Horizon Zero Dawn pulled off an impressive storytelling feat. The game tossed you into a bizarre world where surreal neo-Vikings scratched out an existence in a ruined yet verdant landscape swarming with robot dinosaurs. By the time the credits rolled it had managed to justify every odd thing about its setting, to the point where I thought “huh, you know what, it does make sense that there’s a robot T-Rex trying to kill me”.
The first game unraveled its mysteries at a carefully controlled pace, continually feeding you information and keeping you hungry for more. You just have to know how the world got this way, and the story sticks the landing.
But the first game’s success puts sequel Horizon Forbidden Dawn in a difficult position. What do you do when there are no more secrets left to reveal? The answer, seems to be to go full sci-fi schlock. It doesn’t really work.
Without wanting to get bogged down in spoilers, the story has a real problem with presenting you with an overarching goal and then losing interest in it. For example, most of the early trailers and the first hours of gameplay are focused on Aloy’s quest to cure the Red Blight, a War of the Worlds-lookin’ weed that’s poisoning the ecosystem.
The game effectively forgets about the Red Blight midway through, with the problem solved offscreen and not mentioned again. This happens a couple of times, leaving a story that never really gets going, especially in comparison to the “I gotta know what happened” vibe of the first game. That’s exacerbated by the fairly rubbish new villains, who spend most of their time offscreen and prove to be disappointingly two-dimensional.
Perhaps the best example of Forbidden West‘s wonky storytelling priorities comes in a midgame mission in which you explore
*spoilers*
Ted Faro’s tomb. Throughout the level you’re teased that the truly despicable villain was experimenting with extending his life and you begin to sense that something of him might just have survived.
You finally get to the last room, a door creaks open and *something* lets out an inhuman moan from around the corner. I imagine at this point everyone who played Zero Dawn leaned forward eager to see what’d become of Faro and… some random NPC walks through with a flamethrower and toasts him.
Then the building collapses and you flee, having never actually seen what became of the man that cursed the world. Narrative director Ben McCaw attempted to justify this by saying “whatever the player imagines is probably scarier than what the game could show.”
What the fuck ever buddy. Give me my mutant monster man!
Maybe I’m also sour because Forbidden combines a bunch of other stuff I’m not a fan of. This is more personal taste than anything, but I’ve never been a big fan of crafting mechanics and Forbidden West is built around them. Want to buy a new bow from a shopkeeper? Well, you can browse their wares, but to actually buy the bow from him you’ll need to traipse around collecting machine components for it. That’s not a shop, that’s a crafting station in disguise!
Then there are the bolted-on systems I didn’t even bother with: like being assigned cooking quests for buffs. Hey chef, I’ll quite happily buy dinner off you but I’m not going to spend time tracking down pigs so you can make a stew. There’s also the ‘valor surges’ – the first one powers up your arrows and as that’s the primary attack I didn’t bother ever equipping another one.
But though I didn’t like Forbidden West very much I can’t deny that it’s an extraordinarily pretty game. Every location is brimming with tiny artistic touches, color, and smart environment effects – and there’s an almost fractal level of attention to detail in the character models. Photo mode got a hell of a workout in this and if this is what can be accomplished with a cross-gen release I can’t wait to see what happens when games like this go PS5 exclusive.
Having said that, while I appreciate the hyper-detailed environments, busy character designs, and splodges of primary color my personal taste is for a bit more restraint and I’d put Forbidden West‘s Decima Engine buddy Death Stranding ahead of it in terms of aesthetics. But really, quibbling over the looks of this game feels silly.
Forbidden West is probably going to be my jumping-off point on this franchise. Firing arrows into robot velociraptors wore out it’s welcome long ago and I feel like it’s shot its load as far as storytelling surprises and visual excitement goes.
I don’t regret playing it, but I’m glad it’s over, and I’m not at all interested in where the story goes next.
Pixel Hunted 