Netflix's Horizon Zero Dawn series will include Aloy as a main character, says showrunner

Another Playstation franchise is one small step closer to appearing on our screens as Horizon Zero Dawn quietly confirmed its showrunner yesterday (Aug 25).

In an interview published on Tudum, The Umbrella Academy showrunner Steve Blackman revealed that he's working on the adaptation of the popular video game, in addition to confirming the return of The Umbrella Academy for a fourth and final season.

Steve said: "Horizon Zero Dawn is an exceptionally well-crafted game with wonderful characters not often seen in the rank-and-file of the gaming world. Guerrilla Games has created an incredibly lush and vivid world of man and machine who find themselves on a collision course to oblivion.

"Their salvation comes in the form of a young female warrior named Aloy, who has no idea she's the key to saving the world. Suffice it to say, yes, Aloy will be a main character in our story."

Although known for his work on The Umbrella Academy, Steve explained that Horizon Zero Dawn and Orbital (another series he's developing) will be different from each other.

"One takes place a thousand years in the future, in a world completely remade by massive machines. The other is set near present-day on a space station," he noted.

"From a character- and world-building perspective, there's a clear through line: I gravitate to characters who are grounded and relatable but exist on the fringe. Outliers who struggle to find their place in a world of conformity and structure.

"All my stories strive to subvert expectation and find a new way of looking into the worlds we think we know."

Apart from the reveal of the showrunner and the confirmation of Aloy's appearance, no other details about the Netflix adaptation of the game have been revealed.

For the uninitiated, Horizon Zero Dawn is a 2017 action-roleplaying game developed by Guerrilla Games and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment.

It takes place during the 31st century and is set in a post-apocalyptic United States. Large robotic creatures — which resemble a myriad of animals, creatures and even dinosaurs — dominate the world. Humans, on the other hand, live in primitive tribes with varying levels of technology, though not as advanced as their predecessors.

Their technologically superior predecessors are known as the "Old Ones" and are regarded as godlike figures.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1xAWm9wOR8&ab_channel=IGNGames[/embed]

The game follows the journey of Aloy (voiced by Ashly Burch) who bears a striking resemblance to Elisabet Sorbeck (also voiced by Ashly), a scientist of the old world. In the process, she stumbles upon Sorbeck's automated terraforming project titled Zero Dawn which was created to deactivate the robots and restore life to Earth.

A sequel, titled Horizon Forbidden West, was released on Feb 18 and is available for both Playstation 4 and 5.

bryanlim@asiaone.com