Over 12 minutes of early Horizon multiplayer game footage leaks online

Footage purporting to be from Horizon Forbidden West's multiplayer alpha has appeared online. The leak surfaced on Reddit over the weekend, claiming to be from a "very old alpha" build from summer 2020. It's an interesting watch, as while the world and robo dinos look like classic Horizon, the characters jumping around fighting them look a lot more stylised than their hyper-detailed mainline counterparts.

The leaked footage mainly features a lot of characters running around in low-poly environments and some brief looks at combat against its familiar mechanical enemies. What was most interesting were the “join-PS4” and a “join-PC” options, potentially hinting at cross-platform play and a simultaneous PC release.

There are still a number of question marks surrounding this footage, though. When it was originally posted, it was labelled as "Horizon Forbidden West leaked alpha's multiplayer" - Forbidden West being the currently PlayStation-only sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn. The latter received a PC port a couple of years ago, but we're still waiting for Sony to bring over the former, calling into question those "join-PC" settings.

However, it's also possible that this leaked footage has something to do with Guerrilla's already confirmed Online Project, which is supposed to have "a new cast of characters and a unique stylised look", according to their announcement tweet from last December. Guerrilla are still hiring for that particular project, though, so until they have more to say about it, your guess is as good as ours. Still, Monster Hunter-style co-op with some sweet Thunderjaws sounds like a ride I’d be up for.

Horizon seems to be expanding rapidly. The aforementioned Online Project is currently being developed internally at Guerrilla alongside another single-player Horizon game, but there are also other developers working on more External Projects as well. Chief among them is the rumoured Horizon MMORPG, coming from Guild Wars publisher NCsoft. Customisable robot mounts, anyone?

If you’d rather hunt robot dinosaurs alone, Horizon Zero Dawn: Complete Edition is available on PC now via Steam, the Epic Games Store, and GOG for £40/€50/$50.