One of the main reasons Horizon Zero Dawn took so long to make is because Guerrilla Games came up with an entirely new engine to build it on. Known as the Decima Engine, it’s only been used in a handful of games so far (that we know of), but the results speak for themselves. In addition to Aloy’s debut and the sequel, Horizon Forbidden West, Kojima Productions famously used Decima to develop Death Stranding and, presumably, Death Stranding 2.
It seems that this is far from over for this engine. As part of a management shakeup at Guerrilla Games, art director Michel van der Leeuw announced that he would be working on Decima full-time. in Linkedin postVan der Leeuw says he will focus on “our ambitious future plans for our Decima engine.” He says the team has “crafted the studio’s roadmap and future direction for our decimal engine so ambitious” that it now requires his full attention.
Of course, we don’t know what that future direction looks like, but we can hazard a guess that more PS Studios may be migrating to Decima moving forward. It could also elude the development of tools that allow the engine to be used for online service games, which is clearly a strategy in the making at PlayStation.
Moreover, imagining how the engine could improve is very difficult; The results are incredibly powerful indeed, producing some of the most technically impressive open-world games to date. Assuming Guerrilla and PS Studios move to PS5-only development in the future, it seems likely that Decima could be at the heart of some of the console’s hottest looking titles in a few years’ time.
Are you excited about the future of decimal? Tell us in the comments section below.
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