Midway through Horizon Forbidden West, Aloy discovers a video from the old world. A holographic figure stands in front of the White House and delivers a hopeful rallying cry for a country at war. “True courage means facing [our] fears with conviction instead of cynicism,” the long-dead speaker firmly declares. It’s a line that sums up Aloy’s entire raison d’être, making her the perfect hero for her “techno-nihilist” times. Horizon Forbidden West is a sequel to 2017’s hit Horizon Zero Dawn. It once again drops players into a postapocalyptic world where humanity and nature alike have begun to reform following a man-made catastrophe that filled the world with deadly machines resembling malevolent versions of Boston Dynamics robots. Despite its gloom-and-doom premise, it’s not a cynical game. Instead, it presents a bright and beautiful open world full of tribes that have found ways to coexist with machines without sacrificing nature. Aloy sees the potential utopia growing amid the decaying...
Improved combat; Excellent new machines; High-effort side activities; Stunning world design; Better traversal tools;
Dry dialogue; Frustrating swimming; Crashes and visual bugs;