The Dread Out Universe is canon in the world of indie horror gaming. With over 1.5 million people braving its chilling landscapes, it’s a force to be reckoned with in the world of digital horror. What started with a viral sensation in 2013 has grown into a horror gaming phenomenon, captivating gamers, YouTubers, and streamers alike. Dread Out became Indonesia’s first global gaming hit that spawned a Netflix film of the same name, inspiring its successor Dread Out 2, and today DreadHaunt launches in the same universe to push the limits of fear!
So, what’s all the fuss about? Let’s break down the six things you need to know before jumping into this horror-filled world with DreadHaunt, now available on Xbox!
Unveil the Horror: DreadHaunt Now Available on Xbox
Brace yourself for a nightmare you won’t forget as DreadHaunt hits Xbox! Prepare to be thrown into the heart of a cursed island off the coast of Jakarta, where dark secrets lurk, and supernatural terrors abound.
Whether you’re a solo player ready to uncover the island’s gruesome past or someone who prefers to team up with friends, DreadHaunt offers a horrifying experience for every gamer. But beware: in multiplayer mode, the terror is even more unpredictable—one of your allies might just turn against you, possessed by sinister forces!
Here are the six key things you should know before you dive into DreadHaunt‘s terrifying world:
1. Multiplayer Madness
When you’re deep in the island’s mystery with your friends, trust is everything… until it isn’t. One of you might just become possessed, and then the real horror begins. Remember, if your friend suddenly goes quiet, something *bad* is about to happen.
2. Keep Friends Close, Enemies Closer
Teamwork is key in multiplayer mode—but always be wary. Sometimes, the greatest threat is standing right next to you.
3. Walk Softly, Avoid Detection
Spectros—otherworldly beings that stalk the island—can sense your movements. Walking instead of running might be the difference between staying safe or becoming the next victim.
4. Invisible Threats
In single player mode, not all dangers can be seen. Some Spectros are invisible, and you’ll need to use a UV blaster to detect and stun them before it’s too late.
5. Solve the Mystery
The UV blaster is not just for defense. Use it to uncover hidden messages that reveal key pieces of the island’s dark puzzle.
6. Arm Yourself
Your survival depends on being prepared. Don’t forget to equip your weapons and make sure they’re fully loaded—there’s no room for mistakes here!
With customizable characters, immersive storytelling, and an eerie atmosphere, DreadHaunt is the latest heart-pounding addition to the Dread Out Universe. It builds on the legacy started by Dread Out, the viral sensation that made history as Indonesia’s first global hit horror game. Now, with DreadHaunt, the terror continues, drawing in millions more to experience the fear firsthand.
Download DreadHaunt today on Xbox and immerse yourself in a nightmare where trust is your greatest weapon, but betrayal might be right behind you.
Are you ready to explore the unknown, confront unimaginable horrors, and survive the supernatural terrors lurking in every shadow?
DreadHaunt is a survival horror and deception game that can be played solo or in multiplayer. While designed with multiplayer in mind, a single-player story mode reveals the chilling origins of the supernatural events from a decade ago.
Set on a forsaken island off Jakarta’s northern coast, a place steeped in arcane energy and unsolved mysteries, you will face anomalous entities, cursed objects, and strange phenomena that modern science cannot explain. Using specially designed tools infused with ancient amulets, you’ll confront these exotic creatures and spiritual threats.
As a member of a covert containment agency comprising scientists, exorcists, and believers your mission is to locate and secure cursed items believed to fuel the island’s paranormal activity. But danger doesn’t just come from the supernatural; one of your team members may fall victim to possession, threatening your mission from within.
Explore the eerie island, customize your character, and choose how you’ll communicate and confront the dangers that await. Team up with fellow agents to survive, uncover the island’s secrets, and stop the evil forces at play.
DreadHaunt—where every decision matters, and survival depends on trust.
