Horizon Forbidden West is the direct sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn. Horizon is set in the distant future after our society had somehow been wiped out. Humanity has emerged again and currently live in hunter/gatherer tribes sprinkled across the world. The world is now shared with massive robotic beings emulating the animals of the past.
When Horizon was first shown in 2015, it looked amazing, unique, and fresh. However, the series has been plagued by bad release dates. Zero Dawn released on Feb 28th, 2017, ONE WEEK before the Switch's release and Zelda Breath of the Wild. People only came to Zero Dawn later. And now with Horizon Forbidden West, it released on Feb 18th, 2022, ONE WEEK before Elden Ring, another massive release that completely overshadowed Horizon.
Despite bad releases, Horizon is a tent-pole series for Sony and Playstation, and even recently they've released a Lego game about Horizon. People may not have played the games at launch, but they've definitely gone back to them, and ultimately loved what they played.
I'm one of those people as well. After the DLC released for Zero Dawn in late 2017, I played through it, and ultimately really liked the experience. And now, having played through Forbidden West, this series really deserves its place among the greats. It's a shame how much it is overlooked for one reason or another.
I think the most intriguing thing about Zero Dawn was the overall story and mystery of what happened to humanity. This was my biggest draw. What event caused our society to fail, how did these humans survive it, yet not know anything about it? And how did this robotic presence come to be? Zero Dawn answers all these questions through the eyes of our protagonist, Aloy.
Aloy was born an outcast, motherless. She was found in a mountain by another outcast named Rost, and raised as his own daughter. Without a true family, she was never accepted in her tribe as a full member. As a child, while exploring mountains she fell into a cave and found a device called a focus. A focus is a metallic ear piece of the old humans. It's basically Google Glass, that allows you to scan things and show information about them. No one else really seemed to understand how to use it, but Aloy could figure it out immediately.
While playing Aloy as a child, you are introduced to the idea of the machine animals. Apparently, they were all peaceful and they lived together in harmony with the tribal humans. But recently, some of the animals have become aggressive and occassionally attack humans for unknown reasons.
As a teenager, Aloy joins the rite of passage of her tribe to become a full member. If she passes the test, it wouldn't matter whether or not she was motherless. She was able to pass the rite and become accepted in the tribe, but the tribe was attacked by a fanatical group who also had focuses. Now that she was a member of the Nora tribe, she was tasked to venture west and learn more about this group, and for her, why they had focuses, how they figured out to use them, and why the machines have become more aggressive.
This was the introductory part of Zero Dawn. From here, the map and the game opened up allowing you to explore the remains of the central United States. Much of the game's story was navigating the politics between the various tribes and solving their problems. This was the absolute most boring part of the game. Who cares about these primitive tribes... I want to know about what happened to the world.
Eventually Aloy stumbles into one of the factories underneath the surface of the Earth, still operational and producing the machine animals. These factories are known as cauldrons. Text and audio messages of the old humans point her towards the ancient ruins of the Faro Company. Here, she learns that we're now in the 31st century.
Only 1000 years had passed since the "extinction" of humanity. That seemed like a short time for life to evolve to the point of humantiy having tribal societies. Humans of the 21st were wiped out by the Faro Plague. The Faro Company had developed "peace-keeping" military robots that self-replicated and lived off of biomass. Smart. Let's make robots use living things as fuel.
Aloy also meets Sylens, the eventual antagonist. He is presented as a tinkerer and scholar trying to understand the old humans and how they built and developed all the massive buildings and technology of the past. He also wonders why the peaceful machines have become more aggressive. In recent years, not only have they become more aggressive, but many new machines have advanced weaponry and are built like war machines.
He and Aloy share information and work together to find out more. Aloy is eventually led to the main lab of Zero Dawn, and she finds herself, Elizabet Sobeck. Elizabet Sobeck was an old world scientist who led the project of Zero Dawn, a scientific project designed to terraform and repopulate the Earth after the Faro Plague. The core of Zero Dawn was an AI system known as GAIA, which operated with nine subbordinate functions, each having their own role in terraformation.
One of the subfunctions is APOLLO. After the other subfunctions birthed plantlife, reenergized and fueled oceans and rivers, and reintroduced animal and human life, APOLLO was meant to educate the new humans with all the knowledge of its databases, the sum of all knowledge and intelligence of humanity. This was meant to bring humanity back to its current state. It was deleted, sabotaged by Ted Faro, the same man who created the machines which killed all life. His idea was that humanity led itself to the point of destruction, so new life should follow its own path.
