Horizon Call of the Mountain

Lore & Background

Horizon Call of the Mountain follows Ryas, a disgraced former Shadow Carja soldier, as he seeks a royal pardon by investigating a mysterious signal enraging local machines. He is aided by his brother Urid. The narrative involves Ryas uncovering and thwarting a conspiracy by a rogue engineer named Asera, who intends to weaponize machines against the Carja capital of Meridian. The game was developed concurrently with Horizon Forbidden West (2022) and built using Unreal Engine 4 to leverage the PSVR2's eye-tracking and haptic feedback.

Reader's Guide

Horizon Call of the Mountain is significant as a launch title for the PlayStation VR2, demonstrating the headset's capabilities in eye-tracking, foveated rendering, and haptic feedback. The game received generally favourable reviews, with critics praising its visuals but noting reservations about its linear structure and repetitive climbing mechanics. It won Best VR Game at the Golden Joystick Awards and Immersive Reality Technical Achievement at the 27th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards. The game's development involved remodeling and reanimating machines for first-person VR, and it introduced accessibility features such as disabling falling and automated arrow loading. Its legacy lies in expanding the Horizon franchise into virtual reality and showcasing technical innovations for the PSVR2 platform.

Did You Know?

• The game was developed using Unreal Engine 4, unlike the mainline Horizon games which use Guerrilla's proprietary Decima engine.
• The player can physically open crates, play musical instruments, and throw environmental objects off cliffsides.
• The game includes a 'safari mode' that allows players to observe machines in their natural habitats.
• Some team members experienced motion sickness with traditional analogue stick movement, leading to the creation of a gesture-based 'arm-swinger' traversal scheme.