This one launches on the Switch eShop on 24th October, throwing us into a creepy underground world packed with crafty combat and perilous platforming — ring any bells? The art style and movement mechanics instantly put us in mind of Team Cherry’s masterpiece, but this doesn’t seem to be any old hollow imitation (god knows we’ve seen some of them), with an underlying shrine-building objective appearing much more optimistic than the dark and down-trodden world of Hallownest.
Alan Wake developers Remedy have announced their very first multiplayer game, a three-person co-op shooter set in the world of Control and thereby, the Remedy Connected Universe. Previously codenamed Condor, it’s called FBC: Firebreak – and I am going to immediately recommend they shorten it to Firebreak, because that caps-into-colon combo is going to wind me up when I’m writing news posts at speed. While I’m throwing my weight around, let me also instantly rebut the pedants who are even now racing to leave a comment saying that, actually, Remedy did work on Smilegate’s multiplayer shooter CrossfireX. Yes, they did, but only the single player bits.
Anyway, Firebreak! Here’s the announcement trailer.
Developers Unknown Worlds and publishers Krafton have given us our first proper look at their next open world exploration sim, Subnautica 2, which will launch on PC via Xbox Game Preview in 2025. It’ll support four player co-op, alongside the returning singleplayer survive-o-buildy experience, and it’ll take place on a brand new planet. Here’s the reveal trailer.
Remedy’s new multiplayer game set in the Control universe has been fully revealed for the first time under the name FBC: Firebreak.
Billed as a three-player co-op experience, it features a more colorful take on Remedy’s popular universe. The first gameplay trailer shows three characters in environmental suits battling a variety of enemies in fast-paced first-person gameplay. There’s also a garden gnome. Check out the trailer below.
In a follow-up post on Xbox Wire, director Mike Kayatta said that FBC: Firebreak is “not Control DLC and it’s definitely not a Control sequel.” Instead, Remedy calls it a game you can “enjoy with your friends and tackle multiple hectic co-op missions.”
It casts players as first responders from the Federal Bureau of Control battling enemies in The Oldest House using “paranatural augments,” which are “Altered Items” engineered into tool attachments. That apparently includes
“We have always done single player games at Remedy, and rest assured, we have more single player games in development, and they will be awesome, but for a long time we have wanted to make a PvE multiplayer game.,” Kayatta says. “There are loads of us here who love multiplayer besides single player. We don’t want to be doing the same types of games all the time; it’s good to take on new challenges.”
We wanted to make sure that FBC: Firebreak was a legitimate and impactful part of that history and lore
Notably, Remedy says that FBC won’t be a typical live service game. While there will be plenty to unlock and will feature a steady supply of fresh content, it won’t be geared around “logging in every day for some loot or fear of missing out on materials.” It will also feature plenty of new stories set in the world of Control, albeit with a somewhat different approach.
“For the people who are keeping up with the single-player journey, we wanted to make sure that FBC: Firebreak was a legitimate and impactful part of that history and lore. The narrative style you’ve seen in our previous games just wasn’t ever going to work here, for this kind of game,” Kayatta explains. “When you think about these differences in FBC: Firebreak’s gameplay – world over story, multiplayer over single-player, voice-chatting with your teammates, action over exploration and so on – you can probably see why it was important that we made FBC: Firebreak a stand-alone experience. That said, you will see more of Control’s world. More of the Federal Bureau of Control. Meet more of the people who work there. Explore more of the Oldest House. Run into more weird stuff. And importantly, experience this world, old and new, from a completely different perspective.”
In the meantime, work continues on Control 2, which is currently in the design stage of development. Remedy is also preparing new Alan Wake 2 DLC. As for FBC: Firebreaker, it’ll arrive in 2025 for Xbox Series X|S and PC, and will be available on day one on Xbox Game Pass. For more, check out everything announced at the Xbox Partner Showcase.
Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.
Nightdive Studios’ quest to revive some of gaming’s most bizarre and long-forgotten treasures shows no signs of slowing down. With the release of PO’ed: Definitive Edition earlier this year, it was a clear-cut signal that the team is ready and willing to embrace titles that may not be the most recognisable in an increasingly crowded market, but nevertheless represent and preserve them, unearthing titles that would otherwise have fallen ever further into obscurity.
