The Impact of Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered on PS5

Even today, Horizon Forbidden West on PlayStation 5 stands as one of the best-looking games available for Sony’s platform. The lush world, overflowing with detail is stunning to behold delivering a significant leap forward over its predecessor on PS4 – Horizon Zero Dawn. And yet, despite the gap, Zero Dawn is still a great-looking game, already running at 60 frames per second on PS5. So, the very idea of a remake of Horizon Zero Dawn seemed silly when we first caught wind of it – but it turns out that’s what we have is a robust remaster helmed primarily by Nixxes that manages to greatly enhance the visuals while introducing the full suite of options available in the second game. Is this enough to warrant the effort? And is it worth the relatively meagre $10 upgrade price for owners of the original game?

When you first boot up this new version of Horizon, perhaps the first thing you’ll notice is the option to import your save from PlayStation 4. This is not a full remake, after all, so you can directly pull over your original saves. In my case, I decided to leverage the New Game+ option to begin with a full selection of equipment. Beyond this, there are many more options available this time. All the gameplay, HUD and accessibility options made available in Horizon Forbidden West have made the jump. The options menu is far more robust than the original game as a result, allowing you to better tweak the gameplay to your tastes.

This also includes the performance options – like Forbidden West, players have access to 30fps, 40fps and 60fps modes each offering various trade-offs between performance and image quality. The game seems to use the same dynamic resolution scaling exactly like Horizon Forbidden West before it with quality mode aiming for native 4K while performance modes drop slightly below targeting 1800p on average. Thankfully, the anti-aliasing matches the current version of Forbidden West so it’s very clean compared to the initial launch version of that game.

Beyond image quality differences, however, the three modes are all roughly the same. Personally, the image quality in performance mode is strong enough that I recommend this mode over the others. Nixxes also confirmed to us that Horizon Remastered already includes PS5 Pro support which will automatically activate when played on the new console. It’s also worth mentioning that performance is, by and large, perfect. Each mode delivers on their performance targets, along with an unlocked frame-rate mode for VRR displays. This doesn’t deliver frame-rates that much higher than 60fps, but it’s nice that it’s there and of course, there are potential benefits via playback on future PlayStation hardware.

But really, it’s all about the visual and features makeover. Firstly, the entire suite of next-generation materials has been deployed from Forbidden West but often tweaked to better work within this new game. For example, Nixxes has replaced the terrain system, the foliage and so much more – that much is obvious from a cursory comparison. However, if you stop and look much closer at individual assets, the boost in quality is more evident. There is an increase in the number of unique plants and in their actual quality. Everything around you appears more detailed, falling roughly in line with Forbidden West. It’s interesting to see – the team went through and seems to have closely matched the types of foliage expected in each biome but used completely revamped assets that look a lot better overall.

Popping into manmade areas instead, there’s still a sense that things have been improved detail wise. For instance, the stonework used throughout Meridian is hugely improved in this new version. Still, when just slamming together a pair of gameplay clips from each game, it wouldn’t be unfair to say that the original still looks great. This is very much an upgrade focused on the nitty gritty details and not everyone is going to notice or appreciate the boost in detail which is what makes modern comparisons so difficult.

That said, effects work has improved in lock step with the assets, with water rendering a great example. This is something I had taken issue with way back in my original analysis on Zero Dawn. The water simply doesn’t look very good at all. It uses an ugly, low resolution approximate cube-map along with poor SSR. Forbidden West absolutely blew the doors off Zero Dawn with amazing water rendering throughout. Zero Dawn Remastered, in comparison, sits somewhere in the middle. It never quite appears as striking as the sequel, but the improved SSR and fallback reflection system do make a huge difference. Reflections can appear slightly pixelated on close examination but it’s miles beyond the original and really shows off the surroundings. Furthermore, the improved caustics and handling of light above and below the surface produce a far more pleasing image. Scenes like this really showcase how much better the water rendering can be.

