It's one of the most anticipated PS5 games yet, and is finally set to drop this Friday. Indeed, Horizon Forbidden West is already the talk of the internet, thanks to its incredible-looking graphics and gameplay. Oh, and, um, one character's facial hair.
One gamer hit out at designers for animating one female character with a "beard" – much to the chagrin of pretty much everyone else online. Allowing for unprecedented levels of realism and subtlety, the graphics are able to capture even the 'peach fuzz' on protagonist Aloy's face – but it seems not everyone has been acquainted with this perfectly normal anatomical feature yet. (Feeling lucky? Check out the latest PS5 restock news.)
"Can you explain to me why the hell Aloy has a beard?" someone unwisely tweeted – and the pile-on was swift, with many commenting with variations on the theme that said tweeter has clearly never seen a woman up-close. Yes, peach fuzz is perfectly normal – it just wasn't ever going to show up in a PS1 game.
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Tell me you’ve never been up close to a woman, without telling me you’ve never been up close to a woman…This dude will go first: pic.twitter.com/glRRULUJjTFebruary 15, 2022
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I thought this was a post about the immense detail they put into the model but no, virgin twitter strikes againWomen have peach fuzz y'all 😭 https://t.co/nlZzIi0gurFebruary 15, 2022
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I'm so impressed by the Horizon peach fuzz shader that I can't bring myself to dunk on the guy who doesn't know how faces work.February 15, 2022
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Indeed, so proud is developer Guerrilla of the character models in Horizon Forbidden West that it singled out this specific detail in a blog on the PlayStation website. "Each generation of consoles brings extra power that lets us add even denser polygons to our character models," the developer says, "so we can create finer details such as peach fuzz, smooth contouring, or finer texture details and accurate materials expression, to name a few."
Guerrilla shows off the game's incredible character modelling (Image credit: Guerilla)
So there we have it. The PS5 graphics are so good, they're even teaching some inexperienced gamers how faces work. If fuzz-gate has inspired you to start gaming right now, check out today's best video games console deals below.
Daniel John is Design Editor at Creative Bloq. He reports on the worlds of design, branding and lifestyle tech, and has covered several industry events including Milan Design Week, OFFF Barcelona and Adobe Max in Los Angeles. He has interviewed leaders and designers at brands including Apple, Microsoft and Adobe. Daniel's debut book of short stories and poems was published in 2018, and his comedy newsletter is a Substack Bestseller.
