Horizon Forbidden West

Synopsis

Following the events of Horizon Zero Dawn, Aloy discovers that the threat facing the world is far from over. Earth’s biosphere is rapidly deteriorating: increasingly violent storms devastate the land, a mysterious red blight spreads across vegetation and the fragile balance that still allows humanity to survive begins to collapse.

Searching for a way to prevent another catastrophe, Aloy journeys into the Forbidden West, a dangerous and largely unknown region inhabited by new tribes, deadly machines and remnants of an ancient technological past that can still reshape the present.

Her journey leads her deeper into the legacy of the old world as she searches for the knowledge needed to restore the planet’s balance. Caught between human conflicts, buried secrets and new threats, Aloy must discover what is destabilizing the biosphere before the world she is trying to save becomes permanently uninhabitable.

Overview

The first Horizon Zero Dawn was built largely around one question: how had the world become this strange mixture of tribal societies, technological ruins and animal-like machines? Horizon Forbidden West arrives after some of those answers have already been revealed. Guerrilla can no longer recreate exactly the same mystery. The sequel therefore chooses to expand almost everything else.

Aloy heads into the Forbidden West as the planet’s balance continues to deteriorate. Violent storms, contaminated vegetation and disruptions to the biosphere threaten an already fragile world. Her search leads her toward new tribes, new machines and the remains of an ancient civilization whose technologies continue to shape the present nearly a thousand years after its disappearance.

Exploration gains much more freedom. Aloy can climb a wider range of surfaces, use the Pullcaster to reach certain points, deploy the Shieldwing to slow her falls and spend extended periods exploring underwater. These tools do not turn Horizon into a completely free-form climbing game, but they remove some of the barriers that sometimes made the first entry feel like an enormous world that could not always be approached as freely as one might have wanted.

Combat retains its most interesting principle: a machine is not simply a health bar to empty. Players need to study its structure, identify components, exploit elemental weaknesses, tear off specific parts and sometimes turn the machine’s own weapons against it. Forbidden West multiplies the species, equipment and tactical possibilities built around this idea, to the point where some encounters become genuine mechanical problems to solve under pressure.

Key takeaways

• The Forbidden West considerably expands the universe. New tribes, regions, ruins and environments give the journey a greater sense of scale than Horizon Zero Dawn.
• Exploration becomes more mobile. Expanded climbing, the Shieldwing, the Pullcaster and underwater exploration give Aloy more ways to navigate the terrain.
• Hunting machines remains at the heart of combat. Scanning components, exploiting weaknesses and detaching specific parts is often more effective than simply dealing raw damage.
• The RPG systems become denser. Weapons, outfits, upgrades, skills, techniques and combat styles allow for greater specialization than before.
• That richness also has a downside. The sheer number of systems, resources, activities and upgradeable items can sometimes turn the adventure into a succession of menus and lists to manage.

PANACHES review

Horizon Forbidden West is a sequel that improves almost everything without necessarily recovering the same sense of discovery. It is a fairly logical paradox. Horizon Zero Dawn could still reveal its universe piece by piece and turn certain answers into major events. Forbidden West inherits a world whose foundations the player now understands.

Guerrilla compensates through sheer substance. Landscapes are more varied, settlements feel more alive, supporting characters are better integrated and side quests generally receive more staging and attention. The Forbidden West less often feels like a vast map built only for Aloy. Communities live there, trade, argue and interpret the remains of the old world in different ways.

Yet Horizon is still at its most distinctive when the humans fade into the background and a machine appears in the distance. Watching a Tremortusk, preparing the right ammunition, targeting a component while another creature circles Aloy and improvising when the plan falls apart creates a kind of tension that few open worlds reproduce in quite the same way. Fighting machines can sometimes feel more like a technical hunt than a traditional battle.

The game struggles more when it tries to enrich everything at once. More weapons mean more ammunition. More equipment means more resources. More systems mean more upgrades. The open world becomes extraordinarily generous, but also more administrative. It is possible to move from the pleasure of discovering an unfamiliar machine to the far less romantic question of which material is still missing to upgrade a bow.

That accumulation does not erase the game’s qualities; it simply exposes the natural limit of “more.” Forbidden West is often at its best when it refines Horizon’s original idea rather than adding another layer on top of it. Its world, art direction and especially its machines remain distinctive enough to preserve an identity that most large open worlds have never truly managed to copy.

Good to know

• Horizon Forbidden West was released on February 18, 2022 for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. It is a single-player adventure developed by Guerrilla Games and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment.
• The game is the direct sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn and continues Aloy’s journey into the western regions of post-apocalyptic America.
• Horizon Forbidden West uses Decima, the engine developed by Guerrilla. The studio has published several technical presentations detailing its use for rendering, asset streaming and production tools.
• The PS5 version notably uses the console’s SSD to significantly reduce loading times, as well as the DualSense’s haptic feedback and adaptive triggers.
• PlayStation currently lists 25 accessibility features for the PS4 and PS5 versions.
• The expansion Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores was released on PlayStation 5 in April 2023 and continues the story after the main quest. Guerrilla chose to focus the expansion on PS5 in order to pursue its technical and creative ambitions.
• Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition was released on PC on March 21, 2024. This version was produced by Nixxes Software and Guerrilla and includes both the main game and Burning Shores.
• The PC version includes several graphical presets, support for multiple display formats and numerous options designed to adapt the rendering to a wide range of hardware configurations.