Image via Sony
Horizon Forbidden West is the follow-up to 2017’s Horizon Zero Dawn, a sprawling action-adventure game where machine animals have inhabited a post-apocalyptic planet. Humans have reverted to becoming a hunter-gatherer species and the contrast between that aspect and the advanced-tech creatures were striking.
The story continues to follow Aloy as she ventures into a new territory called the Forbidden West. Aloy recently comes across a plague that kills off anything that it infects, and she believes that her journey out west will help her find the source of it.
What’s apparent about Horizon Forbidden West is that it features much more environmental variety than its predecessor. Whereas the first game was mostly filled with forests, grasslands, and snowy mountains, the new Forbidden West frontier also features deserts, swamps, and beaches. Aloy also has new exploration tools, including the Shieldwing that she can use to safely glide from high altitudes and her snorkel for breathing in underwater areas.
All of these different biomes make it a delight to explore the Forbidden West for treasure, bandit camps, and secret areas. While the world looks beautiful, it’s nothing without the people living in it. Horizon Zero Dawn had amazing side quests—they had thorough subplots and the NPCs provided a lot of worldbuilding.
Horizon Forbidden West is no different here as it continues to offer these same kinds of deep and thoughtful side quests. A memorable one for me involved Aloy helping out with her friend’s love triangle between another man and woman. To make matters more complicated, the woman has been missing for years. It’s incredibly easy to get distracted with all of the different activities, but none of them ever feel wasted as they all enhance the overall gameplay by providing experience points and skill points to put towards learning new abilities.
As for the Horizon Forbidden West’s gameplay, the core of it hasn’t changed all that much from the previous game. Aloy wields a bow and she shoots arrows at different parts of the machines to knock off certain components and then destroy the creatures. There are different kinds of arrows to use like fire arrows, ice arrows, and shock arrows. These act similar to status conditions mechanics found in other games. For example, burned enemies suffer from residual damage, frozen enemies become brittle and therefore easier to break off components, and stunned enemies stay in place.
Aloy also has a bigger skill tree to invest in too, split across six several different categories such as Hunting, which focuses on her bow skills, and the Warrior branch, which focuses on her melee abilities. Speaking of which, a criticism from the previous game was that Aloy’s close-range melee combat with her spear felt clunky. It still feels that way a little in Horizon Forbidden West, but the animations between attacks are more fluid now. Additionally, Aloy’s close-quarter combat options have expanded.
For example, by putting in points in the Warrior branch of her skill tree, Aloy can unlock the Resonator Blast ability. With this, when she connects her smaller, quicker hits, those build up energy in her spear. Once at full capacity, Aloy can unleash the energy on the opponent. By following up with an arrow shot, the extra energy can explode, inflicting major damage.
Some new quality of life improvements have been added. In the previous game, if Aloy ran out of space in her inventory satchel, the player would have to discard materials or items and it was a very laborious process. In Horizon Forbidden West, any extra resources picked up goes straight into a storage space that can be accessed in any town. This is by far my favorite new feature and is great for players who feel the need to compulsively pick up every single bit of material.
However, one thing I’m not entirely fond of is the inclusion of workbenches. This is supposedly to incorporate the new weapon upgrade mechanic which the previous game didn’t have. Also in the previous game, players could just upgrade satchels to increase inventory space simply by going to the crafting section of the menu. Here, players now have to find a workbench to craft any sort of upgrade at all—this feels like just an unnecessary extra step.
This game’s strongest aspect is, however, its narrative. Horizon Zero Dawn was one of those rare games where I was so fascinated by the lore and world that I actually took the time to read the game’s text collectibles and listen to every audio log I came across. In Horizon Forbidden West, I found myself doing the exact same thing, with each collectible adding more context to the story and enriching it.
Without going into spoilers, Aloy’s new adventure has even higher stakes than before. What I particularly like is the theme of camaraderie. Because of Aloy’s position in the world, when it comes to saving it, she often has to shoulder much of the burden herself. However, she learns that she doesn’t have by putting her trust in friends she met along the way. This also results in many of the previous game’s side characters being much more fleshed out this time around; this is a vast improvement as they were rather forgettable before.
Initially, the game had a few strange visual bugs here and there, including some very short load times that come out of nowhere when traveling through the world too quickly, causing my game to completely blackout for a second or two. However, Complex was given access to the game’s Day One patch and it has seemed to fix the issue on PlayStation 5. Thankfully, the load times during fast travel between different locations were fast, too.
Horizon Forbidden West is, in a sense, more of what you love from its predecessor. With new gameplay elements, refined mechanics, and varied environments, the game manages to stick with a formula that works, but also provides a new experience. The strong narrative uplifts the game as well. Given how the ending transpired, I can’t wait to see how Aloy’s journey continues and where it takes her next.