Killing Time: Resurrected, originally developed by Studio 3DO and released in 1995, is another example of Nightdive’s valiant endeavour to spruce up curios, and from a technical point of view at least, it’s one of the studio’s most impressive efforts yet. Its presentation has been greatly enhanced while still retaining everything that made this 3DO FPS so unique, resulting in a product that frankly makes the original release borderline obsolete.
Xbox Partner Preview brought us a first look at gameplay from The Lake House, the second expansion coming to Alan Wake 2 on October 22 – placing you in the shoes of FBC Agent Estevez, you’ll be exploring the titular Lake House, a research station situated in the wider game’s Cauldron Lake. It’s a true survival horror experience, but it also opens brand new doors into the wider Remedy Connected Universe – leaving us with a lot of questions. Thankfully, we were able to catch up with members of the development team to find out more about this fascinating new chapter in Alan’s horror tale.
If you’ve completed the main game, it’s clear that the events of Alan Wake 2 are fundamentally self-contained (“it’s not a loop, it’s a spiral,” after all…). That leaves Remedy in a very interesting position when it comes to its expansions – setting up extra story either before or after that story would be difficult, and could risk fracturing that carefully created storyline. That’s why the team’s used these expansions to tell tales that add to that story in unexpected ways.
“The Lake House tells the story of Agent Estevez’s visit to the Lake House facility, which takes place in parallel with the early part of [Alan Wake 2 co-protagonist] Saga’s story in Alan Wake 2,” explains Lead Writer, Clay Murphy. “By the time Saga and Estevez meet, the story of this expansion has already occurred.”
“When we originally came up with the concepts for [first expansion] Night Springs and The Lake House, we knew that they would be quite different tonally,” adds Game Director, Kyle Rowley. “Night Springs episodes were all about these kind of crazy ‘What If?’ scenarios where we could explore some rather unique ideas that were sometimes quite a dramatic tonal shift from the main experience in Alan Wake 2. With The Lake House, we wanted to again lean into the horror side of things.”
Our glimpses at the expansion today certainly make that clear. The course of Alan Wake 2’s main storyline allowed the team to shift gears throughout, drifting from surreal, comedic scenarios, to police procedurals, to full-on horror. The Lake House appears to be supercharging that last point – the lights are low, the enemies are elusive, and the scares are plentiful. The team likens it to the horror levels of the main game’s Valhalla Nursing Home sequence – and if you’ve played that, you’ll know what you’re in for.
The difference here is that The Lake House doesn’t just connect to Alan Wake 2, but a whole other Remedy game: Control. Kiran Estevez makes a small appearance in the main game, but here we’ll learn much more about her role as an agent for the Federal Bureau of Control – and the different kinds of horror that entails.
“Control explores horror themes as well of course,” explains Rowley, “but with Alan Wake 2 being a survival horror game we just felt that the world of Control provides some rather harrowing elements for us to lean into and scare players with.”
The connections to that previous game won’t just be skin-deep – besides working out what The Lake House means to this universe, a teaser at the end of the trailer seems to show Control’s quest goal/antagonist, Dylan Faden, implying there’s a much stronger link than we might have expected – although Remedy won’t be drawn on that right now.
As Communications Manager Miika Huttunen puts it: “It did look a lot like Dylan. It might be worth really exploring the nooks and crannies of the Lake House…”
Diving Into the Lake
Bringing this back to the expansion’s connection to Alan Wake 2, Estevez comes to The Lake House to speak to the FBC researchers inside about the Wake case, and the wider events of Cauldron Lake. But instead of finding answers, she gets more questions, as it becomes clear that the facility is going through a horrifying transformation of its own. The terrors of Alan Wake games always spawn from Overlaps – intersections of reality and art – and here an Overlap is bringing visual art to life. Most notably, that comes in the form of a new enemy type: The Painted.