Another subfunction of GAIA was HADES. HADES' responsbility of terraformation is a reset. If the terraformation process had continued to a point where it's determined that humanity could not exist and thrive, HADES would be activated and begin destroying all life on Earth again, so GAIA could begin a new cycle and try again.
Aloy learns that 18 years ago, HADES was activated. This was the same day that Aloy was born, or found. Using the stored DNA of prominent humans, GAIA's subfunction responsible for creating life, birthed Aloy, a genetic clone of Elizabet Sobeck. Aloy learns that this was a defense of GAIA. HADES' first plan of attack would be to take over GAIA and immediately destroy all life. But GAIA deleted herself in defense, and birthed Aloy as her last action.
Aloy's sole purpose in life was to destroy HADES, restore GAIA, and allow GAIA to bring balance back to the world's ecosystems.
Without GAIA, its subfunctions scattered themselves through the cauldron network on Earth. The subfunction responsible for creating the terraforming machine animals began to create aggressive and warlike machines to protect itself from any human threat. Without GAIA, HADES had to come up with other methods for the world to destroy itself, including showing itself to a particular tribe which began worshipping it as a god. This tribe then attacked Aloy's tribe at the beginning in order to kill her and prevent her from saving the world.
Aloy also learns that Sylens was the founder of this tribe as HADES promised him all the secrets of the old world for his successes. The tribe's ultimate purpose was to connect HADES to GAIA's communication subfunction, MINERVA, allowing it to reactivate the Faro robots and destroy all life again. Sylens helps Aloy infiltrate the tribe and defeat them, but not before HADES had connected to a signalling tower.
While the overall mystery is the most interesting part of the game for me, much of the game is spent helping the tribes of central US with their political problems and such. Throughout the game, you make a lot of friends and help a lot of people. So much so that by the end of the game, you are able to bring everyone together to fight and defeat HADES at the MINERVA Spire.
With HADES defeated, it was able to run a final escape routine and its essence escapes, only to be captured in a mechanical lantern held by Sylens, determined to tortune it for its secrets.
The game abruptly ends, but the DLC continues with a few more details.
For the DLC, Aloy travels north to a frozen area controlled by a single tribe. You later find out this is Yellowstone Park. You eventually find a separate subbordinate function of GAIA known as CYAN. CYAN's only purpose was to prevent the Yellowstone Caldera from erupting. Through helping the tribe and CYAN, you learn about HEPHAESTUS.
HEPHAESTUS is one of GAIA's main subfunctions and it is responsible for creating the animal-like machines that help terraform Earth. When GAIA purged itself, its subbordinate functions were no longer controlled by her. They were able to assert their independence. So, in an effort to keep its independence, HEPHAESTUS started creating machines to kill humans since they were the only ones who could restore GAIA.
In the end, when you save CYAN from HEPHAESTUS' grip, HEPHAESTUS disappears in the cauldron network. Unlike the other core subfunctions of GAIA, HEPHAESTUS is able to move its presence around the globe, making it nearly impossible to find and subdue.
But, this is where the story of Zero Dawn concludes. It leads to a climactic battle with HADES in the end, but after the battle, the game ends. Sylens steals HADES and walks off, and you're left with credits. The doomsday signal was prevented, but there really isn't much closure.
I mean, I guess you learned everything there was to know about the mystery of life and extinction of Earth. You followed Aloy throughout her entire life from birth and childhood to adult, overcoming her isolation and discovering her true origin. There is closure to that story, as a cutscene plays when Aloy finds Elizabet Sobeck's home from a thousand years ago, and discovers the ancient remnants of her decaying bones. It is a touching moment.
So, while the ending felt unsatisfying because of Sylen's cliffhanger, the overall journey was really good.
It was definitely a great experience undercut by The Legend of Zelda taking all the spotlight. Both games are very similar, too, which lends to a lot of unfortunate comparisons.
Breath of the Wild is an amazing innovative open world experience. You can climb everything and naturally discover everything in the environment throughout your journey. Horizon is also open world, but you cannot climb everything, you don't have a glider to smoothly go down mountains, and interesting places on the map are automatically revealed to you through completing "towers" in the form of the Tailnecks. Horizon is very much an iteration of open world design compared to Breath of the Wild's innovation.
