Guerilla Games Principal FX Artist Andrew Schneider said the following about the game during their SIGGRAPH 2015 presentation based on the real-time Volumetric Cloudscapes in Horizon Zero Dawn:

“In the past, Guerrilla has been known for the KILLZONE series of games, which are first person shooters, ” said Andrew in the presentation. “FPS usually restrict the player to a predefined track, which means that we could hand place elements like clouds using billboards and highly detailed sky domes to create a heavily art directed sky.”

Andrew also detailed the key points that they had in mind for Horizon Zero Dawn.

•Horizon is a vastly open world where you can pretty much go anywhere that you see, including the tops of mountains.

•Since this is a living real world, we simulate the spinning of the earth by having a time of day cycle.

•Weather is part of the environment so it will be changing and evolving as well.

•There’s lots of epic scenery: Mountains, forests, plains, and lakes.

•Skies are a big part of the landscape of horizon. They make up half of the screen. Skies are also are a very important part of storytelling as well as world building.

“They are used to tell us where we are, when we are, and they can also be used as thematic devices in storytelling, ”

Video:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x32wuz7_horizon-zero-dawn-time-lapse_videogames

http://gearnuke.com/horizon-zero-dawn-dev-shows-stunning-time-lapse-world-talks-building-open-world-rpg/

How big is your hype for the game?

One of most anticipated titles of 2016 for me. Love the world, character and creature design and combat mechanics.

Is that boxart confirmed? :O

This game is why i want a PS4. Very promising.

I feel I must point out how humorous it is that every time a developer goes open world they feel the need to make a big hoopla over features that have been SOP for open worlds since 2006. Even Nintendo did it with Zelda U. Day and night cycles, "go anywhere you see," weather systems. And all I'm thinking is...haven't these been a pretty standard thing since Oblivion at least? xD

Aside from that, game looks gorgeous and very interesting.

The weather and passage of time, with the sun light & shadows ect,... just beautifully done.

Hyped.

Uhm im not really hyped. Its nothing that impresses me scince its nothin new. We already got Witcher 3 as a big beatifull open world game with day/night cycle.
Also the game looks alot like assassins creed to me (assassins creed III), which i didnt liked.

So not hyped yet, no

this game is gonna blow everybody away

No that's a fanart.