Last week, we finally got to see the gameplay for Horizon Forbidden West, with Aloy's new powers and more details about exploration and combat.

Now, we have come across some new details in the game shedding light on the game's 60 FPS mode, free climbing system, melee system, and the subtle differences between PS4 and PS5 versions.

  • MORE - Horizon Forbidden West: Epic Combat Moves, New Equipment, and Aloy’s Facial Animation

New Details On Forbidden Horizon West

In the latest interview conducted by Game Informer, Game Director Mathijs De Jonge and Narrative Director Benjamin McCaw provided us with some answers that Forbidden Horizon West fans were waiting for.

The climbing traversal was rather limited in Horizon Zero Dawn. But in the new Horizon game players can "free climb anywhere in the world," said De Jonge.

The skill tree has also been redesigned in Forbidden Horizon West. One branch of the skill tree will be dedicated to melee combat, where you can acquire new melee combo moves with skill points.

There will also be a new workbench-style system for upgrading Aloy. It will require players to acquire resources from nature and bring it back to the workbench for upgrading weapons and outfits.

Upgrading items on the new workbench will not only enhance their attributes like damage points but also unlock new specific skills on different weapons. Overall, it is going to be a lot more elaborate than what we saw in Horizon Zero Dawn.

Horizon Forbidden West: PS4 vs PS5

Forbidden Horizon West will be available on both PS4 and PS5 but many gamers must be wondering if their console version would make a difference in the gameplay.

In the interview, De Jonge and McCaw shared some of the differences that PS4 and PS5 players will observe — which will mostly be on the graphical side of things.

A lot of the game has been developed on PS4 and a good amount of playtesting has been done on PS4 to make sure that PS4 owners have a great experience in the game. But as expected, the PS5 will have an upper hand in certain aspects of the game.

De Jonge confirmed that the PS5 version has a different water rendering technique than PS4. Developers were able to add lot more details visually for PS5 and leverage its graphical capabilities to add special rendering technique for the underwater scenes.

For instance, the wave system will be much better on PS5 with more details. The hero lighting on Aloy on PS5 will also have more definition as a special cinematic lighting rig has been used in it.

This cinematic lighting rig is used normally when there is enough time to use it in cinematics. But since the PlayStation 5 is so much more powerful, this lighting rig will be kept on all the time to make Aloy look much better.

However, due to the lower processing power in PS4, the hero lighting on Aloy will be available only in cutscenes.

Besides this, the DualSense Controller will add another sense of immersion to the game specifically to the weapons during combat. Through haptic feedback, the adaptive trigger will impart a sense of pulling the arrow and releasing the bow, much better than the Dual Shock Controller in PS4.

In addition to this, there will be full 3D audio support which will add more to the immersion experience of Forbidden Horizon West.

Will Horizon Forbidden West Offer 60 FPS?

Even though the gameplay was shown off at 4K 30 FPS, Mathijs de Jonge has confirmed that Horizon Forbidden West will feature a 60 FPS performance mode on PS5.

He noted that there are two modes for PS5 — Performance mode and Quality mode. The Quality mode runs on 4K 30 FPS, but the Performance Mode offers 60 FPS.