“For The Lake House we wanted to introduce a new, different kind of enemy from those found in the main game,” says Rowley. “It’s important to us that our enemies follow on from themes found in and around the part of the game that they are revealed – whether that be the water-themed enemy, the “Diver” located at the Valhalla Nursing Home, or the Taken Wolves that are found in and around the Cauldron Lake Forest.
“With that in mind, the Painted are very much themed around one of the core elements inside the Lake House – paint! They can move in and out of the supernatural paint on surfaces, hunting the player as they do so and have devastating melee attacks that deal significant amounts of damage.”
As a new playable character, Estevez doesn’t have the same abilities we’re used to from Saga and Alan – but she does come equipped with the expertise and equipment needed to deal with these fresh threats:
“As a character, she is very familiar with the paranatural forces at play around Cauldron Lake and has experienced many events similar to this in her career,” explains Murphy.
“Much like Saga, Estevez is a federal agent,” adds Rowley, “so she is quite capable with standard issue firearms. That said, we did add a new FBC-specific weapon to this expansion which can be used to deal with slightly more… paranatural entities. Estevez’s base weapons also deal a bit more damage than Saga’s, so Taken enemies go down a little faster.”
Unlike the Night Springs expansion, this isn’t a series of standalone activities, either:
“Much like some of the larger missions inside the main game of Alan Wake 2, this mission is structured like a more traditional survival horror game,” says Rowley. “There is a large open structure for the player to explore, secrets to discover and dangerous enemies to try and survive against. Narrative obviously plays a large role in the expansion – as it did in the main game – so it is definitely worth exploring and trying to locate the many narrative objects scattered throughout the environment.”
Estevez herself will help enrich that story too: “We have tweaked the map so that you also get some nice little notes from Estevez where she uses her experience within the FBC to comment on what is happening in and around The Lake House, giving the player some nice additional context,” adds Rowley.
If you’ve already played Alan Wake 2, you’ll be able to jump directly into the Lake House content from the main menu, but it’s been designed to sit within the main game for any players coming to this for the first time:
“Like with the Night Springs expansion, The Lake House is incorporated into the main game flow, so players will come across these missions while playing through the main campaign in a seamless manner. We really believe adding both Night Springs and The Lake House into our core flow has improved the game’s pacing and makes for the ultimate Alan Wake 2 experience.”
It’s another masterstroke in how Remedy uses its expansions – not building on top of their games, but within them, making each one feel essential. But there’s an added point of interest here. In Control, the game’s second expansion, AWE, was used as a means of teasing the events of Alan Wake 2. With a Control sequel on the way, and plenty of connections already being made, is The Lake House performing a similar trick? Huttunen makes clear that that’s one question we won’t get an answer to until we play The Lake House:
“Let’s just say that we’re as excited as anyone in seeing how the story of the Faden siblings unfold in the future…”
Alan Wake 2: The Lake House arrives for Xbox Series X|S on October 22.
Unlock exclusive content with the Alan Wake 2 Deluxe Edition.
– Digital base game
– Expansion Pass
– Night Springs Expansion (additional story content)
– Lake House Expansion (additional story content)**
– Nordic Shotgun Skin for Saga
– Crimson Windbreaker for Saga
– Celebrity Suit for Alan
– Parliament Shotgun Skin for Alan
– Lantern Charm for Saga***
Night Springs Expansion:
Dive back into the mysterious and ever-twisting world of the Dark Place in the first expansion for Alan Wake 2, Night Springs.
Trapped in the enigmatic Dark Place, Alan Wake seeks an escape route through an unexpected medium: his imagination. As he pens the scripts for the once-beloved TV show “Night Springs,” he unwittingly unravels the fabric of reality, plunging players into a surreal journey where the familiar morphs into the unexpected.
Night Springs allows you to play as several fan-favorite characters through three highly stylized episodes, each offering a unique slice of the Alan Wake universe. While similar to previously known characters, they are different—Night Springs versions of themselves.
Become the Time Breaker, manipulating time to rewrite your destiny. Embrace the cosmic mysteries in the North Star and unravel secrets that defy reason. Or channel your inner obsession as the Number One Fan, fighting the shadows in pursuit of truth and love.