But again, I think the overall story of the world elevates it above other open world games. :)
So far, this post has focused on Horizon Zero Dawn, not Forbidden West. It may seem unnecessary but all this background story information is incredibly important as it's the entire purpose of the world and of Aloy's character. It's all stuff that I had totally forgotten in the 7 years since playing it, and when beginning Forbidden West, there's a 5-10 minute recap video that doesn't really explain all these details well.
Horizon Forbidden West picks up a few months after the ending events of Zero Dawn with the story assuming you keenly remember all the details of Zero Dawn fresh in your mind. Hostile machines are still appearing because of HEPHAESTUS and Aloy searches old ruin after old ruin looking for a backup of GAIA to restore her and make the planet whole.
Every backup of GAIA she finds ends up being a trap set up by Elizabet Sobeck back in the day to prevent it falling into the wrong hands. Frustrated, Aloy reunites with her friends from the first game as they talk about the blight. In addition to the machines becoming more aggressive, plant life has now begun to decay. A red scurge has begun to grow from the ground that chokes out life around it. The tribes of the midwest hope to contact tribes in the west to find a solution, and Aloy agrees to go west as she found a hint that more GAIA backups are there, too.
I never noticed this in the first game, so maybe it was never really there, but Aloy doesn't really seem to pay attention when she's talking with people. Obviously she has an isolated personality from spending the first 18 years of her life as an outcast having no true family. She made plenty of friends and allies throughout the course of Zero Dawn, but when talking with these allies now in Forbidden West, she's asking them questions directly and never really joining in the conversation.
For me, being over 7 years after playing the first game, I don't remember any of them, and I didn't really care about their story at the time either. When they talk, I'm skipping through the dialogue just to continue the story. I don't really care about the details of their life, and what they've been doing since the final battle against HADES. And seemingly, Aloy doesn't seem to care, either.
The dialogue options also seem to push this narrative, since her questions ask about the details of the person, the family, or the tribe. She never asks about them personally, their feelings, or their ideas. She doesn't say anything specific to react. She presents a "face" that only seems to care about the "mission" she has in front of her. Throughout the events of Zero Dawn, she changed so many lives for the better by saving families and helping nearly everyone with their problems both big and small. Sure, Aloy cares about the good she did, but does she really care about the people themselves?
I never noticed any of this until one character at the beginning pointed it out to Aloy.
Erand was a key character in the first game who helped Aloy track down the fanatical tribe and fought with her in the end. Aloy changed his life by finding his sister's murderer, and giving him peace from his frustrated and closed off life. Also, perhaps giving him someone to care about in the process.
He lambasts Aloy for leaving at the end of the final battle without saying a word. After HADES was defeated, Aloy immediately left to continue her quest to find GAIA at the expense of all the friendships she had formed.
Her mission is obviously of the highest importance. Life on Earth still seems to decay and restoring GAIA is the only way to bring balance back. But, she is also a savior to the midwest tribal society and she has meaning and warmth to everyone she has helped. This is also part of life on Earth.
It may sound somewhat selfish of him to ask, "What about me?" But when the savior, and also you as the player, skip through all the dialogue, only ask questions about specific details of the person's problems, and only agree to help because it's a question mark on the map, despite all the good you do, is there still value in doing something to change another person's life if you don't care?
After Erand mentions this, I notice that Aloy rarely ever keeps eye contact with the people she's talking with. She often looks away, and returns her gaze saying something generic to conclude the conversation. You might think this is some kind of bug, making the characters look more like puppets, but all the other characters (minor or major) keep their eye contact with Aloy when talking. They look at her when talking, and even show emotion when talking about something important to them.
The acting and dialogue is sometimes a little weird. They use a lot of modern common phrases and ideas, even though they're meant to be a primitive tribal society. Each dialogue sequence feels like it was filmed in The Mandalorian's green screen sphere. But the actors show emotion and keep eye contact. They are truly grateful for the deeds of Aloy.
Aloy doesn't care, or doesn't know how to show she cares. She's mostly just checking boxes off of the quest log. Same as me.
You could really blow this out further and extend it to all role playing adjacent games. Do we really care about all the people we're helping in these games?
Well, just like the first game, I did not care about the politics of the tribal societies. I was just pushing forward because the game is super fun to play. BUT! This all changed when Forbidden West had its Planet of the Apes 2 (Beneath the Planet of the Apes) moment. Future Humans exist!
How?! A new mystery!
