Horizon Forbidden West almost didn’t have a major game mechanic due to developer Guerrilla Games’ ambition to support the game on both the PS4 and the PS5.
Studio director Jan-Bart van Beek said at the Develop Brighton conference this week that the game’s flying mechanic could have been cut, but ultimately the coders figured things out. According to GI.biz, Van Beek said one of the challenges with making the sequel was finding new ways to excite players, and one of the ways the team sought to do this was by adding underwater and aerial exploration.
The aerial part took a lot of work and it came down to the wire. Presumably due to the technical limitations of the PS4 relative to the PS5, the team considered simply dropping the flying mechanic from both editions of the game.