Horizon Forbidden West, the highly anticipated sequel to 2017’sHorizon Zero Dawn, released back in February 2022. While it may have been somewhat overshadowed by the release ofElden Ring, Guerrilla Games' latest title was seen as another triumph for the studio, withreview scores forHorizon Forbidden Westreflecting that positive sentiment. Following the release ofHorizon Forbidden West, Guerrilla Games has continued to support the title with consistent updates too, seeking to improve the game.
Theupdates forHorizon Forbidden Westhave come in different forms, with some being new content patches that bring surprise additions to the game like a New Game Plus mode. Other updates are more anticipated bug fixes that deal with performance and visual issues.Horizon Forbidden West’smost recent patch, 1.16, falls on the side of the latter, as it seeks to deal with some visual and performance issues the game has had since launch. Namely, patch 1.16 fixes some of the more persistent issues that caused problems with those playing in the 60 FPS performance mode of the game.
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According toHorizon Forbidden Westplayers, there was a consistent issue in the 60 FPS mode of the game that would give a “shimmery” look to objects and foliage, which made many revert to 30 FPS. There were tweaks to the image quality in patch 1.07, but these didn’t solve the issues with the 60 FPS performance mode. Guerrilla’s second attempt to fix the visual bugs inHorizon Forbidden Westhas proven much more successful.
According to Guerrilla Senior Principal Tech Programmer Giliam de Carpentier, the solution to thebugs inHorizon Forbidden Westlay in changing the way anti-aliasing was utilized. A “new AA technique” was used in patch 1.16, which virtually removed all of the shimmering effects. While this has improved the 60 FPS mode of the game,Horizon Forbidden West’s4K quality mode may have taken a hit in patch 1.16, as there are reports of a new lack of visual precision, meaning essentially that the 4K version doesn’t look as good as it used to.
However, Guerrilla Games is far from done with its updates forHorizon Forbidden West. As well as the big update to visual effects,Horizon Forbidden Westcould seeVRR Supportin future patches, alongside a new 40 FPS mode that will combine the quality of the 4K mode with the quicker frame rate of the 60 FPS performance mode.
Horizon: Forbidden Westis available now on PS4 and PS5.