Focusing on characters from Alan Wake games and the Remedy Universe. While similar to previously known characters, they are different – Night Springs versions of themselves, written by Alan Wake based on what he saw in his visions in the Dark Place.
The Episodes:
– Time Breaker : An Actor, who bears an uncanny resemblance to the Bright Falls sheriff Tim Breaker, is a multiversal hero in the game “Time Breaker”. His character must track down the Master of the Many Worlds and prevent him from murdering the multiversal hero’s different selves across parallel universes.
– North Star : The Sibling, an unknown woman who bears a striking resemblance to FBC Director Jesse Faden, is trying to find her missing brother, who is being held captive at Coffee World.
– Number One Fan : The Waitress, who bears a striking resemblance to Oh Deer Diner’s waitress Rose Marigold, must save her idol, the Writer, from the danger he finds himself in. To do so, she must confront the Writer’s critics, and the Bad Boy who is the Writer’s evil twin.
Digital base game:
A string of ritualistic murders threatens Bright Falls, a small-town community surrounded by Pacific Northwest wilderness. Saga Anderson, an accomplished FBI agent with a reputation for solving impossible cases arrives to investigate the murders. Anderson’s case spirals into a nightmare when she discovers pages of a horror story that starts to come true around her.
Alan Wake, a lost writer trapped in a nightmare beyond our world, writes a dark story in an attempt to shape the reality around him and escape his prison. With a dark horror hunting him, Wake is trying to retain his sanity and beat the devil at his own game.
Anderson and Wake are two heroes on two desperate journeys in two separate realities, connected at heart in ways neither of them can understand: reflecting each other, echoing each other, and affecting the worlds around them.
Fueled by the horror story, supernatural darkness invades Bright Falls, corrupting the locals and threatening the loved ones of both Anderson and Wake. Light is their weapon—and their safe haven — against the darkness they face. Trapped in a sinister horror story where there are only victims and monsters, can they break out to be the heroes they need to be?
Solve a Deadly Mystery
What begins as a small-town murder investigation rapidly spirals into a nightmare journey. Uncover the source of the supernatural darkness in this psychological horror story filled with intense suspense and unexpected twists.
Play As Two Characters
Experience both Alan Wake’s and Saga Anderson’s stories and see events unfold from different perspectives. Switch between Anderson’s life-or-death race to solve the case and Wake’s desperate attempts to rewrite his reality to escape the depths of the Dark Place.
Explore Two Worlds
Experience two beautiful yet terrifying worlds, each with its own rich cast of characters and deadly threats. Discover majestic landscapes of Cauldron Lake in the Pacific Northwest and the idyllic towns of Bright Falls and Watery. Contrasting sharply, attempt to escape the nightmarish cityscape of the Dark Place.
Survive With Light
With limited resources, take on powerful supernatural enemies in desperate close-combat situations. It takes more than just a gun to survive: light is the ultimate weapon in the fight against the darkness and will be your refuge when enemies threaten to overwhelm you.
**Additional story content available post-launch, more to be unveiled later.
***Gives Saga an additional battery for the flashlight.
Hey everyone, you may be familiar with Nixxes as the developer behind PC ports of PlayStation games, but behind the scenes we have also been hard at work on a project of a very different nature. Working closely with our friends at Guerrilla, we set out to create Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered for both PS5 and PC.
In our announcement last month, we shared details of improved features and technology, such as the completely revamped sound mix by Guerrilla’s audio team, support for DualSense controllers, and new motion capture for conversations. Today, I’d like to introduce you to some of the team members at Nixxes to give you more insight into some of the enhancements that have been made in the remaster.
Overhauling nature
Foliage plays a big role in portraying the lush, overgrown ruins of a long-lost civilization in the world of Horizon. Our team of Environment Artists considered the foliage in Horizon Zero Dawn to be an industry standard, and Horizon Forbidden West added to that with significant improvements in visual quality. For the remaster, the team wanted to give the foliage the same care and attention.
