PlayStation sci-fi epic Horizon Forbidden West makes its way to PC

PlayStation Studios —

Post-apocalyptic heroine Aloy will return to Steam and the Epic Game Store soon.

Sony has announced that the sprawling open-world sci-fi epic Horizon Forbidden West will make its way to PCs “in early 2024,” almost two years after it debuted on the PlayStation 4 and 5 and four years after its predecessor Horizon Zero Dawn reached PC gamers.

Titled Horizon Forbidden West: Complete Edition, the PC release will include both the base game and the recently released Burning Shores DLC, which takes place in a post-apocalyptic Southern California. The complete edition will also launch on PlayStation 5, but a bit earlier, on October 6 of this year.

The PC port will be handled by Nixxes, which previously did a mostly bang-up job porting Sony studio Insomniac Games’ Spider-Man and Spider-Man: Miles Morales to PC. Sony hasn’t announced any details about PC-specific features for the game, but some recent ports of first-party PlayStation games have included features like ultrawide monitor support, DLSS AI upscaling, and more. The Spider-Man games prominently featured ray tracing, but ray tracing was part of the PS5 feature set for those games already. Horizon Forbidden West does not have ray tracing on PS5, so its inclusion in the PC version is less certain.

Despite the lack of ray tracing, few would argue that Horizon Forbidden West wasn’t a showstopper in the graphics department on PS5. High-quality assets densely populate its large open-world environment.

Horizon Forbidden West is set in a future where tribal societies with medieval (or worse) technology struggle to make progress hundreds of years after a catastrophe that ended our current civilization and forged in its place a world dominated by colossal mechanical menaces. It follows Aloy, an intelligent and driven hunter, as she treks across the region that was once the western United States to uncover the mysteries behind a malevolent AI that threatens to hit the reset button on human civilization again. Like its predecessor, it includes a large ensemble of characters, multiple fictional societies, and a number of twists, turns, and surprises in the story.

The action RPG was well-received by fans of the popular open-world game formula, even though it doesn’t shake that formula up as much as critical darlings like Elden Ring or The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom do. The sequel drew praise for its expansiveness, story and characters, and production values, but it also received some criticism for its long run time and over-designed game systems. Still, it’s widely regarded as a good game, especially for science fiction fans.

The game will be available on the Epic Games Store and Steam, with product pages already launched on both.

Listing image by Sony