Benjamin Franklin once said that three may keep a secret so long as none of them is a videogame age-rating board, and he was right. The ESRB, whose main purpose is preventing children from being exposed to too much drugs and violence and whose covert second purpose is undercutting publisher marketing campaigns, has once again leaked a release ahead of its announcement. This time it's, uh, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered. Wait, what?
That's right, folks, 2017's prettiest robo-hunting sim is about to get even prettier, barring the unlikely possibility that someone at the ESRB is just wishing it into existence. Per the still-live listing on the board's website, the remaster is set to launch on both PS5 and PC, although the ways in which it's being remastered are still a mystery.
The obvious question is: Why? On PS5, the first Horizon got a whizzbang update three years ago that meant its original version could take advantage of the new console's extra horsepower. On PC it's been gorgeous from the start. Of the many, many games in my Steam library, HZD is unquestionably still one of the prettiest. Remastering a game that is both still intensely playable and utterly beautiful almost seems like the games industry poking fun at itself.
The ESRB rating's timing—coming just a week after Sony announced the existence and eye-watering price of the PS5 Pro—is surely no coincidence. Perhaps a gussied-up Horizon will be one of the Pro console's showpiece games when it launches this November
Which, if anything, just drives home how marginal the improvements offered by the PS5 Pro seem to me, a man still financially recovering from an RTX 4080 purchase early last year. Where the PS4 Pro seemed like a reasonable answer to devs' complaints about underpowered console hardware last generation, the PS5 Pro feels like an answer to a non-existent problem. That one of its showpiece games might be a very delectable version of Horizon Zero Dawn—a game that already looks absolutely stellar—almost feels like Sony hanging a lampshade on its own product's total un-necessity.
Fortunately for Sony and corporations the world over, I'm a moron, and I'll probably still end up buying whatever the Horizon Remaster ends up being when it inevitably goes on sale a year or two down the line. The games industry might be slipping into self-parody, but I've been there for decades.
