Game Dev Twitter is heating up over this Horizon Forbidden West comparison video

Another day, another discourse

Pretty much anyone who plays games has some kind of opinion about them they want to share, and social media lets us, whether we should or not. There’s always something sparking outrage on Twitter, and this time the whole of Game Dev Twitter is taking up arms against a user who basically called Guerrilla Games lazy because they reused an animation in a game sequel. Oh, the horror.

Yesterday, this user posted a video showing a side-by-side comparison of an animation of Aloy using her grappling hook, one from Horizon Zero Dawn, and one from the new gameplay footage of Horizon Forbidden West. The tweet simply reads “copy and paste,” a snarky way to say that the developers reused the same animation for the game’s sequel. The video has since garnered over 1.2 million views and nearly 4,000 quote tweets on the platform.

Copy and paste 😂 pic.twitter.com/U5jYJVmLWW

— JayRock (@JAAY_ROCK_) January 26, 2022

A flood of posts from Game Dev Twitter came to Guerrilla Games’ defense, discussing how much work goes into making a game, and that developers don’t have time to waste on recreating perfectly good animations. The replies and quote tweets are full of people basically putting this user on blast, but at least I don’t see any that are agreeing with OP.

Some actually think that is person is just a troll, trying to bait reactions with repeating this same take every time a big game release is on the horizon, which is also a super likely scenario at this point.

Look, game developers are certainly not above any sort of criticism, but why don’t we focus that energy toward companies that are actually releasing unfinished games, going back on promises, and pushing scummy features like NFTs. Animators work too damn hard to have some rando with a keyboard “call out” their work ethic.

I kind of just miss the days when people could keep their opinions to themselves.