![]() The Forbidden West itself, which stretches from parts of Utah to the coast of San Francisco, is packed with a tremendous variety of biomes and more traversal opportunities than ever. ![]() Overgrown and dilapidated homesteads and town squares from the pre-apocalypse routinely become miniature puzzle sequences that flex the potential in Aloy’s new abilities and gear like the Pullcaster. Similarly, where Zero Dawn made dungeons and unique gameplay experiences out of the ruins of scientific bases and sprawling landmarks, Forbidden West gives players plenty of opportunity to explore smaller slices of the world as we know it now. Between the base and the other major settlements in the game there’s a far greater sense of place that was missing in the lonely wandering of the previous game’s world and its comparatively soulless centres of population. Grounding what eventually becomes a branching set of objectives in a central location that grows and changes as players achieve goals in the world makes a marked impact on the sense of progression through the game’s story and allows a ton of time for Aloy to have those meaningful and well-written conversations with her companions that I’ve already praised so much. The newfound sense of companionship in Forbidden West’s narrative is bolstered by the structure of its open world as well, which begins with a base of operations for Aloy and her steadily-growing party. Even the things that would be considered filler, the stuff in the open world that would typically be content for content’s sake, is often neatly woven into the world state or feeds into minor narrative beats which makes careful exploration a much more compelling prospect. Every new human settlement is full of engaging and well-rounded stories that add depth to both Aloy and the world around her. Some of the best moments in Forbidden West come from Aloy’s interactions with others, the completely new world and deeper development of side characters naturally resulting in more engagement and exploration of her own thoughts and emotions. THE CHEAPEST COPY: $78 WITH FREE DELIVERY (FREE PS5 UPGRADE INCLUDED) / $98 FOR PS5 EDITION This is coupled with top notch writing, supporting a very wise commitment to the game’s cast of secondary characters. Gone are the original game’s stale and stilted conversations and in their place some of the most jaw-dropping character models and motion capture I’ve ever seen running in real time. One of Forbidden West’s biggest successes, and one that reveals itself almost immediately, is a far more convincing cast of characters that are better written, better rendered and animated and more pivotal to Aloy’s journey than ever. This is a game that tackles ideas of purpose and legacy, religion and government, freedom of information, colonisation, race, technology, loss, pride and so much more and deftly delivers them in magnitudes both grandiose and miniscule. The tough part is talking about any of it – there are simply too many crucial narrative beats and revelations that would be a shame to spoil, suffice it to say that Guerrilla has again done an extraordinary job of exploring a vast range of themes in this fantastical world. The sequel manages to dig deep below surfaces that the original only scratched to find an abundant wellspring of lore and world building that had me enamoured from beginning to end. ![]() To say that Forbidden West’s narrative ups the ante from the groundwork that Horizon Zero Dawn laid would be a severe understatement. That goal quickly reveals itself to be more involved than expected though when the warring Tenakth tribes of the Forbidden West, mysteries surrounding an old world corporation called Far Zenith and a poisonous red blight on the plant life all work to complicate the mission. Picking up six months after the events of Horizon Zero Dawn this new journey finds our hero Aloy and her fellow Nora, Varl, setting out West of their homeland to a new territory in search of a backup of GAIA, the AI that can help them fix the dying world (if you haven’t played the first game or it’s been a while I’d urge a quick refresher before jumping into this). I remain incredibly impressed and grateful that the open-world video game equivalent of Dino-Riders managed to make its way into the stable of PlayStation’s blockbuster AAA exclusives, but there was no denying that this new IP from Killzone developer Guerrilla Games was an ambitious proof-of-concept more than a formula perfected.Įnter Horizon Forbidden West, a sequel that doesn’t just perfect the formula laid out by its predecessor but sets a whole new benchmark for all open world video games to come. At the risk of alienating anyone reading this review before we’ve even gotten to the juicy bits – it took close to four years and as many restarts for me to finally invest in 2017’s Horizon Zero Dawn enough to finish it.
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