All life had been wiped out on Earth, and if anyone had survived, they wouldn't have waited 1000 years to finally emerge. In Zero Dawn, you learned of an ark which was meant to shelter human and animal genomes was being sent to the Sirius star system. This project was known as Far Zenith and the ark was called the Odyssey. The project was a failure, though, as it had malfunctioned and exploded in orbit. Well, apparently, this was false. A ruse to mask their success.
Moreover, the future humans (whom we call Zeniths after the Far Zenith mission) have their own clone of Elizabet Sobeck, the same age as Aloy.
This happens at the HADES testing facility after catching up with Sylens and destroying HADES for good. Deep within the facility, Aloy finally finds a working backup copy of GAIA still intact. She gains the GAIA backup, but her exit is interrupted by the Zenith's entrance. As Aloy hides, the Sobeck clone acquires the other remaining backup. With both backups removed, Aloy's hiding spot is exposed and you lock eyes with the clone for a moment, both somewhat reveling in the discovery of another you.
The moment is broken as the Zeniths grab the other Sobeck. They identify Aloy as a redundant clone, and one Zenith stays behind to eliminate you. The Zeniths have a perfect shield, preventing any damage, and you barely escape the facility.
Escaping danger and with one of the GAIA backups, Aloy moves west following a subfunction signal. After infiltrating the facility, you're able to reintegrate MINERVA into GAIA, and restore GAIA's consciousness. With a restored GAIA, you ask about the Zeniths, your clone, and how to proceed.
The Far Zenith mission was originally intended to seed life on a world in the Sirius system, 8.6 light years away. This would be done using the Odyssey spacecraft, an ark with all the instructions for life on Earth. It could be operated by a crew of 60 people. The rich and powerful elite of the 21st century then falsified its destruction and piloted the ship themselves to Sirius. Through technological advancements, they developed some kind of technology or therapy that allowed them to extend their lives indefinitely. We are not given any more information about that throughout the rest of the game.
The Zeniths made it to the Sirius system and set up a colony on one of its planets. However, a geological event occurred which destroyed the planet and forced them to return to Earth. As such, they were the ones who sent the signal to GAIA and HADES to re-terraform the planet in preparation of their arrival, and they created a clone of Elizabet Sobeck to restore GAIA to its full function.
They are responsible for HADES in the first game, and ultimately, they are the catalyst for GAIA giving birth to Aloy.
You also learn the despite defeating HADES and now restoring GAIA, life on Earth is still on the course of extinction because of the growing damage to the biosphere. You only have 4 months to completely restore all of GAIA's subfunctions or else the damage cannot be reversed.
GAIA has nine total subfunctions. HADES has been destroyed. APOLLO was sabotaged and destroyed by Ted Faro one thousand years ago. And, you have restored MINERVA. This leaves six more subfunctions. HEPHAESTUS is one of the most important subfunctions as it controls the creation of the machine animals. With its control, robots can be made to repair Earth rather than attack humans. We encountered HEPHAESTUS before at Yellowstone park, and its now constantly moving through Earth's cauldron network impossible to contain.
GAIA is able to locate three of the other five subfunctions, but the other two are completely silent. AETHER, DEMETER, and POSEIDON are not that far away, and by restoring these three, GAIA would have enough "computing power" to be able to contain HEPHAESTUS if plugged into the network, and this would be enough to stabilize and rejuvenate Earth.
So, after 20 hours into Forbidden West, the map is completely open and our path to the end is defined. It's no longer just chasing lead after lead in a linear fashion, much like the first game.
Also, GAIA's current location becomes our base of operations. Some of the main characters we've met so far move into the base, and are given focuses to understand the futuristic technology and the current threat to life on Earth. There are some friends from the first game, but many of the new characters are also misfits and outcasts who don't fit into their tribes.
The structure of the game from here to the end really feels like Mass Effect. You aren't running around with a party like Mass Effect, but occasionally some of your friends will come with you on a mission. Back at the base, you can also talk with everyone about their thoughts on the current story, current missions, other characters, and about Earth. You get a much more complete sense of all the characters' personalities.
Moreover, as you meet more characters and bring them to your base, it feels like you're actually building something together. You're building a fellowship and a home. You occassionally have character missions which result in meaningful changes, like solving the blight and healing those lands, which in turn, results in changes to the characters. And while Aloy still asks simple direct questions, that feeling of isolation begins to go away as she becomes part of a family. Aloy shows more emotion when talking to her friends, and engages in actual conversation with them, even though sometimes it feels awkward.
