One of the prettiest PlayStation 5 games has somehow gotten even prettier, thanks to the efforts of the Horizon Forbidden West’s modding community.
I’ve personally been a little hard on the graphical strides that current-gen consoles have made in the past few years, because the leap in quality between the PlayStation 4/Xbox One and the PlayStation 5/Xbox Series has felt underwhelming when compared to the same leap between the PlayStation 3/Xbox 360 and PS4/Xbox One generations.
This isn’t a diss on developers or even current-gen console specs, because really… it’s nobody’s fault, exactly.
As time goes on, the strides each generation of consoles makes just become less impactful, because, comparatively, there was so much of a noticeable difference between generations like the PS1 and the PS2. It’s simply a case of diminishing returns.
I remember booting up the PS5 remake of Demon’s Souls for the first time and being absolutely blown away, but no other game has really captured that feeling of progress for me since (and that was arguably more to do with the fact that the PS5 comes equipped with an SSD).
However, one current-gen PlayStation 5 title came close to giving me that same feeling: Horizon Forbidden West, Guerrilla Games’s 2022 sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn.
Whatever you think of the game itself, it’s impossible to deny that Horizon Forbidden West is absolutely gorgeous to look at, which is why I was even more impressed when I finally got my hands on the PC port of the game in 2024.
Unsurprisingly, the game looks even better on PC (although you need a pretty beefy rig to take advantage of said improvements).
That’s why I’m pretty impressed with what modders have been capable of, because they’ve somehow managed to make one of the best-looking games of the 2020s look even better.
The Decima Engine Produces Incredible Results
As YouTuber and modder Digital Dreams has showcased in their most recent Horizon Forbidden West video, it’s now possible to download a bunch of shaders and even a camera mod that makes Guerrilla Games’, uh, game look like it’s straight out of 2028.
I should note that while Digital Dreams’ video states that the gameplay is in 8K resolution, I don’t believe that is technically true.
I think that the video itself has been upscaled from 4k to 8k, which you can test for yourself by comparing the (lack of) difference between the two resolutions on YouTube.
Still, the shaders they’re using look incredible, especially where the backgrounds are concerned. Makes me wonder how good the next Horizon game is going to look, although we’ll probably be waiting until the release of the PS6 to get our hands on that.
