The Horizon Forbidden West team provides Aloy with new abilities

The outfits in Horizon Forbidden West will have abilities attached to them, Guerrilla Games has revealed.

In a post about the PlayStation Blog Bo de Vries, Guerrilla Games Community Leader, spoke about the variety of outfits that will be available for Aloy in Horizon Forbidden West and how the studio is developing versatility within this aspect of the game.

“Horizon Forbidden West will have a variety of outfits that Aloy will benefit from; similar and perhaps familiar from the first game, the outfits allow protection against a variety of dangers Aloy encounters and can be purchased from merchants or found in the world. “says de Vries.

“A new addition to the system is that outfits in Horizon Forbidden West have abilities attached to them, so players can improve their abilities in different ways. Maximization of these abilities occurs through a new and improved skill tree, something we will tell you more about some other time. ”

In Horizon Zero Dawn, each outfit provides different base values ​​of resistance to unique types of damage that could then be increased through additional modifications. Armor throughout the game could be purchased from various merchants and would range from basic armor types that offered few basic stats to fire and frost resistant sets that could be used in various situations.

It is not yet clear how Forbidden West will integrate this system into the game’s new and improved skill tree; It is not clear from the wording whether the sets will unlock entirely new skills or help improve skills that players have already unlocked. But these changes seem to allow for more versatility in the way that players can adapt their version of Aloy as they tackle various situations within the game.

Elsewhere in the article, Guerrilla delved into how the development and release of the PlayStation 5 has allowed the studio to add even more detail to Aloy and other character models in Forbidden West. “We can create finer details such as peach fuzz, soft contours or finer textured details and precise material expression, to name a few,” says Guerrilla Lead Character Artist Bastien Ramisse.

“And it’s not just the visuals that benefit from the new PlayStation 5 hardware, we’ve also increased the number of skeletal joints to take our deformations and facial expressions to a whole new level for a more believable and immersive character performance.”

Despite this, the studio was quick to assure fans that its focus on pushing the boundaries of Forbidden West on PS5 will not compromise its PlayStation 4 counterpart. “In fact, we developed and tested the game simultaneously on both PlayStation 4 like on PlayStation 5, “says Ramisse. “Because it is very important to us as a studio to ensure that PlayStation 4 players get an equally immersive experience.”

Horizon: Forbidden West is scheduled for release on February 18, 2022. For more Horizon news, be sure to check out our full rundown of (almost) everything we know about the game so far.

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow it on Twitter.