Horizon: Zero Dawn represented a point of important turning point for PlayStation studios and the possibility for Sony of being able to count on a strong, recognizable brand with an interesting and up-to-date protagonist. With its 20 million copies, Aloy’s adventures are placed in fourth place in the ranking of the best-selling exclusives, an excellent result if we count that in front there are very strong brands such as Marvel’s Spider-Man, The Last of Us e God of War.
That’s why the expectations on the sequel, Horizon: Forbidden Westavailable from February 18th, they are quite tall. Both for Sony, which hopes to repeat the success of the first chapter, and for the public, fascinated by the eco-punk setting of an Earth projected many years into the future that mixes tribal societies, technologies of the past and robotic beasts that they will remember. to more seasoned toys like the Zoids. The focus of everything is obviously Aloy, a particularly interesting protagonist who mixes the classic journey of the heroine called by fate with an adventurous temperament and the gravitas of those who feel they are carrying the entire destiny of the human race on their shoulders.
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Forbidden West resumes more or less where we left off, only Aloy has gone from being a pariah of a matriarchal tribe in which her motherlessness was viewed with suspicion to a decidedly more institutional role: she is the heroine of Meridian, a figure bordering on the messianic, respected and even feared. However, like the most classic of narrative topos, new threats loom, the AI that nearly annihilated the human race was not entirely defeated and therefore the time has come to venture where its name is worthless, in the Forbidden West, where the warlike and militarized civilization of the Tenakth reigns.
Horizon: Forbidden West is the classic title open world of gargantuan dimensions we have been used to for some time, the classic game in which to get lost exploring kilometers and kilometers of plains, mountains, canyons, villages and outposts in search of more or less rare resources, objects to trade and secondary missions, counting on athletic skills by Aloy, a grappling hook to reach the most inaccessible areas and the chance to ride some biomechanical creatures. As always in these cases, our alter ego will be able to increase characteristics and skills by exploiting experience points to be acquired by completing the various missions and eliminating human and robotic opponents, which can then be exploited in the various branches of specialization.
If you have played the previous chapter you will find yourself in the face of a fairly similar experience, centered on spectacular settings and clashes in which the strategic component is extremely important. Each opponent is characterized by weaknesses and strengths that will be known very well, as well as it will be essential to exploit in the most suitable way an arsenal made up of bows, slings, traps and melee attacks. Obviously, based on how you decide to upgrade Aloy, some choices will prove more effective than others and, a bit like in the first chapter, the most interesting challenges will be those with biomechanical monsters. If humans tend to attack you without too many nuances, the various creatures, with their vulnerable areas and different behaviors based on race, will be much more stimulating to hunt.
Obviously there are some new features: the aforementioned grappling hooka sail with which to glide from the highest peaks, some new monsters, smoke bombs, a new heavy weapon capable of throwing javelins and a chess-like board game called Mechanical Knockout to entertain in inns when you don’t feel like hunting, as well as the ability to upgrade weapons and equipment at workbenches scattered around the map.
It is therefore immediately evident that the structure of Horizon: Forbidden West not only is it solidly based on the previous one, as it should be, but that, just like the first chapter, does not differ much from the canvas of the genre. This is not a fault, but if you feel a little tired towards games like Assassin’s Creed, Ghost of Tsushima and in general towards open worlds with a lot of missions and based on experience points, it will not be Aloy’s adventures that will make you change your mind. However, the opposite is also true: if you love this type of play system, then Forbidden West it’s exactly what you need to spend tens and tens of hours exploring far and wide one of the most beautiful universes to see in the current videogame panoramaa space made even more beautiful by enhanced exploration capabilities, which now also include flooded underground lakes and caverns and higher and higher mountains from which to glide towards a cyborg cobra that launches electric shocks.
The fulcrum of judgment and satisfaction on Forbidden West and on titles of this type, that’s all: the mechanics have been run in and for sure you have already tried them in a thousand shades, if the story and the protagonist thrill you, it will be fun. And compared to other similar games, the creatures of Forbidden West they are an interesting peculiarity.
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One of the biggest flaws of the first chapter was that the game pretty much revealed all of its mechanics at the beginning, go on there either you liked the story or there was a lack of a real sense of progress. Under this point of view, Forbidden West corrects the shot, because not only Aloy’s skills and specializations are many more but also the weapons, although few and almost all have already been seen, have different nuances and approaches and often must be found in some remote outpost. Of course, she remains the driving force: Aloy, and her story, who in this resetting of her charges due to the new areas to explore offers an even more interesting character to play. Aloy is a determined and bold person which, however, carries with it the typical weight of the figures forced to save the world: loneliness. About her Her mission belongs only to her, and although there are people ready to support her, she is the one who carries her weight on her shoulders, a weight that sometimes leads her to isolate herself and deal with who she is left behind. Moreover, Aloy is now also a figure that everyone looks upon with respect but also expectations: when you save the world once, then everyone expects you to always do it.
Confronting the Tenakth tribes is therefore a way to shuffle these cards and the main story knows how to lead us by the hand, always keeping the attention awake, perhaps even more than in the pastdrawing on the myth of the frontier, thanks also to many secondary activities that we absolutely recommend you undertake because they are perhaps even better written than the main path.
All this happens without abandoning the characteristics that have made Aloy an interesting character and the example of how it can be writing a female figure without necessarily abusing the classic archetype narrative of the strong woman. Aloy is undoubtedly stubborn, ironic with those who doubt her and particularly bored by power games, but she is not always strong, she does not always face challenges with bravado, she does it because she feels the need to do it, to protect those she loves, because she is what others expect from her. All this is also possible because the world around her is carefully written and sees men and women playing equal in all aspects, both positive and negative.
Obviously there are matriarchal and patriarchal societies and some restrictions, but luckily we are not once again confronted with a woman who has to fight a society of brutal and two-dimensional men to prove that women can hit too, he doesn’t have to prove he can do the things a man does. And at the same time the female figures are not all cloying saving mothers, saints or malicious manipulators. Aloy struggles and lives, like all figures of Horizon, whether they are good or bad, for what they are, for what they want to do. It’s this one diversity of approach it is also noticeable in the construction of the surrounding characters, who have extremely different sizes, ethnicities and traits, without this becoming a message to underline with a thick marker, it is more a matter of nuances.
If video games are a space both for fun but also for politics, like all spaces of human expression, here it is Horizon: Forbidden West it can be just not a way to grind hours and hours of climbing, fighting and exploration but also to live some time in such a difficult, tribal and fascinating world where injustices, religions and oppressive traditions remain, but also where one is judged for what one does and not for what one is.