There are also improvements to other natural weather-related phenomena. The deforming snow that was first introduced in Frozen Wilds is now used across the entire game for both snow and sand. Furthermore, Aloy’s outfit becomes caked with snow as you move through it adding to the realism. Elements like snow and rain are also handled much more smoothly now, producing better, more atmospheric results.

Volumetrics are also so much better this time, much like the second game, adding a huge amount of depth to the scenes where it’s used. Particularly impressive is the new cloud system known as Nubis which was developed for the second game which is deployed in the Zero Dawn remaster. Clouds were already a high point in the original, though, but the updated sky system just allows for sharper, more complex formations. Basically, in terms of both detail and environmental effects, the team was successful in bringing the game up to par with the second game.

Lighting is also dramatically improved. Like the original, Forbidden West still relies on pre-calculated lighting data rather than fully real-time global illumination, but the quality of the individual bakes is increased allowing more detail especially in more subtle, shadowed regions of the image. Basically, there are now 12 bespoke times of day captured in the bake along with many more layers to handle verticality. As a result, smaller details are now properly captured in the lighting system allowing more nuanced ambient shadowing and reducing the incorrect light leakage and other issues that we see in the original.

The thing is, as I learned from taking with Nixxes, the improvements to lighting aren’t just down to technology. The entire game was re-lit by hand. So, while technology was leveraged to improve accuracy, many of the improvements are simply down to more experienced lighting artists working their magic. The combination of the two pays off, producing far more striking results. Honestly, the changes are significant enough that I’m not sure the word ‘remastered’ is entirely fitting here. There are always arguments over what remastered really means but, in most cases, improvements are very minor and mostly focused on image quality and performance. While not as dramatic a shift, it almost reminds me of Bluepoint’s work on Shadow of the Colossus and Demon’s Souls.

Next up, let’s talk characters. All of the models are updated in this version of the game but not as you might expect. Basically, all the base polygon meshes are largely the same as in the original game, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been improvements. Essentially, the materials used across every character have been overhauled. Skin is more realistic; clothing feels more natural and everything seems more convincingly lit. Aloy herself has received the most improvements with things like peach fuzz and superior hair quality being added to the mix. More importantly, Nixxes improved one of the game’s weak points – the conversations. In the original game, outside of main cutscenes, conversations were very stiff and awkward. This was hugely enhanced in the sequel where they look amazing.

For Remastered, the developers captured many hours worth of new motion-capture data to use for conversations. They built a complex system to integrate new animation data into the game, delivering new character movement and facial animations that look and feel more natural. Perhaps this not quite on the level as Forbidden West but it’s a lot closer and much more natural to the eye. Furthermore, entirely new camera angles were selected for these scenes making them feel fresh. This helps a lot in terms of presenting the story. The five point lighting system from Forbidden West also makes a return – I know not everyone loves this ‘hero lighting’ but I do think it looks good overall and helps the characters stand out in their scenes. The original game used just a pair of lights in comparison, meaning that such scenes were less convincingly lit.

Moving away from visuals, though, there are other elements that have been improved. Audio is a big one. While the core remains much the same, the audio mix has been reworked with better support for surround and 3D audio. The mix feels livelier taking better advantage of highs and lows. The original is already an amazing sounding game, to be fair, but this is improved further. In addition, as you’d expect, full Dual Sense support is included. The haptics are excellent, I feel, and do bring a little something to the game. It’s a subtle but welcome boost.

Ultimately, though, when stepping back and looking at the project as a whole I walked away fairly impressed. As I said in the beginning, I was sceptical. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see a studio pour years of work into remaking a game that already looks great in its original form. In the end, however, this was a good opportunity for Nixxes to produce something slightly different than its usual PC conversions and the idea that the team was able to manage this remaster while also releasing a huge number of PC ports suggests that they were a perfect fit for this project after all. I’m impressed.

Furthermore, if you already own the game, I think £10/$10 is an eminently reasonable asking price for the upgrade when considering how much has been added. Too much work was poured into this to offer it as a free upgrade, I think it’s fair to say. Given the near perfect technical execution of this remaster project then, I’d say my initial scepticism was not warranted in the end. Nixxes did a great job.