Although, the true catalyst for this change is the other clone of Elizabet Sobeck, whom Aloy eventually identifies as her sister.
After restoring one of the three subfunctions, Aloy receives a distress signal from the location of a subfunction you couldn't find before. You have no idea what this could be. Is it actually that subfunction? Or is it a trap from the Zeniths? Either way, Aloy investigates. One Zenith is at the location, but is killed by a weapon developed by Sylens.
After killing everyone left, you descend into the facility and find the source of the signal in a stack of containment pods. It's the clone, alive, but unconscious. You bring her back to base, and you're able to talk to her after she wakes up.
The original purpose of the Far Zenith mission was to seed life on a distant world, so their ark, the Odyssey, housed DNA of all species on Earth. For humanity, it had samples from 200,000 individuals, including Elizabet Sobeck. The Zeniths used this DNA to create a clone, who they diminutively named Beta.
Beta was raised in near complete isolation. The other Zeniths never spoke with her, except giving her direct, cold instructions. On the Odyssey was a full copy of APOLLO, so Beta spent all day learning from it and studying it. There was one Zenith who sometimes reached out to Beta in private, but eventually that contact was completely cut.
Beta grow up never having anyone and never understanding warmth. A life very similar to Aloy's. Except Aloy did have a warming voice, her adoptive father from the first game, Rost. As another outcast, he never really gave Aloy love, but he still pointed her in the right direction, and died giving his life for her. This allowed her to keep moving forward, fighting the odds and overcoming difficulties. Beta was never given any opportunity for love or growth.
It's an interesting, yet perverse idea to think about how the path of your life would change given a different environment, different people, and different situations. Without given any opportunity for growth or challenges to overcome, what kind of person would you be? Or with given incredible challenges and difficulties, would you be able to overcome them? And then, what kind of person would you be?
So scared of the thought of failure, Beta is shocked and terrified at your progress of restoring GAIA. The Zeniths have a total of three subfunctions for their copy of GAIA, and you only have two now. She escaped thinking you'd easily be able to defeat the Zenith and she'd be safe. But, she panics at the uncertainly accepting it as failure. You try to help and reassure her, but it only causes more unease.
Your friends at the base eventually calm her down later, but you find her pessimism frustrating and defeating. Honestly, I think Aloy is doing pretty good with just a bow and arrow so far.
Anyways, Aloy runs off to get the other two subfunctions and with each one retrieved, GAIA can stabilize more parts of the biosphere, and extinction is pushed off by a couple more months at a time. With the extra three subfunctions retrieved, Aloy and friends come up with a plan to capture HEPHAESTUS and integrate it into GAIA. While still pretty sure of their failure, Beta agrees to help with the condition that Aloy kills her if things go bad.
Well, things good bad. They successfully capture and integrate HEPHAESTUS into GAIA, but the Zeniths arrive. They steal GAIA and recapture Beta. Aloy cannot follow through with Beta's wish for death. A Zenith stays behind, kills one of your party members, and you are knocked unconscious.
Later, you awake in a bunker, unharmed and free to roam. You meet one of the Zeniths as you emerge from the bunker in her home from 1000 years ago.
This is Tilda. And she tells you about the past of the future humans.
The Zeniths successfully arrived on a planet in the Sirius system 300 years after their launch from Earth. They established a colony, but then indulged themselves in virtual reality. With their bodies becoming immortal, they could stay in virtual reality indefinitely, not noticing the planet's slow deterieration. With the planet's demise imminent, only 13 of them could escape on the Odyssey. Their plan was to return to Earth as it was the only other habitatible planet they knew about.
There are still questions, though.. Why signal HADES to kill all life on Earth and reset the biosphere? Why not try to live with or understand current life on Earth before destroying it indiscriminately? Tilda says its because they're all evil and narcisistic. This is true, but this is more cartoony evil rather than intelligent evil. Beings of a 1000 years wouldn't be so stupid to simply rush into this situation.
Also, why is Aloy alive? Why did Tilda save her?
Tilda knew Elizabet Sobeck. They were briefly in a relationship with each other, but the relationship was one-sided. One day, Elizabet slowed and eventually stopped contact with Tilda, and Tilda was left never really knowing why. She thought of Elizabet as an amazing impressive person, and they had great times together, but it ended.
