Guerrilla Details Its Collaboration With the Rijkmuseum on the Art Gallery in Horizon Forbidden West

By collaborating with the Rijksmuseum, the national history museum of the Netherlands, the art in Horizon Forbidden West is some of the Netherlands’ finest. A blog post released today further details the story and the meaning behind this special collaboration. Classic art in video games itself is far from new. There is the ever-lasting struggle around art collection in the Animal Crossing games. You can make a trip through the Louvre in Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness. There’s plenty of religious imagery throughout the Castlevania games. Guerrilla brought the longstanding relationship between video games and classic art to a new height.

At Guerrilla, we're always happy to showcase our Dutch roots to our international community. So when the opportunity presented itself to collaborate with the @Rijksmuseum, we had to take it!

🖼 Watch the full video here: https://t.co/6Kz8aq27Ka#HorizonForbiddenWest pic.twitter.com/JV1kuR8K3o

— Guerrilla (@Guerrilla) April 6, 2022

The collection of art in Horizon Forbidden West is in a vault underneath a large mansion. This mansion belongs to one of the game’s new characters, Tilda van der Meer. Her Dutch heritage is challenging to miss. If not for her name, then certainly for her art collection! It includes 10 historic Dutch works of art, which include the famous painting The Night Watch. Guerrilla recreated the paintings and statues in meticulous detail to give the impression of the physical art gallery as it appears in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. 

A story of how gaming and art can go hand in hand

The 10-minutes mini-documentary features narrative director Ben McGaw, Aloy’s voice actress Ashly Burch, Guerrilla Details its Collaboration with the Rijkmuseum On the Art Gallery in Horizon Forbidden West and Denise Campbell, curatorial assistant at the Rijksmuseum. They discuss how the collection matters to the Tilda and the universe of Horizon Forbidden West, Guerrilla’s roots in Dutch culture, and how video games and art preservation matter in modern times. 

The collaboration between Guerrilla and the Rijksmuseum shows the connection people have with their pasts. Not just Tilda and her own, but also Guerrilla and its Dutch roots and us as players with our pasts. After all, to paraphrase the behind-the-collab video, the art in Horizon Forbidden West does what physical art does as well. It inspires us in the present by appealing to our universal emotions. 

Watch the video here, but beware – it contains major spoilers for part of the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-XUBBNR4Qo

Curious what else we enjoyed about the game? Then make sure to check our 5 ways in which Horizon Forbidden West improves on its predecessor!