Earlier this week I had the chance to get hands-on with LEGO Horizon Adventures. Among all my other praises for this game, I really loved the huge level of detail that went into making every single LEGO brick component. This isn’t a coincidence either, as it turns out that the entire world is made of individual bricks in a way that can apparently be reconstructed in real life from actual physical LEGO sets.
Speaking with me at the Summer Game Fest Play Days over the weekend, Guerrilla Games story director James Windeler told me how this strange collaboration between Guerrilla and LEGO came about. Guerrilla had originally prototyped Horizon: Zero Dawn’s robot dinosaurs in DUPLO and had a keen interest in model building. The team wanted to do something more lighthearted for their next project. And then there was the LEGO Tallneck collaboration from a few years ago. On LEGO’s side, LEGO really liked that the Horizon games had bright colors and upbeat themes, as well as a relatively inclusive fanbase. Put it all together and it’s no wonder the two companies hit it off.
Most LEGO games to date have been made by what is now called TT Games, but TT is not involved in this one. Instead, joint development group Studio Gobo and LEGO are working with Guerrilla Games, which itself has assembled a team that includes a number of people who worked on the original Zero Dawn. Windeler tells me that many of them have had children since Zero Dawn came out, and those children are now reaching an age where their parents want to play video games with them. Hence the co-op feature of Horizon Adventures.
But a different team also means different approaches and capabilities, and for Guerrilla in particular, that meant really sweating the LEGO details. Windeler says the team wanted Horizon Adventures to feel like a “playable LEGO movie” and notes that every single asset in the game is “built by an individual [LEGO] brick.”
“It was designed by master builders,” he says. “All of these things, from the coolest elements of Horizon, the majestic scenery, the machines, the characters, they all follow the rules of physical LEGO. So even though they’re made as digital assets, you could technically build them from physical sets… And it also extends to the animation style and the way the characters move in the game. There’s this kind of freeze-frame of all the characters. Yes, it’s toy-like. ‘Toyetic’ was a word that got thrown around a lot, and it’s the idea that you’re potentially playing with your own figures.”
What Windeler describes certainly showed in my hands-on time with the game. I pointed out that when the characters fall off a high ledge, they humorously slide down like a LEGO pushed off a shelf. Then they quickly jump back up and go again with the jerky movements of a child walking a LEGO character on a play mat. There are other little hints like these to the overall feel of the LEGO game – for example, when I rescued some villagers from Nora in my demo, there were a few regular LEGO people mixed in with the Horizon suits. What was that for?
“When you’re a kid, when you play with LEGO, with LEGO, you’re not necessarily building this fully connected world,” Windeler explains. “You use the LEGO you have from your kit.” Fair enough.
Windler couldn’t comment on whether or not the very real possibility of building LEGO Horizon Adventures means more LEGO Horizon sets are on the way, nor could he talk about whether or not other PlayStation IPs will get LEGO games. He told me that LEGO Horizon Adventures’ story is about seven to eight hours long, and there will be a replay element at the end that will allow players to revisit regions they’ve previously visited and unlock more customizations and stuff. As Windeler told me, Horizon Adventures isn’t meant to be a 20+ hour adventure like Horizon: Zero Dawn was. It’s based somewhat on Zero Dawn, but it’s meant to be digestible for everyone – not just ten hours of inside jokes for existing Horizon fans.
“There are a lot of nods and I mentioned iconic scenes that we’ve reimagined that will be recognizable and hopefully joyful for fans of the series, but at the same time we want people who have no knowledge of Horizon to come.”
For more details on LEGO Horizon Adventures, you can check out our full hands-on review. We also played the new Astro Bot game at the same PlayStation meeting and have a preview for that too.