With Beta, Tilda's feelings was complicated. She had the opportunity to raise a new copy of the woman of her desires. But she could only ever talk to her in secret and it could never equal. Beta grew weak and meek. To Tilda, Beta was a failure. This wasn't Elizabet. This wasn't even a fraction of Elizabet.
But on seeing Aloy for the first time, and studying her actions, she became infatuated.
Given a different environment, different situations, and a different life, what kind of person would you become and what things could you achieve?
Aloy is pretty close to a super hero in the world of Horizon. She has overcome every challenge against her, saved entire tribes, and changed countless lives. She's strong, attractive, and younger than Elizabet was when Tilda met her. If you were hung up on your ex for 1000 years, and you saw how a different version of them became the savior of humanity again, how could you not become obsessed and enamored with them?
Tilda says that she'll betray the other Zeniths for you and help you rescue both Beta and GAIA.
So, the final assault is set. Tilda sneaks your party into the Zenith base. Sylens uses his weapon to disable the Zenith's shields. Beta releases HEPHAESTUS from capture allowing her to create machines to fight the Zenith's hordes of robots. Most Zeniths are killed in battle, and you have a final showdown with the Zenith who killed your friend.
Aloy makes it to the command center of the Zenith base, following the leader. She rescues Beta from her virtual reality prison. The leader of the Zenith emerges, but he's killed by Tilda. And you learn of the truth.
The Zeniths were never planning on staying on Earth. They only arrived on Earth to retrieve GAIA, resupply, and escape in some random direction to find a new home. They needed GAIA so they could terraform whatever planet they found. And with all the data of APOLLO and the collection of DNA, they could create their new world.
They were running away because an entity was chasing them. Sirius wasn't destroyed because of a geological event or a super-nova or whatever.
It was destroyed by Nemesis.
Some of the future humans, perhaps the ones who developed whatever methods that resulted in their immortality, weren't content with their organic bodies. They thought that the true next evolution of humanity would downloading their consciousness into a digital form. A digital transcendence.
Some humans completed this procedure and began life in their test environment. But, the project and experiment was ultimately abandoned, as many others were content with their virtual relaity lives. The human consciousnesses were left in isolation within the containment. Left to fester over centuries. Their hatred grew against their former colleagues and all of their sentience was replaced with this hatred.
20 years ago, this sentience figured out how to break containment and it escaped into the Zenith's virtual reality network. It began killing every Zenith. Only 13 of them were able to escape using the Odyssey. Knowing the Earth was the only place they could go, Nemesis sent the extinction signal to Earth.
With the other Zeniths dead, Tilda asks you to come with her on the rocket and escape the Nemesis threat, but her manipulation is over. Well, if you won't go willingly, she'll just kidnap you, and she becomes the final boss. She doesn't need Beta to activate GAIA if she has you. After over 100 hours of side quests, grinding machine parts to upgrade weapons, and becoming incredibly adept at taking down high-level machines, Aloy easily defeats her, and kills her in the process.
All the Zeniths are dead. You've reacquired GAIA with many of her subfunctions. And, you've met the ultimate final boss of the next game.
It was pretty clever of the writers to have HEPHAESTUS be released because now we can still have aggressive machine animals in the next game to fight as Aloy brings together the tribal societies of Earth, educates them of the past and its technology, and somehow prepares everyone for the incoming threat of Nemesis, an entity that even the future humans couldn't defeat.
Although, to be fair, the future humans, Zeniths, weren't prepared to fight Nemesis. It killed everyone while they were having fun in VR. Also, it used their future technology against them. The tribal societies on Earth aren't so reliant on that technology and also have time to prepare for its arrival.
You also learn the extinction signal sent to HADES stopped when you defeated it in the last game. Horizon Forbidden West ends two years after the events of the first game, so presumbly Nemesis has been in transit to Earth for 2 years already. It took the Zeniths about 18 years to get to Earth from Sirius (even though the intial trip from Earth to Sirius was 300 years), so maybe we have 15-16 years to prepare? Maybe less since they aren't going to age up Aloy to 35 years old for the next one.
The story continues with the DLC entitled Burning Shores. After counting all the Zenith corpses, only 12 out of 13 have been found. One Zenith cannot be found and now there's a signal and energy surge coming from the south. In the first game, you are traveling around the midwest areas of the United States with a lot of Colorado. In this game, you continue west and go to Nevada, Utah, and Northern California, with distinct buildings and locations in Las Vegas and San Francisco. Burning Shores brings you to Los Angeles and Hollywood.
