Horizon's tribes were very expensive and time consuming to make, artist confirms

New documents give key insight into the production process of Sony's best-selling Horizon franchise, revealing some of the more taxing and expensive parts of the game's design.

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PlayStation's first-party Horizon series is dazzling and eye-catching, matching up colorful meso-American style with sci-fi futurism. The game's vibrant world is anchored by seven tribes that give players more agency in the Horizon universe. According to Guerrilla Games art director Jan-Bart van Beek, putting the tribes together was actually one of the most difficult parts of making the game. Guerrilla spent a lot of time and money meticulously crafting each tribe, and that attention to detail permeates throughout the games--from clothing to architecture, the games are distinct and striking.

The info comes by way of a written declaration from van Beek in regards to Sony's active copyright infringement lawsuit against Tencent. The company behind PlayStation is suing Tencent, saying that Tencent's game Light of Motiram is essentially a blatant imitator of Sony's Horizon series.

The declaration is nearly two dozen pages and worth a read. Here's an excerpt below:

"The Horizon storyline features humanity living in culturally distinct, technologically primitive tribes, co-existing with Machines in different ways.

"Creating the tribes was one of the most time-consuming and expensive parts of the Horizon development process. We had to create style manuals for each tribe--ranging from 60 to 200 pages--and make countless artistic choices in designing the tribes' physical traits, attire, accessories, dwellings, etc.

"In developing the various tribes, we worked with anthropologists to understand how tribal cultures form. We read literature, talked to experts, listened to presentations, and did significant research to understand how real-world tribes are formed and what creates unique tribal cultures.

"We invested countless hours into research before we began creating the visual environment and narrative of Horizon.

"We designed each tribe to have a unique aesthetic design reflecting its material culture and home biome. We chose distinctive color palettes to reinforce each biome's identity and the cultural distinctiveness of its inhabitants. For example, the Nora tribe wears primitive apparel made primarily from animal hides, leather, linen, and protective metal plates, accented with feathers, embroidery, wooden beads, metal accents, and discarded cables."