Horizon Steel Frontiers, an MMORPG twist on Sony's series about plinking robo-animals with arrows, is coming to PC

From Guild Wars publishers NCSoft

Start setting up tripwires and stretch your bow strings, a Horizon MMORPG dubbed Horizon Steel Frontiers has been fully revealed by Sony and developers NCSoft. As ever, it's all about slapping up and taming big metal bears, birds and the like, this time as a custom character in a world filled with other players who're also in the robo-hunting business.

As Guerilla Games studio director Jan-Bart van Beek says in the reveal video above, Steel Frontiers has been "built specifically for mobile" by Guild Wars publishers NCSoft, but is also coming to PC via the South Korean studio's launcher Purple.

Set in a region dubbed The Deadlands inspired by Arizona and New Mexico, the game'll see your custom Nora, Tenakth, Utaru, or Oseram "sharing the frontier with thousands of other players, sometimes working together to take down machines, sometimes competing with rival tribes, or fighting over resources". Sounds quite Monster Huntery, as you'd expect.

Executive producer Sung-Gu Lee says giving massive machine hunts the MMO treatment's been the key focus for Steel Frontiers. "We’ve added unique, original gameplay elements to the process of taking down giant machines," he explains. "For example, after destroying a specific part of a machine you can quickly approach and climb onto it using a Pullcaster, set traps on the damaged part, and inflict status effects. During battle, you can even pick up weapons dropped by the machine, carry them on your mount and use them in subsequent fights. At the heart of giant machine hunts are two core values: cooperation and strategy. Players must take on their roles, act strategically, and work together seamlessly. These combat mechanics truly shine in large-scale battles, offering the scale and dynamism that only an MMORPG can provide."

The footage shown off thus far looks pretty graphically swanky regardless of the stated mobile-first focus, and contains a lot more big swords than I remember from my time playing Zero Dawn. To be fair, I did spend 90% of that whacking things to death with Aloy's spear in a fashion I imagine led the game to sigh deeply while it gazed at the array of ranged weapons and gizmos I could be using if I didn't want to be flung at the scenery whenever I failed to dodge point blank swipes fast enough.

Speaking of Aloy, she's nowhere to be seen in the video, so we'll have to see how or if the game works in any references to the metal-named huntress. As of right now, Steel Frontiers also doesn't have a release date. Alongside yelling at Tencent in court, Sony and Guerilla have previously confirmed they've got a new mainline Horizon entry in the works, as well as an online Horizon game of their own.