Incredible Horizon Forbidden West PS5 graphics spark unexpected debate

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.) 

horizon_forbidden_west_twitter_people_are_so from r/PS4

"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. 

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." 

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.

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