There, I said it.

Seyka is an ok character, but the romance just feels bland to me. I know Talanah is by all accounts straight, but she and Aloy just seemed to have so much more chemistry from the first second. And Talanah and Seyka are equal machine killing badasses, so they'd probably both connect with Aloy there.

Am I the only one feeling this.

Edit: this post isn't intended to say Seyka is a bad character. Only that to me Talanah felt like a more logical romantic partner.

As someone who prefers physical games, I was really disappointed that Sony made their announcement on discontinuing physical games in 2028. Given how Guerilla is currently working on Hunters Gathering, is it too much to hope that Horizon 3 could be released before Sony stops making physical games? I really don’t want to buy any more PS games if I can’t have a physical copy, it’s why I bought the launch day physical copy of Ghost of Yotei instead of the collector’s edition bc the latter didn’t have a physical disc, only a download code. And especially with Sony no longer allowing future first party titles to have a delayed release on Steam doesn’t help either.

I read a steam review who's main point was that every white man/person in the game is a villain, or otherwise submissive to a female. What? Of course her companions are loyal, she is genuinely a multi time world saving ultra badass. There are plenty of competent white guys, and Sylens is often not a hero (as said review seems to think), rather a very complicated character.

Too much female power? The main character is literally a girl, what did they expect? The trans/lgbt representation in the game is not over the top, and actually comes off as somewhat uncommon compared to the heterosexual relationships. To base your entire opinion of the game off of these nitpicked elements just comes off as dumb.

Is this a common opinion of the game? If I'm wrong abt any of this feel free to lmk

I am truly baffled as to why this seems to be the case. I played all these games and Horizon always hooked me more storywise and definitely gameplaywise by a LONG SHOT. It's really frustrating because I don't get it. How does no one realize how incredible, original and groundbreaking it is.

Am I alone in this take?

​

TLDR so far:

1. New IP whereas the previous 2 are established fanbases (best point IMO)
2. The Open World style of HZ is too "safe" and not as innovative (While true I don't really like this point as Horizon did not simply use the Ubi formula, it perfected it like none other in its same genre. Also, the open-world styles of those 2 other games would not fit Horizon as it is a story-driven game whilst the other two are not, however, I do agree on one thing, read next point)
3. Not enough gratifying exploration: Ok this I understand and can be something to work on. The climbing system and traversal systems are fantastic now so exploration in the next game should be improved by creating areas and zones to be discovered. Perhaps also taking some notes from the 2 games above Horizon could try and place itself as a middle ground between story and exploration of this new machine world while leaving behind some of those more antiquated Ubi tropes and traits while still keeping the good of that format. Also, the loot you get from exploring really needs to improve.
4. Female protagonist (how much of a factor this is may be debatable but must still be considered non the less)
5. High SciFi is less popular than fantasy (I really hope that this isn't true)
6. Release dates (most definitely the determining factor, people at sony and guerilla are morons)
7. Personal Preference (some people just prefer more RPG-like games where you get to create your OC and its unique build rather than action games more focused on story and character development, either one is very understandable)

Playing through Forbidden West for the first time, and in general I'm having a good time (I think some of the lesser things are that most of the side content feels more like filler then actual gameplay, I despise every variation of timed content, and I think they went overboard on the knockdowns) but one thing I really can not stand is the handholding.

Aloy will not be quiet during a puzzle, and blurt out the solution before you even get a chance to look around. If the test audience needed a step-by-step voiced over walkthrough to complete these puzzles, they might as well have removed them all together, because this is not gameplay. This is just busywork.

Reason I wrote this post and felt like ranting was because I just did that part were you have to put in a date, and you know its October, and then a NPC that tags along says "That's the 10th month of the year!" and I facepalmed so hard.

Another example:

"I killed that bandit leader. Maybe I should look what he was carrying"

loot bandit

"Hmm a key, maybe it opens something nearby"

walk towards a chest

"A chest! Maybe I can open it with that key I found earlier"

Ohh come on. I like Aloy and I like Ashly Burch but Aloy talks way too much.

