Aloy comes out on top once again! (Horizon: Forbidden West in review)

     Hey friends, it has been over a year since I talked about a little game called Horizon: Zero Dawn, which was a pretty great time. I loved the character of Aloy especially, and while the platforming and climbing mechanics weren't quite to my liking, the combat and the story made up for it and made a pretty great experience. The first game made me interested in this premise, and the teaser of the major threat, Hades, being captured by Sylens after the credits rolled made me completely intrigued by what the sequel could be about. Would Sylens, who acted as Aloy's somewhat shady ally, act as the main antagonist on the second time around, as the narrative seemed to be foreshadowing? Would there be some other world-ending threat that Aloy would have to defeat? We would just have to wait and see. The time has come now to see what the world has in story for Aloy and the world as a whole, and boy is this a doozy. I'm going to try to write this post as spoiler-free as possible, which is to say that this may not be the longest post I've written, as there are a lot of amazing moments in this game that really need to be experienced first-hand. Get your focus on and your trusty bow by your side, because we're headed back into this world. 

A World of Growth...

    This game picks up a few months after the original title wrapped up. We find out that Aloy left during the celebration party after defeating Hades, as there were still a lot of things to find out and do. The vegetation of the world is dying, and it's up to Aloy to figure out what the deal is, and how to stop it. Gaia, the AI in control of rebuilding the world, was wiped out during the final battle of the first game, and Aloy has to get her back in working order before the world is completely uninhabitable again. She's searched high and low for any possible remaining clue as to where a back-up of Gaia could be, and we join her in an old space station, where a rich space colony was supposed to take off before the world ended. Immediately we have a cool setting in the launch site that has been reclaimed by nature, and though Aloy doesn't find anything here, all is not lost. Varl, her friend from the first game catches up with her and convinces her to let him help out. Sometime between the first game and this one, Aloy has found a bunch of Focuses, and gives Varl one which helps him understand some of the predicaments that they will be facing in this game, which highlights a great point in this game. In the original title, Aloy didn't really trust anyone, and while she was able to make a lot of friends, she didn't really allow anyone to help her until the battle of Meridian when she was facing impossible odds. Once she fails in the search for the backup of Gaia in the space station, Varl is able to convince her to come back to Meridian, where the spire left from the Hades battle has begun transmitting a message from Sylens, who informs Aloy that he's headed into the west in order to do something, and he has the core of Hades, the AI subfunction of Gaia gone rogue. Aloy has to travel into the west to learn what Sylens has found, and I have to say, I can't give all of this story in a short post if I tried. This game is called Horizon: Forbidden West, but it took me about 8 hours to get to that titular area! This isn't to say that those first eight hours were a tutorial, I feel like this game did a much better job than the first one to get you into the meat of the story, and even before I got into the main plot of this game, I was already well invested and had an idea of what the game had in store. In order for Aloy to complete her mission, she has to open herself up more and more to the ideas of collaboration, as well as coming in contact with a completely different society from the one that she's known, the Tenakth. I would be remiss to discuss one important point that I love in this game, and it's one of the cooler things that I've noticed in a while.

    The world actually remembers what Aloy has done. In a lot of games, particularly Legend of Zelda, once the world ending threat is over, that Link's story is also over. If you go back into the game, the story picks up from before you faced Ganon or whoever the villain is this time, but with this game being the sequel to Horizon: Zero Dawn, the people of this world actually remember what you did. Aloy is constantly referred to as "The Savior of Meridian" in this game, and she's held in extremely high regard, even though as the game goes on, you can tell she doesn't really like being put on a pedestal. She doesn't feel like she deserves this praise, as she's not finished with her mission yet, but everyone else sees all that she's accomplished, not to mention what more she does in this game, and feel that she's more than deserving. The interesting thing about Aloy as a character is that she just knows what needs to be done, and at times she seems to be the only one willing or skilled enough to make things happen, but is still a friendly enough character to readily make new friends, even if she doesn't always make the best first impression. It's hard to discuss her character growth/great character moments in this game without going pretty heavily into spoiler territory, but I did want to discuss a bit of the story at least, as again I feel like it's definitely where the game shines the brightest. The gameplay also deserves a lot of praise here, I must admit.

There's more than one way to climb a mountain!

