Sony has officially revealed the long-rumored Horizon Zero Dawn MMO spin-off it’s making with Guild Wars publisher NCSoft. It’s called Horizon Steel Frontiers, it looks a lot like Monster Hunter, and it’s not coming to PlayStation 5.
Announced during South Korea’s G-Star gaming convention, Horizon Steel Frontiers was developed in partnership with PlayStation studio Guerrilla Games and centers around big, raid-like boss fights against the franchise’s detailed assortment of futuristic prehistoric robots. Instead of following the story of franchise protagonist Aloy, players will create their own custom characters and team-up to take down their mechanical quarries across PC and mobile.
There’s no release date yet but we did get a 10-minute deep-dive into the RPG’s gameplay and development backstory:
You play as a machine hunter in the Deadlands (inspired by Arizona and New Mexico) who hails from one of four tribes: the Nora, Tenakth, Utaru, or Oseram. It’s unclear exactly how many other players you’ll be able to team up with or how seamless the world will be as you explore, but early footage teased several different biomes, from fire-ravaged deserts to icy tundra. Players have ground and aerial mounts they can utilize for exploration and combat and there’s one moment in the trailer where players are galloping across a field alongside a mechanical herd as well as one of the series’ iconic Tallnecks.
I have no idea how it’s supposed to run on phones but it looks great.
“Horizon Steel Frontiers is a full-fledged MMORPG that NCSoft has built specifically for mobile,” Guerilla Games studio director Jan-Bart van Beek said during the video. “You’re sharing the frontier with thousands of other players, sometimes working together to take down machines and other times competing with rival tribes or fighting over resources, and that mix of cooperation and competition creates moments that you could never script.”
A gameplay trailer gives a better sense of how exactly combat will work and it certainly looks a lot like Monster Hunter. Players will hack away at enemies, targeting weaknesses and damaging specific parts of them over the course of battle. But it’s not just mashing buttons. Players will also be able to make use of carefully placed traps and grappling hook-like pullcasters to sling-shot themselves around the battlefield and onto enemies’ backs. Based on the UI, it looks like there might even be some sort of stagger mechanic.
NCSoft executive producer Sunggu Lee said during the developer interview that Horizon Steel Frontiers‘ emphasis will be on teamwork and strategy. As an MMORPG coming out of South Korea built primarily for smartphones, I also expect it to be a heavily monetized XP grind. If the company can make it feel more like a coop Horizon adventure than a second job min-maxing spreadsheets, Horizon meets Monster Hunter has the potential to be really cool. But a lot of that will come down to how smooth and rewarding the moment-to-moment combat looks and feels.
Sony is currently all-in on the Horizon franchise. In addition to Guerrilla teasing a third mainline entry in the existing open-world RPG series, there were rumors of a live service multiplayer spin-off based on project footage from 2020 that leaked several years ago. It’s unclear whether that was abandoned, became Steel Frontiers, or remains another multiplayer project in the mix at Sony. There’s also the Horizon movie that’s currently slated to begin filming next year.
