‘Horizon Call of the Mountain’ Gameplay Trailer Suggests It Will Be More than a Mere Experience

By
Ben Lang
-
16

Sony today revealed the first gameplay trailer for Horizon Call of the Mountain, an exclusive title headed to PSVR 2. While it wasn’t clear initially if the title would be a full blown game, the latest reveal suggests it will be significantly more than a short VR ‘experience’.

Horizon Call of the Mountain is the first major exclusive known to be coming to PSVR 2. It’s of course a big deal to see one of Sony’s hottest franchises come to VR, but when the title was initially teased it wasn’t clear how much of game it would truly be, rather than a brief tour around the ironic world.

A new gameplay trailer revealed during today’s PlayStation State of Play event suggests that Horizon Call of the Mountain will be closer to a full game than just a brief experience.

A post on the official PlayStation Blog further refers to the project as a “game” with a “main story” and even says that Call of the Mountain will include a separate “immersive River Ride experience,” which will be an ideal way for players to give friends and family a taste of PSVR 2 even if they aren’t full-blown gamers.

Here’s how developer Guerrilla describes the game:

The world of Horizon is spectacular up close. In Call of the Mountain, you’ll be seeing it through the eyes of Ryas, a former Shadow Carja Warrior who hopes to redeem himself by investigating a grave new threat to the Sundom. He is a master at climbing and archery, two skills crucial to survival as you step into his shoes, scaling perilous mountains and taking down mighty machines like the Thunderjaw.

Throughout your journey, you’ll master various tools and weapons and use the world’s many materials to craft additional gear, equipping you for any situation. But you won’t be going it alone. Along the way, you’ll meet Horizon characters new and old, including Aloy herself.

So while it isn’t clear if we’ll be getting a 15 hours epic, it sounds like there’s more to Horizon Call of the Mountain than it first appeared.

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There’s still no official release date for the game (or for the headset for that matter), but we’re betting that Call of the Mountain will be a launch title.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • VR5

    Having an easily presentable on rails experience inside the larger full game one is pretty ingenious because the former is doing wonders for getting VR new fans but the latter is crucial for retention. Leading with the River Ride in the first short trailer was also a good way to lure naysayers into getting their usual attacks out, only to be proven wrong by the actual product.

    The new trailer is also nicely exploiting this reflex by starting with the ride, then going to climbing and finishing with free movement attack evasion. Prove expectations wrong to positively surprise.

    • kontis

      The problem with this is you may feel like you are playing some second rate product that was an after thought, when you could instead be experiencing the real thing without VR.

      I remember when I was excited to play designed for PSP games from series like GTA and Metal Gear Solid. But I could constantly feel that those games didn’t have the same kind of effort poured into them and something was off. So then I tried classics from Playstation 1 via emulator and it was so much more fun I gave up completely on the native games… Even with older, inferior graphics the production value was clearly better.

      • VR5

        PSP was the last successful Playstation in Japan and absolutely outperformed the PS3. After that PS4 and 5 only went downhill. PSP got plenty of fleshed out games, and after it the 3DS and Switch did also. The Vita’s failing was due to competition from Nintendo, not because the market at large prefered PS4.

        You might say, that’s Japan and the rest of the world is different. But Switch has already outperformed all Playstations in the West as well except PS2, and that’s still in the cards. You’re right, the important thing is production values. And you can get those also with superficially “worse” graphics. In case of VR, they’re actually better even if that doesn’t show on a flatscreen trailer.

        If Call of the Mountain is 10 to 15 hours, that’s comparable to HLA and it’s also a good length for any non grindy flat game. The production values are absolutely there and it’s enough to further grow the market. Especially since Sony promises 20 major games at launch.

    • Tommy

      Smart move. Totally agree!

  • Mach5

    Watch this be a very linear game and not an open world free roam one

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Even if it is, does that really matter? Personally I like linear games.

      • Mach5

        Nothing to go crazy about for the psvr 2

        • ApocalypseShadow

          Lying to yourself won’t change the fact that PS VR 2 will have amazing games and experiences exclusive to the platform not playable on PC or Quest 2 like this one. Even with just a taste of what we’ll see , releases are going to be more and faster than any modders on PC to keep up with trying to make flat games into VR. And the system will have actual games and not unfinished, early access demos.

          The haptics are exclusive to console as well. Sony’s First Party is second to none and you won’t see every game coming over. The features in the headset are exclusive. Even if the headset gets modded to work on PC, there’s no standard across PC games or PCs.

          No amount of negativity will change these facts.

          • Mach5

            Ok fan boy

          • ApocalypseShadow

            Keep telling yourself that. You’re probably in front of a mirror giving yourself negative affirmations to keep up the negativity. No one cares.

            Won’t change the facts.

          • Mach5

            Lmao ok somebody takes video games a little too seriously, touch grass

          • ApocalypseShadow

            You’re the fan boy calling someone else fan boy speaking negative about a product you have not even tried to say there’s nothing on offer. That is the very definition of fan boy.You haven’t even seen the complete set of games to come to your conclusion.

            I’m just calling out your negativity. And not every game needs to be open world. We got enough of them already. Nothing wrong with a linear game.

          • Tommy

            Owning both PCVR and PSVR2 is the way to go. I really hope the modders get the PSVR2 working on PC. It’s a great headset regardless of what system it would be used on.

    • VR5

      It’s not like we don’t have any open world VR games, there’s Skyrim, Fall Out 4, Stormland, Eagle Flight, the upcoming GTA San Andreas. But not every game needs to be open world. It’s not like they’re inherently superior and that linear games need to go away.

      If Call of the Mountain isn’t open world it can still be a great full fledged game.

  • Nothing to see here

    The trailer indicates that the game is on rails. That’s too bad because I was hoping to explore the world of Zero Dawn in VR. Oh well. I guess I will still have to play it.

    • Tommy

      Did you watch the video or read the article?