Knocking on Death's Door: Designing a New Bunker for 'Horizon Forbidden West'

[@dionkemp]

Dear GDC, we need more breakdowns like this 🙏

[@evanlane1690]

Fun watch. Seeing the iteration is key. I think with a lot of the GDC talks we hear "And we iterated a lot." but the specifics of that iteration gets glossed over. It was really nice to see the process from a very successful, long iteration cycle. Thanks for sharing this! It's hard to open yourself up to peer critique, but I (definitely NOT a peer... hobbyist at best) learned a lot from the talk.

[@BrenoGF144]

This is why my favorite dev logs are stuff like the Blizzcon OW development and the Respawn's Titanfall presentations on GDC

[@imperfectgamedev7533]

Amazing breakdown. So great to see how they balance narrative and gameplay.

[@k.kuzziah6384]

I have so much respect and admiration for everyone over at Guerilla who have made this game an amazing labor of love.

[@tylerboyce4081]

Thank goodness! This was the #1 session I was hoping to see at GDC, so I'm glad it's finally be released from the Vault.

[@gosu6594]

I really liked this quest. I found the 'traversal parkour puzzle' in the big room rather challenging, but it was a change of pace that I enjoyed. The boss fight was probably one of the most memorable fights of the game imo and it set the bar for what was coming later in the story. It was fascinating to see the work that was put behind it, really puts things into perspective

[@Phoenix700]

Funnily enough I hated this quest. The parkour puzzle was more frustrating than challenging for me, and the boss fight at the end was super annoying. You had to constantly shoot a target on the machine, while an enemy that is out of your view keeps attacking you so it felt cheap. Cool to see the process of the quest from start to finsh though

[@maxgrieve]

A really interesting talk. Have to say that I too, like many it seems, found the traversal sequence a pretty hard slog when I played it. But hearing here how tight time was for gameplay tuning, gotta say that makes a lot more sense now! For the record though, this quest didn't 'nearly make me quit'. Not even close. The cinematics and interactions before entering the facility made it clear this was going to be a Big Deal for the story, then the (very spoilery, like he says) revelations in the recluse chamber felt like a suitably big reward for the effort. I ended up feeling my experience on the quest was worth it. Yeah, could argue that's more down to luck with Narrative bailing out Quest - but game design is a team effort. Overall Guerrilla smashed it with HFW.

[@MoosebreathMan65]

It’s funny how they never solved the problem where the player is always looking up and away from the boss. Almost every iteration (except the shield overcharge one) has this issue. I assume it just got to a point where it was way too expensive to change the design with all the art resources pouring into the spider.

[@uxorioushornet]

I'd love to hear more about the ACE pillar method. It sounds like a great test to make sure encounters will be meaningful and fun. Reminds me of the CPNR method Extra Credits talked about when they analyzed the first floor of Durlag's Tower in Baldur's Gate.

[@18gShop]

I am feeling sad for Blake, because of all the hand-holding that he had to implement back to his puzzle design.(bright points, voice queues, markers, hints - the whole lot). I do believe that this is sacrificing the joy of discovery and the satisfaction of overcoming those hurdle by yourself, even if you need a couple of tries. I get that those games are being shipped for very wide audiences, but still it seems sad that all of the solutions are plainly spelled out by Aloy herself, constantly.

[@JM.....]

Yeah the self talk really dialed up into this game, made it feel like the game treated you as a toddler

[@Myzelfa]

And it's frustrating to see the tooltip appear or hear the self talk if I was already perfectly aware of what to do next but hadn't had time to do it yet. Perhaps having hints triggered by a button would have worked better.

[@JohnDuraSSB]

This channel is a gold mine.

[@_alexMadeira]

Fantastic presentation! It was fascinating to see how players reacted to the level and how each interaction changed based on that.

[@Dethikah]

Thank you for sharing this talk!

[@kaba9926]

Really interesting ! Even if I didn't really liked that section of the game. Thought it lacked direction. Level designers did their best with the mechanics they had but for me most of the new game deisgn elements (unable to grapple below water, need to grapple traps, same tool used for grappling and pulling but different distance, etc.) make no sense and feel too game-y. The iterations are better and better but maybe it just lacked some focus from the very beginning. The final result is of astonishing quality though. Thank your very much for sharing this content !

[@ct-gv6yl]

This was my favorite quest!

[@JM.....]

The whole pullcaster thing really didnt add much to the game, and seems like it really became a central focus point of quests, despite of that. It was a puzzle feature, without any purpose besides being a new puzzle feature. It over gimmicks all puzzles Players dont care that your engine can now do pull mechanics, we had the rope launcher to lock down machines in HZD, this is just that, but on the env. Override doors make sense, theyre controlled access points. Water sections make sense, things flood. Shootable ladders make sense, and reward spacial awareness. HZD puzzles were about exploring spaces, and overriding access points so you could explore the next space, which was consistent with the game narrative of exploring the old world

[@mutalix]

PlayStation 1st party studios are just built different, either they're setting the standard by which other games are judged or totally blowing the previous ceiling of quality.

[@Azure_Gust931]

Brilliant!

[@daanduijkers4845]

Personally, I think the developers should find another way to progress quests than "Aloy talking to herself". It often causes her to solve solve puzzles before the player does and many hardcore gamers have voiced their annoyance!

