[RUMOR] Horizon Zero Dawn 2 on The works, It was planned to be trilogy and HZ 2 planned for PS4 but shifted to PS5 to take advantage of new tech and architecture on PS5

[DonFerrari]

shikamaru317 said:

DonFerrari said:

Why would Sony shut down one of the teams? Also why do you think HZD2 and GoW would take so long to develop?

Well, my thinking is that possibly most of Insomniac worked on Spider-Man, in which case there would not be enough dev time since Spider-Man released in August 2018 for a new Ratchet and Clank to have been made (only a bit more than 2 years between August 2018 and Holiday 2020). We know that Insomiac used to have 2 large teams because of their release schedule, Ratchet & Clank Into the Nexus in 2013 and Sunset Overdrive in 2014, followed by Ratchet & Clank reboot in 2016, such a schedule would not have been possible without 2 large teams. We just don't know for sure if Insomniac kept their 2 team structure after Sunset Overdrive and Ratchet & Clank reboot, or if both teams combined to form the Spider-Man team. Hopefully they kept 2 teams and they've had a team working on a new Ratchet & Clank or maybe even a new Sunset Overdrive since before Spider-Man released. 

Horizon Zero Dawn took 6 years of partial development (February 2011- February 2017) and 3 years and 3 months of full development (November 2013-February 2017) to make. November 2020 is 3 years and 9 months since Horizon Zero Dawn released in February 2017. Guerilla Games has expanded from 250-337 devs since HZD released, but still 3 years and 9 months is not alot of dev time considering how much longer the 1st game took. And if this particular leak is to be believed, HZD will have an even larger map than the first game, plus development changed platforms partway through, from PS4 to PS5, which would have required assets that had already been made for the PS4 version to be remade in higher quality for PS5, which takes additional time. I just can't see HZD2 releasing before Holiday 2021 personally. Maybe we'll get the standalone co-op game mentioned in this leak sooner.

God of War 4 took about 4 years to develop (development began sometime in 2014 and it released May 2018). 2 years and 5 months will pass between God of War 4 and November 2020 when PS5 will likely release. Assuming that they took the time to retool their engine for PS5, I just can't see the game releasing with less than 3.5 years of development, which would make Holiday 2021 the likely release window. It might even get a full 4 years of development, which would put it's release in Q2 2022. 

We haven't seem news about they merging the teams so I would expect a R&C or similar size game for 2021 or earlier.

HZD was a new game, new engine and also they had to shutdown a project (years in the making) before going for HZD. So a sequel shouldn't take that much longer than 3 years to make (it is pretty normal time for an AAA game, 3 to 5 years). About assets we don't know if they didn't work similar to ND and PD making assets of quality much higher than what the console was able to handle and them strimming it down.

About GoW, launching window is about 6 months to even 1 year of console release, so there is possibility of it arrising in that timeframe although I agree it is less likely than the other 2.