we get closer and closer to it.
04:09It builds up a sort of crescendo that really goes all in,
04:13in terms of animation, visual effects,
04:17all the abilities of the player will be challenged.
04:20We're really trying to push Horizon and our engine to the limits of what it can give you.
04:26When I first saw the PC version, I saw it on one of our ultra-wide screens and I was blown away.
04:34When you see it on ultra-wide, it's very difficult to go back again. It's very spectacular.
04:40Run!
04:42Horizon already looks wonderful, but seeing that on widescreen just hits different.
04:48He's heading for the bay!