Patrick Blankenzee, Senior Environment Artist: “To bring the foliage in the remaster up to the same level of quality as in Horizon Forbidden West, we enhanced the shaders, textures, geometry and foliage interaction. We assessed all the foliage assets in Horizon Zero Dawn and upgraded them with all these new features. We did this for hundreds of plants, bushes, flowers and trees.”
“We looked at the biomes in the original game and compared them to the concept art. We found places that we could enhance and bring closer to the original intent, with the rainforest biome being a good example of this. With powerful procedural technology, we injected new foliage and raised the quality and density to new heights. The riverbanks have also been upgraded with more biodiversity to bring them closer to the original intention as seen in the concept art.”
Julian Hofman, Environment Artist: “Working with the original team over at Guerrilla, we were able to ask questions, and directly compare their latest work on Horizon Forbidden West to the work we were doing for the remaster. This gave us some very specific goals to work towards, like the fresh generation of moss that you can now see Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered.”
“For me, the foliage changes make the game feel more alive and make it live up to the incredibly high standards of the Horizon games. The result is a coherent world to replay or experience for the first time.”
Enhancing the living world
The Design team at Nixxes made several key improvements to Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered. One of the most significant changes is the enhancement of the living world.
Brian van Nunen, Senior Technical Game Designer: “To achieve this, we reviewed all villages, outposts and cities, identifying areas that felt empty or where we could improve realism and immersion.”
“Building the game for PS5 allowed us to leverage the increased amount of memory available, enabling us to significantly boost the number of non-player characters. We added many more places for NPCs to stand, sit, work and fulfil their needs. We gave them more varied schedules to increase movement and liveliness in different areas. We also tried to make creative use of existing animations. For example, there is now a woman feeding geese at the well in Meridian, reusing an existing sowing animation. Additionally, on the bridge to Meridian, we’ve made significant strides in improving the atmosphere and sense of activity.”
Improving terrain and building blocks
Our Tech Art team used the library of next-gen materials that were created for Horizon Forbidden West to enhance the quality of assets used for terrain, objects and buildings significantly in the remaster.
Sander Bronkhorst, Senior Technical Artist: “We began by replacing all the Horizon Zero Dawn terrain materials with their new Horizon Forbidden West counterparts. This was only the first step, as the sequel’s terrain materials didn’t always align with the original aesthetics. To address this, we carefully tweaked and polished each individual terrain material to closely match the look and feel of the original game, while maintaining the visual fidelity of the terrain materials in Horizon Forbidden West.”
“In addition to updating all the terrain textures and materials, we incorporated features like deformable snow and sand. Snow deformation was first introduced in the Frozen Wilds expansion, but in the remaster, you will find this feature outside that area as well.”
“In settlements like Meridian and Daytower, the ground required a more unique aesthetic. Previously, Guerrilla used custom meshes and materials for the floors in these settlements, exclusive to these locations. For the remaster, we initially followed this approach, exploring the possibility of increasing texture resolution and adding parallax mapping to areas such as brick floors. However, after initial tests we concluded that in these specific cases this wasn’t going to give us the visual quality that we were aiming to achieve. Therefore, we decided to completely remake the floors in Meridian and Daytower from scratch. This involved creating new high-resolution textures, setting up new materials, painting blend maps, and creating new high-resolution geometry supporting the shapes from the textures used in the material.”
“Another aspect of the upgrades to the game environment in the remaster are Building Blocks. To give a bit of context here: Building Blocks are the individual assets that are used for set dressing the world of Horizon Zero Dawn. Think of objects like rocks, plants, utensils and even buildings.”
“Building Blocks can be divided into two categories: natural and man-made. For both types, we increased the resolution of the textures and adjusted the level of detail (LOD) ranges to ensure higher mesh fidelity.”
“We performed a separate pass on all the man-made Building Blocks, creating new high-resolution geometry for assets that would benefit from this. We found that buildings greatly benefited from having more detailed geometry, as most were using brick-like textures on the walls without the shape of the bricks being reflected in the geometry.”
