In a new post on the Playstation Blog, members of the Horizon: Zero Dawn team talk about how they worked together to make Horizon: Zero Dawn ’s main character Aloy into an icon, not only by look but by personality as well.
Check out the video of the Horizon: Zero Dawn team at Guerrilla Games discussing Aloy below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIqMJupQqXg
Hermen Hulst, managing director, stated, “When we started working on the concept art for Horizon: Zero Dawn, it was almost as if Aloy as a character kind of jumped out of the concept art. She was the ideal vessel, I felt, to explore this world, to unravel some of these great mysteries.”
Jochen Willemsen, cinematics producer, called Aloy’s design a “massive, long, ongoing iterative process” as images of previous Aloy designs flash onscreen (many of them with darker skin or different hair colors, but usually with locs) until we see Aloy in her final incarnation as a fair-skinned young woman with bright red hair and tribal clothes.
Jan Bart Van Beek, studio art director, offered his thoughts on the trouble with creating a character not merely memorable but iconic. “I think it’s really hard to design an iconic character. You can hope for it, but it’s not something like, oh, put a stamp on it, it’s iconic now.”
John Gonzalez narrative director, said his team tried to achieve “something that’s like to 90% of Nathan Drake” as others discussed fan reaction to the character. But if you look at the cosplay it might seem that the Horizon: Zero Dawn team is already there.
According to Hulst, “It’s been super invigorating seeing the immediate response to Aloy as a character. I mean in the cosplay scene, there’s been such huge interest in finding out more, who she is… To get that confirmation that we were actually touch upon something that’s relevant and people respond to it very positively, that's hugely, hugely positive for the team.”
Executive producer Angie Smets discussed how Aloy is more than the sum of her parts. “There’s so many, I think, different layers to designing a character. She’s this combination of a voice actress, there’s the face, there’s the hair, we have the costume, there’s how she moves, there’s the dialogue that also adds to her character,” said Smet.
Van Beek added, “A large part of what made her is the narrative itself. It started shaping her as an identity, as a character. So ultimately whether we give her red hair or gold hair or dark hair isn’t really that important, it’s more that the character itself becomes iconic.”
David Ford, lead quest designer, added some insight into how the narrative helps flesh Aloy out. “The nice thing about our story, the way that it’s written, is that she’s emerging from the area that she’s lived her whole life and going out into the big world along with you. So everything is just as new to her as it is to you, and you feel a real resonance with the character that way.”
Hulst says that Aloy’s appeal goes far beyond looks and is about “more importantly the stuff she can do. I mean, she’s super agile, she’s quick, she’s very crafty, she’s very strategic, she’s a great person, a great companion to explore the world of Horizon: Zero Dawn.”
Will Aloy join the ranks of Nathan Drake, Lara Croft and other iconic video game characters? We’ll find out for sure when Horizon: Zero Dawn drops on March 1. Until then, feel free to discuss Aloy in our comments section below.