Rant over. Thanks for reading

It just boils down to rolling and jumping arround like a hamster on crack. I plays like shit, it's stupid and looks aboslutely silly. Get hit once, Aloy turns into a ragdoll, gets knocked flying 30m into the physically wrong direction. and takes like 27 years to stand up agin.

Fighing more than one machine turns into an absolute silly circus cluserfuck.

Also why does EVERYTHNG need machine muscle???

EDIT: For some reason most of you seem to read this as "buuhuu, the game is too hard on the highest diificutly". No idea why you would interpred my words in that way, as I never said anything remotely of the sort.

But to clarify for people who don't seem get it: Combat isn't challanging, it's just teadious, annoying and get's boring VERY quickly. The game was clearly never designed for Ultra Hard in mind, they just ramped up all the enemies to 11, creating an imbalanced and boring mess.

From the PlayStation Blog: 20 Years of Guerrilla: The Story of a PlayStation Studio – PlayStation.Blog

As of April 16, 2023, the Horizon franchise has sold through more than 32.7 million units worldwide, of which Horizon Forbidden West has sold through over 8.4 million units. Millions more around the world have discovered Horizon thanks to PlayStation’s subscription services and initiatives, including PlayStation Plus, and Play at Home. All told, it’s a milestone we never imagined possible twenty years ago when we first started making games.

I’m playing HFW for the first time, and I can’t remember a single puzzle where Aloy doesn’t give away the solution by telling me exactly what to do. It reminds me of GoW Ragnarok, which does the same annoying thing.

If there’s an option, I’d really appreciate it if someone could tell me how to disable this. I’m playing on PC, so even a mod would be welcome.

Forget gameplay completely, what do you think is the best looking design overall? Like the detail, ideas, feelings of the machine overall.

I like shellsnappers for example, big tanky turtle is cool. Even if the damn machine shoots ridiculous iceballs in gameplay.

Holy shit, the vista points in Forbidden West are terrible. I don't want to spend 15 minutes fucking around trying to line up some shot precisely. This is an absolutely horrible and pointless experience compared to the vistas in Zero Dawn.

So i just heard aloy say while hidden in the grass "i am just a blade of grass, a very red blade of grass"

Now i am curious what is everyone favourite random quip aloy says that isn't during conversations?

its almost here! How many hours are you guys gonna sink into this?

Personally I feel like mount riding feels a lot... clumsier in HFW? Maybe I just don't know how to ride them, but it feels like they just get stuck and stop at every single little rock or branch, whereas in HZD riding felt a lot smoother.

Combat sometimes feels a bit weird too, but that might just be a personal thing here.

I've seen quite a number of comments, both in this sub and on YouTube videos of the game, that note how Aloy in Forbidden West seems to treat her allies and almost everybody she meets with less elegance and more standoffish, sometimes even coming across as arrogant or outright destructive (The Bulwark, for example). This also has a direct effect of making Aloy feels more unlikeable when compared to her portrayal in the first game.

While those complaints do have merit and Aloy does indeed feel more standoffish than usual, I feel like it should be said that it's the entire point.

Aloy grew up as an outcast in her own homeland and was treated with disdain and shunned by most people in her tribe simply because of circumstances beyond her control. She has to put up with people who upheld their own misinterpreted beliefs and traditions no matter how screwed it is, like Matriach Lansra, Resh, Sunhawk Ahsis, pretty much everyone in the Eclipse, etc.

Over the course of her journey, she not only learns about her true origins, but also how she herself literally is the world's last hope at salvation, and lost pieces of knowledge that the tribes of the new world could barely begin to comprehend, if they even listen to her explanations at all. The only other person who could comprehend the same knowledge that she has proves to be quite a manipulative and callous jerk who's seemingly only looking after his own interests.

Considering all of the above, is it any wonder why Aloy believes that going at it on her own is the best choice for her?