“To address this, we developed custom tools for generating more detailed geometry for these buildings. The artists used these tools to create new geometry, then manually tweaked and adjusted each individual building for the best visual result.”
Lively conversations
A big change in Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered is the addition of over 10 hours of additional motion-capture data for characters, directed and captured by Guerrilla at their motion Capture Stage in Amsterdam, making the game’s conversations much livelier and in line with those in Horizon Forbidden West. Implementing this additional data was handled by our technical artists and animators.
Mark Bazelmans, Senior Technical Artist: “Horizon Zero Dawn has almost 300 conversations and well over 3100 dialog options, so we needed to find a way to easily integrate this huge number of updated animations into the conversations. We created a tool with Python to process the almost 2500 mocap files that Guerrilla provided to replace the original animation in the conversations, removing deprecated events and replacing those with the mocap and setup.”“We then focused on creating a pipeline in Maya for our animators to easily load, edit and re-export the individual mocap files for any other edits that were needed, such as finger animation, art direction feedback and fixes. Animators could select the conversation and subsequent dialog option from a list which created the scene from scratch, or simply opened it if it already existed.Our tool referenced the characters and imported the dialogue audio, so the animators could time the movement better and create the camera cuts and layout. Later, we extended this pipeline to also include existing animations for both conversations and cinematics, as some of these also required edits. Our animators could then go into Guerrilla’s DECIMA engine and edit or change the updated conversation.”
Alexander Georgiev, Animator: Since all mocap footage comes from actors with different height or gender, there was a lot of data that needed to be covered and checked. For example, characters looking up or down too much, shoulders not matching the rest of the pose, arms clipping though clothing and fingers that are too static.”
“To solve this efficiently, we created tools to help us. With these tools we visualized helpers that brought a closer connection between working in Maya and the DECIMA engine. One example was that we could not see the eyes moving the same way as in the DECIMA engine, as that was a complex, automated system. With the toolset we created a head and eye aim helper that made it clearer where the characters were looking, and with that we knew how much we should adjust the head of a certain character.”
“We made small, automated scripts to fix shoulders and arms clipping. All these tools gave the animators a way to focus more on enhancing the acting of the characters to support what they want to say. By developing these tools, we created a strong workflow and were able to significantly speed up our iteration time per conversation.”
Mark Bazelmans, Senior Technical Artist: “Alongside the updated body animation, new facial animations were captured for the conversations. Initially this was deemed a straightforward ‘overwrite and replace’, but after seeing some of the results we decided to build a pipeline to be able to edit the updated facial animations.”
“We created tools in Maya that could process a facial animation file in proprietary format into a Maya scene with literally a talking head including audio. We also wrote our own exporter that could then export a Maya scene back to the same proprietary format.”
“Next to updating the animations in conversations, we did a pass on the camera and lighting setup for both conversations and cinematics. For the cameras, we batch updated the camera setup and values. In most conversations, the automated pass didn’t quite give the desired result because the contrast between the original movement and the new mocap was too big. The new body animations allow broader movements, often leading to characters stepping out of frame or being completely offscreen. Therefore, a manual pass was done by our Camera Layout Artists, aided by our custom DECIMA tools to easily edit cameras and settings.”
“We updated the lighting toolset to be closer to that in Horizon Forbidden West, which allows for editing settings of character and environment lighting across similar shots using a visual representation of shots. Lighting was controlled by a single setup for each character in a conversation that would apply to all dialog options in a conversation. Then our lighting artists could do their magic on a particular shot type and all similar shots of that character would be lit the same, with of course room to edit individual shots if needed. This way lighting had maximum control with as little tweaks as possible.”
Shining new light on Horizon Zero Dawn
The work for world lighting and cinematic lighting was divided between Guerrilla and Nixxes Lighting artists, with Guerrilla providing direction and technical support. The Atmospherics team at Guerrilla recreated the sweeping cloudscapes from Horizon Zero Dawn in the new Nubis cloud system from Horizon Forbidden West. The cherry on the cake was the creation of the set piece volcano cloud in the Frozen Wilds expansion, using a combination of the latest innovations in voxel cloud rendering, first pioneered in the Burning Shores expansion for Horizon Forbidden West, and traditional particle VFX.
