Shuhei Yoshida admits to Sony’s apprehension featuring a female lead

There is so much to get excited about with Guerrilla Games’ new IP, Horizon: Zero Dawn. Lush visuals, post-apocalyptic setting, giant freaking metal dinosaur things, and keeping with a trend we’ve seen throughout E3 this year, a female protagonist that appears both well developed and interesting. The team behind Killzone clearly invested a lot in making this game as captivating as it already looks to be, so it’s surprising that Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida would come out during an interview with Polygon that he was most nervous about their decision to go with H:ZD’s main character, Aloy, because of her gender.

Yoshida went on to elaborate that despite testing well in focus groups and the story having been framed around this character’s perspective from the get go, there was a lot of apprehension surrounding it for all involved. However, once E3 got under way the team felt relief seeing the expanded diversity that was featured this year and Yoshida stated that he hopes that this trend will help gaming reach across a broader and, in turn, more diverse audience.

Acknowledging the gender gap in tech and game development, he also continued with "As an industry, I think we should continue to make efforts to have more females in studios on the development side and to get different perspectives."

Horizon: Zero Dawn is a PS4 exclusive set to release sometime in 2016.