Promising signs, though true porting success remains to be seen
Considering it’s one of the most gawwwwjuss games you can get one o’ them PS5 machines, Horizon Forbidden West’s upcoming PC version has some pretty fair-looking system requirements. The newly released specs, which you can find below, suggest that pushing the open world, robosaur-slaying sequel to its most extreme settings will take a burly graphics card – but likewise, lower settings and resolutions can get by with much creakier hardware.
Specifically, you’re looking at either an Intel Core i3-8100 or AMD Ryzen 3 1300X as a starter CPU, both being ancient budget chips, and at least a GeForce GTX 1650 or Radeon RX 5500 XT for yer GPU. Again, those shouldn’t be a problem for anyone with a remotely modern rig, and are encouraging for Forbidden West’s chances on the Steam Deck. The recommended specs bump those up considerably, to an RTX 3060 or RX 5700, though neither of those are particularly exclusive parts these days either.
The only “How much?” moment here comes courtesy of the storage space requirement: a gluttonous 150GB. Granted, this is the Complete Edition, so includes the entire Burning Shores expansion alongside the main adventure. It’s not as if those mechanical mammoths are thirty gigs a pop.
Here’s the full system requirements guide, helpfully in JPG form. Click to embiggen, if needed:
At least while Forbidden West is gorging itself on your SSD capacity, it’ll also be benefitting from load time-cutting DirectStorage support, as previously announced with its other PC features. Besides DLSS and DLSS 3 frame generation, owners of non-RTX graphics cards will also be able to shake it down for some extra frames-per-second via AMD FSR or Intel XeSS upscaling, while those with PS5 DualSense controllers can enjoy all the twanging pleasures of its adaptive triggers and haptic feedback.
All very promising, though while parts of my memory are filled with great times playing Aloy’s exploits on PS5, others are stained with the knowledge that many previous PlayStation ports have arrived on Windows in a less than stellar state. Forbidden West’s porting house Nixxes can claim some of the better ones, such as last year’s Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, though even that suffered from some minor technical wobbles. Here’s hoping they can make this one as smooth as the system requirements suggest.
