PlayStation‘s “Lego Horizon Adventures” launches Thursday, bringing the epic post-apocalyptic world of machine hunter Aloy into an adorable brick format drastically different in tone from the original Guerrilla Games-produced “Horizon Zero Dawn.”
But that playful take is exactly what made the Sony Interactive Entertainment-owned studio, which also produced sequel “Horizon Forbidden West,” so excited to move forward with the project when Lego approached them with the idea in 2022.
“The Lego games are really great games for introducing a younger, new audience into the world of ‘Horizon,’ which is, of course, super cool for us,” Guerrilla Games art director Roy Postma told Variety. “From my personal perspective, but I think also a lot of the original, older ‘Horizon’ players who have become parents, or already were parents, it’s the same story. I’ve played a lot of Lego games in the past with my kids and that was just such a great experience, where you can share your passions and cool ideas with your kids because they’re most likely too young to watch the movies or these kind of things.”
But one of the major selling points for PlayStation was the idea of shifting away from Lego’s usual “mumble mode” — the nonsensical unintelligible way the Lego figures speak in the cut scenes for most of the brand’s video games, which helps to cuts down on localization costs — to using the “Horizon” franchise’s actual voice cast, including Aloy actor Ashly Burch.
“The voice acting was really good for us internally to nail down hitting the right tone of what makes it a Lego game, but still tell our original story at the same time,” Postma said. “Even our voice actors, they had so much fun recording these sessions, so we used a lot of the original voice cast and they were having a blast, as well.”
Postma confirmed that a new actor has been cast for the voice role of iconic “Horizon” character Sylens following the death of original actor Lance Reddick, but that the casting has yet to be revealed.
“The voice acting and the characters in ‘Horizon’ are so important and it was something that we wanted to embrace,” Lego branded games product leader Kate Bryant said. “I think one of the things, even from the outset, that was so exciting about what we could do here was the prominence and real coolness of Aloy as a central character. And Minifigure Aloy isn’t exactly the same as Aloy Aloy, necessarily. But all of that get-up-and-go, she’s a machine hunter, that’s absolutely still true for Minifigure Aloy. She’s just able to be a little bit sillier and lives in a world where kookier things can happen.”
In building “Lego Horizon Adventures,” Guerrilla Games and animation company Studio Gobo had to work with the 50 colors available in Lego’s color palette (which includes a limited seven shades of green, but one perfect match for Aloy’s red hair) and bricks that are all currently available to purchase from Lego. But surprisingly, these constraints did not create an issue when re-creating “Horizon’s” aesthetic.
“We had, let’s say, the opposite problem, especially in the beginning,” Postma said. “Okay, we want to build this in Lego, and then we managed to build it so amazingly well from the bricks that, if you would zoom out a bit, no one would actually know it was built from Lego anymore.”
In order to combat the scaling situation while maintaining “the tininess and the cuteness” of Lego, Studio Gobo lead concept artist Damian Buzugbe said the team relied on Lego to show them how to build using non-traditional Lego pieces — like chairs and bagels.
“Our Nora hut went through several different versions of sizes — this is too big, this doesn’t work with the game camera,” Buzugbe said. “And then we eventually settled on it. These Nora huts have these beautiful curved roofs, and we’re like, how are they going to make that in Lego? And the next day, we turned up, and the master builders have made every tile out of an individual Lego chair, but turned upside down, and there’s Lego bagels everywhere, bricks and things that you’d never imagine utilized just to create these awesome machines.”
