Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores is exclusive to PlayStation 5 because of its clouds

While we're sure there are a plethora of reasons for why Horizon Forbidden West has looked to leave the PlayStation 4 behind for the upcoming Burning Shores expansion, Guerrilla Games has now published a new PlayStation Blog post that touches on one of the biggest reasons on why the PS4 won't receive the post-launch addition.

And it's because of the clouds that make up the Los Angeles that Aloy will be travelling over. We're told that the development team has created and used new techniques to offer richer and more detailed cloud systems, and that the PS4 simply couldn't handle the data necessary to render the clouds they wanted to serve up.

Andrew Schneider, principal FX artist at Guerrilla stated: "The cloud systems that we developed for Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West were fast because they didn't store clouds as 3D objects, but rather instructions on creating 3D clouds from limited 2D information. The PlayStation 5 can handle larger datasets. So, after Forbidden West wrapped, we set to work writing a voxel cloud renderer prototype that could live up to our standards for quality, and actually allow the player to fly through highly detailed cloud formations."

Aside from just looking better, the clouds in the Burning Shores expansion are slated to be explorable as well, as we're told by Schneider: "It was important to us to make the experience fun and joyful on its own outside of the main gameplay. The clouds are not simply immersive scenery but an explorable landscape in themselves. Among the clouds, players will be able to explore tunnels, caves, and other surprises that make for fun flying.

"The best part is that depending on when you try any of these features, the experience will be different. As the day progresses, the quality and direction of light change, hiding and revealing some of these features and changing the feel of each journey.

"And I don't want to spoil anything - but we hope you aren't afraid of a little lightning."

Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores will arrive on PS5 on April 19.