Expected by all gamers on ps4 and ps5, the last born of Guerrilla Games studios is only a few weeks away from its release. Here is all the information you need to know about this wonderful game.
Horizon Forbidden Zone West is the next game from Guerrilla Games and a direct sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn. It is one of the upcoming exclusives for the PS5 console, which will be released on all generations of the PS4. Release date, gameplay, story, what to expect, here are the essentials!
When Aloy explores the Forbidden Western Frontier on February 18, 2022, she’ll discover a wide variety of exciting things to do: Melee pits in villages, salvage contracts in the wilderness, outposts and camps teeming with Regalla rebels, as well as mysterious challenges, ruins, and much more.
Take a closer look at all these activities. But don’t forget that the Forbidden West is a huge and dangerous place, with many more secrets and adventures than we can reveal today!
Table of Contents
When is the new Horizon coming out?
Expected by all gamers on PS4 and PS5, the new Horizon Forbidden West will be released on February 18, 2022.
We don’t have any information about the release date of Forbidden West on PC yet. But several factors suggest that keyboard/mouse fans won’t be left out for long. Indeed, Sony’s recent policy has been to expand the export of its exclusives to the PC. Uncharted 4 and the first Horizon Zeroes game come to mind.
Horizon Forbidden West: Story of a journey to the west
Horizon: Zero Dawn was a surprise: with more than 10 million copies sold on PS4 in 2019, and more than 700,000 copies sold on PC the month after its release in 2020 (Sony has not communicated on its sales since), the project originally developed in secret by Guerrilla Games is no longer an outsider, but one of the heavyweights of the PlayStation stable.
So its direct sequel Horizon Forbidden West, taking place six months later, is above all an improvement and confirmation of all that has been proposed previously. However, it also imposes a change in the location of the action. The destination? As the subtitle of this part reveals, it is the American West of this post-apocalyptic world, and more precisely California and its San Francisco with its emblematic pots, with ruined towers now slumbering silently under the ocean, leaving only extremities to appear above the waves, almost cavities planted in this reborn world ready to collapse at any moment.
Pariah at the very beginning of Horizon: Zero Dawn, turned machine hunter during this first adventure, and a character destined to save her world since her “birth”, Aloy has been on a mission for six months when Forbidden West begins: the Red Scourge, a “scarlet honey” according to the trailers, contaminates everything, poisons vegetation, crops, animals, machines, in fact, all beings, threatening to destroy the biosphere, starving populations. At the same time, storms and tornadoes strike more often, devastating everything in their path. Humanity is in danger of disappearing and Aloy is the only one who can prevent this cruel fate.
The origin of these evils: the West of the world, of these now desolate United States. On her way to unravel this mystery and to understand the planet’s past, Aloy will find some old acquaintances. And, to move in this world richer in interactions and opportunities of movements, more alive, the heroine proves today to be more skilful, flexible and swift than before, passing from a weapon to another, running, then clutching a trunk with realism.
A new gameplay
When you say new episode and environment, you say new machines, adapted to the environment, inspired by animals. The Gyrodorse looks like a pangolin with a metal plate on its back and can curl up into a ball to attack its opponents; the Shellsnapper looks like a turtle and can burrow into the ground, waking up to attack whoever passes by; the Bristleback looks like a warthog and the Rampant is a giant snake spitting acid. Most of these machines should be able to be hacked and controlled by Aloy, as well as by her opponents. We can’t wait to take control of some of them, especially the flying ones, and to discover others during our progression.
This was one of the recurring criticisms of Zero Dawn: a lack of life in the villages and fortresses, too repetitive scripts, faces seriously lacking emotions. To remedy this, Guerrilla Games first took the bull by the horns to improve the characters Aloy meets, and Aloy herself, during dialogues. All of them now benefit from motion capture, whether it’s for the animation of their bodies or their faces during these sequences. And it shows immediately, in every discussion shown so far, in the facial or body expressions, in every gesture, in every look.
Aware that Zero Dawn’s villages were seriously lacking in life, the studio set about assigning more scripts to the villages you’ll pass through. Firstly, by integrating more realistic routines with more or less busy inhabitants depending on the time of day, and secondly, by drastically improving the crowd system, allowing the members of each tribe to move around their own environment in a specific way. Thus, around the taverns, one will come across drunkards wandering around and discussing the meaning of life, while inside, everything will be much more lively, with some customers singing or dancing on the tables. Likewise, the members of each tribe will be perfectly identifiable by their clothing and finery, as well as by their culture or movements, the Tenakths carrying their water on their backs while the Utarus clutch their buckets between their arms, etc. The same will be true of the way they fight, alone or in groups. It’s up to the player to adapt.
MOTION CAPTURED CHARACTERS WITH MORE LINES OF DIALOGUE, MORE DETAILED AND VARIED ENVIRONMENTS: GUERRILLA GAMES BREATHES LIFE INTO THIS OPUS.
However, life is not only about these villagers or tribes with whom Aloy will have little real contact, it is also about the companions. These key characters of the adventure disappeared, in Zero Dawn, once their mission was completed. The encounter is too short, too succinct to create links and empathy. Guerrilla Games heard it well. As a result, in this sequel, these allies, like Erend, will follow the heroine for longer.
Even those encountered during side quests have more lines of dialogue and screen time. It’s only a short step to imagine that the developers were inspired by The Witcher 3, where every character, every quest giver, no matter how secondary, was carefully written and polished… It remains to be seen, however, if Guerrilla Games, like CD Projekt in its work, will be able to give them a memorable face and voice.
The Tribes
In Horizon Forbidden West, there is not only for these wandering, monolithic, sometimes aggressive machines, moving in more or less tight herds: tribes live in this California, celebrating nature to sign it (the Utarus), building and loving the party (the Oseram) or trying to take control over these lands, like the Tenakth warriors.
Divided into three distinct clans by their outfits and territories, the latter is plagued by conflicts, since the Regalla, a new faction, opposed to them. And if we are to believe Aloy in the last trailer, another tribe, even more powerful, educated, exploratory, would hide beyond the ruins of the old world of this forbidden West. And if it was responsible for these storms, at the origin of this Red Scourge?
Diversified and interesting quests
The Witcher 3 has proven this. Side quests are only really interesting if they allow the player to gain additional equipment relevant to the continuation of the adventure, while discovering more about the world, the universe and the characters. According to Mathijs de Jonge, the game’s director talking to Gaming TN, “There’s a lot more variety in that sense, a greater sense of accomplishment as you actually get something cool in return for these quests. Horizon Forbidden West will obviously not be about loot at all costs, nor will it be about overdoing fedex quests. Of course, you’ll have to check it out with your own hands.
ref. Reviews, Playstation Blog & Gamerant
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