One thing to note about Burning Shores is that the environments are far more detailed than the full game. While the main game runs on both Playstation 4 and 5, Burning Shores is PS5 exclusive, allowing the environments to look more detailed than before. Textures are richer. Lighting is more dynamic. On the other hand, you only have one complete environment to work with in Burning Shores, so everything looks pretty similar.
The overall story of the DLC isn't really all that special. Walter Londra, the remaining Zenith, went to Los Angeles. He apparently never liked his companions and was planning of separating from them and building a spacecraft of his own with rocket engines developed by his company in the 21st century.
Along the way, he meets the splintered group of Quen, a Hawaiian tribe who you met in San Francisco. They also have focuses and their society was based on the knowledge they've learned from the resources they had. Londra appeared to the Quen as a god and indoctrinated some members into following him like a god. Whatever world he escapes to, he'd didn't want to be there by himself. He plans on taking some women with him to rebuild his society with him as their emperor at the top.
As you arrive in Burning Shores, you meet Seyka, a member of the Quen tribe, but doesn't quite fit in. Her life somewhat mirrors your life of being an outcast, but she has a family and her sister has come with her to California. Currently, her sister, Kina, has been kidnapped by Londra, and you work together with Seyka to rescue her.
Much like before, I'm not really interested in this tribal stuff. I only care about Londra and how his story gives us more information about the Zeniths and the incoming threat of Nemesis. Ultimately, we're never really given any substantial information about that. We learn a little about Londra and how he sucks, just like all the other rich people. Londra falls back into the cartoony evil pattern. After a pretty amazing-looking final battle with a Horus, Londra is killed. Later, we learn Londra was part of the Nemesis project and his consciousness is part of Nemesis. Londra also theorized that 21st century weaponry could probably be used against it.
The few scraps of Future Past lore is disappointing. But, it turns out that the true focus of Burning Shores is Seyka.
What?! Aloy kisses a lady?
After the final battle with Londra and tying up lose ends in town, Aloy meets Seyka on a cliff, and Seyka says she wants to be with you. The game gives you 3 options: Yes, No, and This is too much. Seemed like a odd choice for just having a character joining you. If you say yes, then Aloy says she has feelings for Seyka, too, and they embrace and kiss.
All of this felt like it came out of no where. You are running through the DLC with her, killing a bunch of robots and people, and ultimately saving her sister and crew. But, the relationship never felt anything more than any other friend from the main game. You helped her out with some of her personal problems, but you've been doing that the whole game with all your friends. Even the 3-way choice didn't feel like it was going in this direction.
That's not too say the relationship doesn't make sense. It is totally within Aloy's character to have romantic feelings for a woman and even want a relationship. Elizabet had been in a same-sex relationship with Tilda, and Aloy never considered that to be anything but natural. Also, in the first game, Aloy had rejected the feelings of other men. I think both Erand and the Sun-King wanted relationships or marriages. Although, those relationships always seemed too one-sided.
Overall, for such an important event in Aloy's life and something I would expect the developers to celebrate, it's shoved at the end of a paid DLC only accessible after finishing the main game, which it seemed like many people didn't finish because of the length. Then, it's also behind a "choose your ending."
It feels more like fantasy rather than a moment that the developer's intended.
Whatever choice you make, Aloy says goodbye to Seyka, and Seyka returns to her people, probably never seeing you again. So, this whole plot point seems like its thrown away, anyways.
The ending to Burning Shores was a bit odd, but the conclusion to Forbidden West was pretty satisfying. While I don't think Forbidden West hit the story highs of the first game, it was a far more well-rounded experience, and by the end, I cared much more about all aspects of the story compared to Zero Dawn.
I'm excited for the end of the trilogy, but I think Guerrilla Games has an uphill battle making the game a success. To get the full story of Horizon, you need to play the games in order, and asking people to go through a 60-hour game and a 100-hour game to prepare is too much of an ask, even if its worth it.
They have made efforts to keep Horizon in public consciousness. They made that Lego Horizons game, along with a Lego model toy line. And apparently, they plan on making some kind of multiplayer game with the Horizon license.
Maybe next year, we'll get our first glimpse at the game. But either way, I'm certainly excited to see how they decide to end it. Hopefully, they can pull off a satisfying end.