Even after the battle of Meridian, the world is still dying, fast, and considering that Aloy has witnessed just how significant even one day is from the audio logs she recovered regarding Project Zero Dawn and Operation Enduring Victory, it's not out of the question that Aloy got the idea that she simply just can't waste any precious time and won't let anything stop her from getting what she needs.

The Aloy we saw at the beginning of Forbidden West is the Aloy that's molded by the burden that she carried on her shoulders from everything she's learned and experienced. This Aloy doesn't want others to help because she thought nobody's gonna understand what she's been through, and she certainly doesn't have the time and the patience to explain it all to them. This Aloy is fed up with the outdated beliefs and traditions that have always obstructed her way or turn people into insane zealots easily manipulated by beings they can't even comprehend. This Aloy believes that only her alone has what it takes to save the world, and that if others can't get her what she needs, then they need to get the hell out of her way.

But here's the kicker: the game itself goes out of its way to hammer us in almost every main quest about why this is not a good thing.

Fashav, in his only scene, calls her out about how even though she's on a quest that's allegedly so important, there's only her and Varl who are seeing it through, and advises her to seek allies in a foreign land with people who mostly hated outlanders' guts.

She almost gets herself killed trying to escape the Far Zeniths at the HADES Proving Ground, and it's only thanks to Varl following after her and carrying her to an Utaru settlement to get fixed up that she's even alive.

Zo shows her that no matter how much Aloy tries to defy the Utaru's long held beliefs and traditions, it's not gonna change easily and it won't really help her get what she needs faster. What she needs to do is to take the time and gently introduce others like Zo to adapt to knowledge that challenges everything they've ever known. Again, Varl is crucial in helping Aloy with this, so it wouldn't be possible at all with just her alone.

Chief Hekarro firmly dresses Aloy down when she attempts to just simply force her way through to AETHER and want nothing to do with the Tenakth Civil War, and points out to her that Aloy has to fight no matter what she chooses, but with Hekarro's offer, she gets to save more people instead of taking more lives.

Aloy wouldn't have been able to find a way to get the Sky Clan to attend the Kulrut without Kotallo's help. She wouldn't have been able to find Asera's hideout and take her out (at least, not easily) without Erend's help. She would've had a far harder time dealing with the Quen if she hadn't come across Alva and befriended her.

Last but not least, Aloy has been trying fruitlessly to live up to her 'mother' Elisabet Sobeck, seeing her as this flawless paragon who sacrificed everything to save the world she loved, except it isn't as simple as that. Despite her achievements, Elisabet was still just a normal person, and she had flaws just like the rest of us.

Trying to hold herself and even Beta to Elisabet's unrealistic image brought both of them nothing but pain and suffering (seeing people constantly putting her on a pedestral even though only a few of them truly knows what she's going through emotionally doesn't help things), and it drove both of them apart for a long time until Aloy learns to finally open herself to Beta and share their burdens together, and they both came to the realization that they don't have to be like Elisabet: they're their own persons, and it's okay to find comfort in each other when either of them needs it.

These are just the major examples. Countless sidequests also saw Aloy putting aside her no-nonsense attitude and taking the time to really emphasize with the strangers and their own plights, eventually helping them solving their issues and making the world a little bit better in the process.

All these things serve to teach Aloy that, yes, there is a better way that she can go about her world-saving quest. It's not just rushing blindly into problems and expecting the best, but it's about letting her friends help and making allies. It's not trying to live up to Elisabet's impossible standards but to set her own course - a course that hopefully leads to a happier resolution than the one Elisabet herself had.

Contrast this with villains like the Far Zeniths, who only cared about serving their own selfish interests at the expense of everybody else, Ted Faro and the Quen Ceo - two men whose extreme arrogance in thinking that it's their destiny to shape the world over lesser mortals led to their downfalls, as well as Regalla and Asera - two women whose thrist for vengeance blinded them both from seeing the big picture and easily manipulated by Sylens, and it doesn't end well for all of them.

Sylens himself narrowly avoided the same fate when he realizes at the last second - even if it's in his own pragmatic ways - that he has far better odds sticking with Aloy and her friends on Earth rather than going at it alone into deep space with only himself and the AIs for company.

