Upcoming action role-playing video game Horizon Zero Dawn launches in the UK on the 1st March (Image: Sony Interactive Entertainment)
This post-apocalyptic scene featuring Birmingham’s famous Rotunda and Selfridges buildings may seem like a snapshot captured in a distant future, but it is in-fact part of a nationwide publicity campaign to promote an upcoming video game.
The makers of Horizon Zero Dawn – which launches in the UK this week, on the 1st March – have re-imagined Brum along with cities across the UK as neglected futuristic cities populated with robot dinosaurs, or ‘robosaurs’.
The city of Birmingham re-imagined as a post-apocalyptic wasteland overrun by robotic dinosaurs (Image: Sony Interactive Entertainment)
In a future where there’s very little left of the ‘old world’, the second city is depicted as being completely dominated by lush and overgrown plant life that appears to have completely taken back most of the former skyline, leaving only the Rotunda, Selfridges and St Martin’s Church landmarks in view.
The games lead character Aloy, a young hunter who lives with her adoptive father as outcasts from a nearby tribe, features in the composite images, in the very clever regional marketing campaign that is unlikely to be representative of the actual game-play.
The publicity shots are based on real photographs of Birmingham’s current city centre skyline but with the addition of ‘digital decay’ to represent a thousand years of abandonment, neglect, erosion and natural overgrowth.
Other cities featured in similar artwork include London, Manchester, Cardiff, Birmingham, Liverpool, Dublin and Edinburgh.
1,000 years in the future… you know the Rotunda will still be there.
#Birmingham pic.twitter.com/4WWHNsnTMc
— PlayStation UK (@PlayStationUK) February 26, 2017
Horizon Zero Dawn an action role-playing video game developed by Guerrilla Games and is being launched by Sony Interactive Entertainment for the PlayStation 4.
The third-person narrative revolves around Aloy, a hunter and archer living in a world overrun by robots as she sets out to discover the dangers in a futuristic world.
The third-person narrative revolves around Aloy, a hunter and archer living in a world overrun by robots as she sets out to discover the dangers in a futuristic world (Image: Sony Interactive Entertainment)
Horizon Zero Dawn follows lead character Aloy as she explores a post-apocalyptic world (Image: Sony Interactive Entertainment)
According to Horizon Zero Dawn’s official synopsis, players can explore “a lush, post-apocalyptic world where nature has reclaimed the ruins of a forgotten civilization, pockets of humanity live on in primitive hunter-gatherer tribes. Their dominion over the new wilderness has been usurped by the Machines – fearsome mechanical creatures of unknown origin.”
Only two days to go until Earth is ours no more. #HorizonZeroDawn pic.twitter.com/QstUvBJuXX
— PlayStation UK (@PlayStationUK) February 27, 2017
The game gives players the opportunity to ” journey through a world filled with strange artefacts and crumbling ruins to unlock its deepest mysteries” and discover “how did the Machines come to dominate this world, and what happened to the civilization that came before?”
Birmingham’s Selfridges, Rotunda and St Martin’s Church landmarks are depicted as decayed and derelict (Image: Sony Interactive Entertainment)
Although initially scheduled to be released last year, the game was held back by developers to ensure it was of the highest quality for an enhanced 4K format on PS4 Pro.
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Horizon Zero Dawn will be released in the UK on Wednesday 1st March.
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