It was important to retain the strong mood lighting in Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, ensuring a seamless transition when playing both games back-to-back. Nixxes’ Senior Lighting Artists Myvanwy Broers, Niels Iburg, and Lighting Artist Thomas Schrama talk about their approach and workflow:
“A lot of the world lighting had to be rebalanced or re-lit from scratch to reach the same mood and to bring it in line with the slightly updated art direction. Horizon Forbidden West has some workflow improvements that we used for the remaster, making the process quite enjoyable!”
“To use the improved features to their fullest potential, we revised all the atmospherics settings that control the biomes within the game world. This included changing the light intensities to Physically Based Rendering values. This is true for the sun and the moon itself, but also detailed lighting in areas such as caves and ruins that players can explore. Think of fog, the color of the sun, glow intensities and so forth.”
“This meant that after rebalancing the light intensities into PBR, it was necessary to relight entire areas to create the best visual fidelity possible. It was a joy to revisit these iconic environments to do so!”
“To speed up our workflow, we used Guerrilla’s prefab system – an object which contains geometry, particles, sound, and lights that we can place anywhere. All these assets exist as referenced content within a prefab, which means that if the value of a torch light needs adjustment, this will simultaneously happen for every torch in the world. This enables large scale changes, and high iteration speed.”
“Light bakes are an important aspect of the lighting – a system that is versatile enough for each time of day, yet providing the detailed light bounce that Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered needs. The quality of such bakes is adjustable per volume that we set as lighters, which is great when we require the light bounce to be more detailed in an area without affecting the rest. Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered uses the improved baking system from Horizon Forbidden West, resulting in at least twice as much detail in the light bounce compared to the original.”
“With lighting in cinematics and conversations, we wanted to match the art direction and visual quality of Horizon Forbidden West. This, combined with all updated animations, motion-capture and camera shots, meant we built all the cinematic lighting in the remaster from scratch. We used a lot of new technology and workflow that was created for the cinematic lighting in Horizon Forbidden West.”
“Horizon Zero Dawn used a lighting rig around each character with roughly two lights. For the remaster we used the upgraded lighting rig from the sequel, which uses five lights in total: one key-light, two profile-lights and two rim-lights. These lights are then tweaked on a per shot basis changing position, orientation, color and intensity.”
Detailed characters
Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered features significant upgrades to character models and how they react to lighting. Many enhancements in areas such as detail, skin tones, hair quality, and outfits have been carried over from Horizon Forbidden West.
Patrick Blankenzee, Senior Environment Artist: “Working on the varied cast of characters in the remaster was a big undertaking. We enhanced various shaders to improve the visual quality and made changes to ensure the models react better to the new lighting in the remaster. We gave Aloy’s model – both adult and child – the full cinematic treatment, including peach fuzz, upgrades to hair, eyes and materials.”
“We looked at the original concept art of Aloy as a child and aimed to make changes to her outfit, hair and skin, to match the look envisioned in the concept art, as well as bring the model up to par with the quality of the improved model for adult Aloy.”
“In Horizon Zero Dawn, only the character model for Aloy reacts to environmental elements like weather. For the remaster we wanted to give all companion characters the same level of interaction to bring that cinematic feel to the whole world. For example, you will now see both Aloy and her companions react to warm and cold weather.”
On behalf of the teams at Nixxes and Guerrilla, we cannot wait for you to experience Aloy’s journey (again) with all the visual enhancements, upgraded features and tech improvements.
Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered is available for pre-order now and launches on October 31 on PS5 and PC (Steam, Epic Games Store). Account for PlayStation Network required on PC.
Existing owners of Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition can upgrade to the digital version of Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered for $9.99. Check out the previous announcement PS Blog post for all the upgrade details.
