Recently AusGamers was invited out to Killzone developer Guerrilla Games' Amsterdam HQ to get an extensive look at their forthcoming open-world action-adventure RPG Horizon Zero Dawn. We played through a stack of the game, partook in a studio tour and chatted to some of the brass, and as the first part of a handful of features built around the game, we've put together an extensive look at what we played and at how deep and inviting this new game-world really is.

And so stay tuned for more on this promising new franchise of the next week or so, but for now, here's a snippet from our hands-on report from the game:

If you’ve been following the game at all, you’ll know the elevator pitch is ‘open-world action-RPG set in an overgrown, lush post-apocalyptic future where an ecology of dynamic animal-like robots share the world with socially and technologically devolved humans, and other animals’. It’s a mouthful, and must have been a longer elevator ride than most, but what’s impressive about any such undertaking is understanding the switch from a linear story about a specific set of characters fighting a common enemy -- where the developers controlled the beats and scripting -- to an entirely realised world with rules set outside of the player-narrative. This is a hard concept to grasp, especially because in modern open-world games, ecology is as much a pillar of the game’s world as the open-world itself is. And to have crafted an entirely new ecosystem to coexist alongside one we -- as players -- will already easily understand, and have it nestle there seamlessly, while leaving us with nothing but questions, is to be applauded.

Click here for our full hands-on preview feature for Horizon Zero Dawn.