[@lucbloom]

Yeah but it’s hard to find the contextual clues that someone is lost/stuck. And it’s the less agile player that will get thrown off when a clue isn’t given when they are looking at the right spot etc etc. Remember that these games target audience is super broad now. Gamers are not only 14yr old boys now, but also “normies”. :-) ❤️

[@lucbloom]

Having said that, there could be an option buried in the menu, “Turn off context clues”

[@sebastienbarre]

Agreed. If she was a real human, she would have been institutionalized a long time ago :) It was very frustrating to take 5 steps in a room only to have her say: "Oh, what's that up there?". Compare this experience to the elephant in the room that is Elden Ring, where the character is completely silent, I found it immensely refreshing to be able to traverse FromSoftware's game by virtue of clever art design, sensible use of perspective, and better visual clues overall.

[@daanduijkers4845]

@@sebastienbarre Yeah, one of the problems of the HORIZON series is that (in my opinion) the open world is designed to look pretty, not traversable!

[@lewisnorth1188]

I think it's fine to fall back on that as a last resort, but when I played HZD I noticed the self talking prompts came up almost immediately, giving me no time at all to solve problems by myself. Or at times I would figure out how to solve a problem, think "oh cool, that was pretty nicely designed," then Aloy would just say exactly what I was thinking and ruin the moment.

[@sebastienbarre]

This is interesting and disheartening at the same time, since he clearly spent a ton of time on this quest, but this was for me (and some others here apparently) the quest that almost made me quit the game. The platforming section in the pillars room was so frustrating to me as it was too easy to fall in the water, leading to lengthy and needless back-tracking. The player can see the door to reach from the very start of the room, and all that spiderman-ing around felt like padding. I had a truly bad time with the swimming mechanics from start to finish in this sequel, and the escape sequence near the end of this quest is very high on my list of overall grievances. I had to take a break from the game after that level for sure. It's surprising because there are other games that implement swimming mechanics a lot better, why not copy the same systems? (say, Sekiro).

[@TDVL]

For the future: add a Gen-Z mode. So the rest of us can get decent puzzles and actual challenges. Also, when the entire level is based on a poor idea, no amount of technicality will make it good. Better yes, good no. The level is about a single story beat: introducing the invincible Far Zenith guys (a bad idea to begin with), their Spectres (that suck) and Beta (she is actually a good idea). There are embellishments of world building (everything Travis), but other than that it is like the majority of the game puzzles: inconsequential. The much less sophisticated HZD bunkers and puzzles had been significantly more interesting just because of the mystery-exploration component. No story-stakes here other than the obvious MacGuffin Gaia copy and a weak one at that, even if Sylens is used to make it more serious.

[@Mawal28]

Aw man I thought this was about Death's Door

[@postrock3374]

reading beyond four words are hard apparently

[@vinniemassimino]

Another great one GDC. Unfortunately, my brain is now tarnished when thinking about Horizon Forbidden West. Watching this *after* seeing Blake Rebouche's Elden Ring tweet "nor quest design, really" made his talk wildly informative... TL;DR, he created the discussion, so I'll continue it - HFW vs Elden Ring? HFW is "quest design" vs Elden Ring's pure gameplay In Elden Ring, FromSoftware took core elements from their past games, added and improved upon them, and presented a refined product. In HFW, Guerrilla over-designed much of the game. They also placed too much emphasis focus on new mechanics. I would argue the story in the Death's Door mission was supposed to have the same payoff ("whoa") as HZD when you climb Faro's tower. In HZD, you have multiple possibilities: stealth, full combat - options to reach the boss before the dramatic payoff. Here? Use Pullcaster, pullcaster again, pullcaster... "Is this is a "puzzle"? Aloy self talks frequently, and the player is practically told to hurry up and finish. In addition, why all of the underwater segments? Since when were pullcasters and underwater segments the strengths of Horizon's gameplay? I was so bothered and bored by the level I didn't feel a dramatic payoff. Before February 2022, I would never have thought to compare Horizon to FromSoft, but now that I have to, maybe this guy could learn a thing or two from Elden Ring: play to your strengths, create opportunities for the player to accomplish the goal how they want, when they want, and it'll be more satisfying for the player when they get it done. (And stop giving excessive hints.)

[@JasonHoningford]

This is amazing, but I find this puzzle type gameplay really frustrating and boring.

[@daanduijkers4845]

Yeah, HORIZON has a great concept: robot-dinosaurs in a post-post-apocalyptic world! However, it struggles on the execution cause it's game design is over a decade out-of-date!

[@jackreeves7]

​@@daanduijkers4845 wrong

[@nakirisama3439]

I remember he criticized Elden Ring on twitter, "No quest design, really."

[@John-996]

Was that really Him?

[@daanduijkers4845]

@@John-996 Yep! Its him! His username is "Horizon Forbidden Blake".

[@proprioceptive_ultragamer]

The fact that he emphasizes the importance of "tutorial moments" and reducing friction tells a lot.

[@nichiyohane]

Guerrilla Games might be canceled because of you-know-what, but the dev team culture seems stay the same. Design first, making tools, proxy items or characters, mainly for speed up iteration, deliver the game. But crunch and delay still happens so they probably need some iteration on those.

[@GoldenPhoenix101]

Why might it be cancelled?