Horizon Forbidden West, the highly anticipated game from Guerilla Games, has been delayed until February 18, 2022. During Gamescom Opening Night Live, Guerilla Games confirmed the rumors that the sequel to 2017's critically acclaimed open world adventure game Horizon Zero Dawn would not be released later this year
The Game Director at Guerilla Games and on HorizonForbidden West Mathijs de Jonge made the announcement in a video shown during the Gamescom event, as well as in a blog post on PlayStation's official website. De Jonge explained that Horizon Forbidden West had passed a major milestone back when gameplay was shown off at the June State of Play, but due to the changes in workflow and additional challenges that came with the global pandemic, the game requires a little more development time "to polish the game to the level of quality we strive for."
De Jonge went on to say "while the decision to move the game’s launch to 2022 certainly wasn’t easy, we’d like to take a moment to thank all of our fans for their unwavering support; we know how much you’ve been looking forward to reuniting with Aloy and her friends, continuing her story, and exploring a new and more dangerous world. Your passion, fan art, cosplay, virtual photography, and videos have meant the world to all of us." With the announcement of the delay, de Jonge revealed that the new release date will be on February 18, 2022. It was also announced that preorders for the game will begin next week on September 2nd. He closed out the video and blog post saying to expect more information in the coming months.
This delay and new release date comes after a report by Jeff Grubb on the Giant Bombcast saying that the game would be missing its tentative release date of the holiday season of 2021, which was also corroborated by Jason Schreier at Bloomsberg. Although fans might be disappointed that they will need to wait to see the next chapter in Aloy's story, there is good news that comes with the delay announcement. An enhanced performance patch for Horizon Zero Dawn on PlayStation 5 is now live that allows the game to support 60 FPS. This is as good as any reason to revisit the characters and world of Horizon before the sequel's release.
Horizon Forbidden West joins other PlayStation exclusives God of War Ragnarok and Ghostwire: Tokyo in being delayed into 2022. When the sequel to the highly praised 2017 title finally does arrive on February 18, 2022, it will be available on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. You can watch the new release date announcement trailer for Horizon Forbidden West down below.