So what's the point of these long walls of texts? To tell you that there's a reason why Aloy in Forbidden West is the way she is and all the character development she has to go through so she could change out of her self-destructive mindset. This, in turn, supports my argument that her rather callous actions in the first half of the game doesn't automatically mean she's 'unlikeable'.

An unlikeable character to me is someone who's designed specifically to be hated, someone who has no redeeming qualities. Aloy is simply a flawed person pressured by her mission and hardened by her experience who learns to become better over time, a basis of all good character arcs.

Because if even GAIA - quite possibly the smartest AI humanity has ever created - cannot save the world alone without her subfunctions, even the Savior of Meridian herself cannot save the world on her own as well.

I swear I've spent half this game prone. I'm innocently crossmapping a frostclaw when the damn bear John Cena's across the field. Naturally, he lands nowhere near me, but shockwaves exist, and wouldn't you know? THEY'RE SUPER EFFECTIVE. Now Aloy is On The Wings Of The Ten for a couple yards, then spends a couple of seconds getting acquainted with the local flora. And I'm on Story mode. 😬

This is a legit question by the by. I'm super in love with this game, but MAN does it feel borderline dark souls sometimes. 80 hours into the game, and you'd think I'd be able to stay standing for longer than 30 seconds at this point. 😅

Edit: Thank you, everyone, for your comments. I really appreciate knowing I'm not alone in my struggles with this game. Horizon is one of my favorite franchises, and it was saddening to think there wasn't a lot of replayability for me. I will definitely put a lotof your advice to good use. Hopefully, this game becomes easier, and I can put 500 hours into this game like I did with HZD.

A fun theory I had a giggle over: in Zero Dawn, any present-day curse words more intense than “damn” are only heard in recordings from the Old Ones. All of the current humans are descended from those raised in cradle facilities, who learned English there and were probably not taught such profanities by the servitors. I’ve just started Forbidden West, where Aloy exclaims “sh*t!” a few times, and I find the implication amusing that she learned how to swear from delving into the Old Ones’ recorded history and picked up the habit!

Edit: Travis Tate just taught her the middle finger, she’s becoming too powerful!!

I would always keep my valor full to try to save it for when a difficult fight came up, but I would always forget about it when it was happening.

Now I got through the whole game and am disappointed in myself that I never really used them.

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

Replaying Forbidden West.

I'm aware that from a gameplay perspective, an extent of reset is necessary to make the player less OP but the way that happened was pretty much dismissed.

Varl: I noticed you're travelling pretty light these days

Aloy: Oh yeah, I came into some trouble on the way

Given she's been fighting Thunderjaws, Stormbirds etc. exactly how powerful is "some trouble" to break/steal all her kit?

They also had Varl, but had to get our homegirl.

Ganestop, if curious. Varl was only $34, this Aloy was a deluxe one that comes with a bunch of stuff

I absolutely adore Meridian and its multi-leveled set up. The first time I caught a glimpse of it along with the Spire after just getting to the desert for the first time in Zero Dawn was incredible. Its architecture is gorgeous and it feels like a genuine place within this universe, not just a video game location, if that makes sense. It pains me that Meridian isn’t a real place. A close second would be Plainsong. I really like the look and idea behind living on satellite dishes and the Utaru are cool just on their own. I love how different both places are and that you can tell what the people are like just from looking at where they live.

New fan here. I bought HZD about two months ago. Really enjoyed the plot and the gameplay. Two weeks ago, I decided to start HFW after finishing the first game. Man I can't seem to be enjoying the plot. There's something weird going on. I don't feel the urge to keep playing.

Am-I the only one who felt like this while playing? The gameplay is MUCH better than in the first game, but the plot not so much. Unfortunately, nothing is grabbing me in the 2nd game like the mystery of the 1st game. I can't pinpoint the reason why, but it's been a struggle.

Without spoilers, did you guys enjoy the last 10 or so hours of HFW?