GDC: Balancing Action and RPG in Horizon Zero Dawn Quests

Don’t miss this level design talk by Guerrilla Games’ Blake Rebouche from GDC 2018.

Don’t miss this level design talk by Guerrilla Games’ Blake Rebouche from GDC 2018. A member of the team behind Horizon Zero Dawn showed how they mixed the systems-driven content of open-world RPG and the action-focused level design to build quests for Aloy. There’s actually a nice way to combine The Elder Scrolls and action games like Killzone, but it’s not that easy.

In this 2018 GDC session, Guerrilla Games’ Blake Rebouche explains through his own experiences and anecdotes what it was like finding a happy medium between the systems-driven content of open-world RPGs like The Elder Scrolls and the action focused level design of games like Guerrilla’s own Killzone while developing quests for Horizon Zero Dawn.