    As you may recall, I wasn't a huge fan of the gameplay of the original game. It was a fine time, and I felt like the combat was really cool, but the platforming and overall traversal were kind of cumbersome. Some areas felt completely random as to where you were able to climb and where you weren't, and other times the areas that were specifically intended for you to climb on just didn't work as intended, as evidenced by the time where I tried to climb up a Tallneck (an incredibly tall giraffe-type robot animal that you use as a sort of vantage point) but instead Aloy just jumped onto his back, phased through the beast, and died to fall damage. This game thankfully didn't have any huge glitches like that that I can remember, and truly the best thing that I can say about this game this time around is that the climbing is significantly better than it was in the original title. Aloy's focus has a new feature this time around, if you tap in the right stick, it sends out a pulse and highlights any climbable terrain in yellow, which is a fantastic feature, as sometimes you just won't be able to see anywhere you could climb due to the lighting effects, especially when the sun is setting on whatever you're trying to pay attention to. The grappling hook is a fantastic addition, not only to traversal, but also when it comes to puzzle solving. It's much easier for Aloy to climb up walls with her trusty grappling hook, as well as some other gadgets and gizmos that allow her to get to some other places that she wouldn't be able to get to otherwise, or at least not nearly as easily. The mounts are overly simplified this time around, with only three or four types of animals able to be mounted, with my favorite probably being the one resembling a wild boar, the Bristleback. The first game had way more mounts, and while I think I liked having the variety, I do like that each of these have their own strengths. One looks like a raptor, which is awesome in its own right, and it is a much stronger mount in terms of attacking, but it runs much slower than the other two. The aforementioned Bristleback is able to find little resource containers and compact them up into little pellets, which is pretty helpful even though it isn't very useful in a fight for the most part.

    It would be wrong of me to not discuss how gorgeous this game is. I don't know if I've ever seen a game look as visually stunning as this one does, and all throughout the vast landscapes and changes in scenery, there are really no dips. That's speaking as someone who played the whole game in stability mode because I don't have a 4K TV in my basement and it was much more important to have the 60 FPS. Even with the reduced graphical settings from that, it's absolutely jaw-dropping to see some of the visuals in this game. Similar to the first game, there are a lot of interesting sights that reflect those of our modern world, as the "Forbidden West" described in the game's title refers to the West Coast, California, and the like. It was genuinely fantastic to make connections to real life places in some of these situations, and in my book, these are a few of the highlights of my time in the game. I have to admit, some of the conversation scenes are still a little weird, as I feel like the "close up dialogue tree" look is still a little weird in terms of the human component, no matter how realistic the graphics look, but the expressions on their faces are captured in an amazing way, and the development team at Guerilla Games needs to be applauded for their clearly extensive work on all of the detail and artistic touches put into making this world feel this alive.

    Before I go, I have to give a slight spoiler for something. I know I said I was trying to avoid that, but this time I don't think this will ruin your experience or anything for me to tell you this. One of the larger sidequests involves healing this group of machines that have always been important to this one tribe, the Utaru. The Utaru believe in the "Land Gods," which are Plowhorns (think like a mechanical Triceratops) that have restored the land for generations. The tribe believe that these machines have cursed their land as they haven't been seen in a long time. Aloy knows better, as, with the focus, she can see that something is wrong with the code of these creatures, and is able to heal them and get them back up and running. When you first stumble across Utaru land, their crops are completely demolished and the blight makes Aloy cough just from walking the Earth, but after the quest is completed, something significant changes. The Plowhorns come back and I legitimately gasped when I realized just how different the area looked when covered in vegetation and life. Ultimately, that's what Aloy's job is in this game. The world is dying, and it's up to Aloy and her friends to carry on Elizabet Sobek's mission of preserving and protecting life, no matter what enemy comes to attack it. I'm not going to tell what or who the enemy is this time around, of course, but I think the dev team certainly succeeded in making something pretty spectacular.

    Thank you so much for reading this post, friends. I absolutely loved this game, probably even more than the first, and if you have a PS5, I would highly advise picking it up, especially if you like open world games. Aloy is such an interesting and imperfect character, it's always completely engrossing to see what her reactions will be, and when she makes a new friend or meets someone of real importance, you can't help but cheer. I hope you'll all have a great week as we continue deeper and deeper into these summer months, and I really hope you're all doing well and staying safe. I'm Jonathan, your Self-Proclaimed Horizon Fan, and I'll talk to you all again soon.