Thankfully, they’re pretty much exactly the same as Kojima’s post-apocalyptic courier sim, Death Stranding, which isn’t surprising given that they run on the same engine, but if you’ve been merrily building bridges and delivering packages in the old Stranding, you should be pretty good to go when Horizon bounds onto PC on August 7th. The good news is that it’s a very similar situation to Death Stranding’s PC requirements. Horizon Zero Dawn is a little heavier on the RAM and storage front, admittedly, but its recommended spec still only lists either a 6GB GTX 1060 or an 8GB RX 580 graphics card to get a smooth 60fps at 1080p, the former of which is the very same Nvidia card as Death Standing’s recommended 60fps 1080p requirements. Indeed, my own PC performance analysis of Death Stranding confirmed that a GTX 1060 was more than enough to hit this speed on max settings at 1080p, so I’m hopeful that Horizon’s recommended spec should be able to produce similar frame rates on its top graphics presets as well come August 7th. As you may have noticed from Horizon Zero Dawn’s PC launch trailer, there are two more graphics presets above the ‘original’ PS4-oriented (aka Medium) preset - ‘Favour Quality’, which is effectively High, and ‘Ultimate’ which pushes a lot of its settings up to Ultra. Of course, I’ll have to wait until I can go hands on with Horizon Zero Dawn myself before I can see if my predictions hold true, but if its 1080p performance is anything like Death Stranding then I’m pretty confident that we’ll see equally smooth frame rates on these presets, too. Alas, Horizon Zero Dawn won’t be making use of Nvidia’s DLSS 2.0 tech, so RTX card owners won’t be able to turn their GPU into a 4K 60fps machine at the drop of a hat. It will, however, support the same ultrawide resolutions available on your monitor - that is, the full 3440x1440 for 21:9 screens and even 3840x1080 if you’ve got a super wide 32:9 display like the Samsung CRG9 - rather than Kojima’s cinematic 3360x1440 interpretation. Alas, Guerrilla have sadly confirmed that cutscenes will still be limited to a 16:9 aspect ratio, though. Still, even if your PC doesn’t quite meet the recommended requirements for Horizon Zero Dawn, the even better news is that its minimum spec is actually much lower than Death Stranding’s, which aimed for 30fps at a 720p resolution. As a result, even slightly elderly PCs built in the last five years should be able to cope reasonably well with it. You will, however, need to make sure you’ve got Windows 10 installed, and that you’ve got a GPU that supports DirectX 12. Otherwise, you’re going to have trouble. Naturally, I’ll be testing Horizon Zero Dawn in much more detail come August 7th, so stay tuned for more PC related performance chat at the end of next week.
