Horizon Forbidden West – is it too serious? (pic: Sony)



A reader explains why they think Horizon Forbidden West doesn’t live up to its potential and why they’re not getting the Burning Shores DLC .



Like many a new PlayStation 5 owner I bought Horizon Forbidden West as soon as it came out. There weren’t many exclusives around at the time and it did promise the best graphics on the console, so it seemed a pretty low risk purchase. Especially as I’d played and enjoyed the original. I didn’t love it or anything, but it was a cool action role-player with a neat premise and, of course, robot dinosaurs. (Although I was a little disappointed to find that most are not actually dinosaurs, but ordinary animals.)



The first thing you realise is that Forbidden West is not a very ambitious sequel. Most of the systems and gameplay mechanics are the same, with just a few new bells and whistles. The skill trees are bigger but there’s still not much of interest on them. There are more ammo types and options for the weapons, but it’s got the same problem as the first God Of War , where you’re replacing weapons and trinkets so quickly that the whole role-playing element starts to seem silly and shallow.



None of that spoils the game but while new things like the swimming are cool it doesn’t really change anything and there’s a lot of déjà vu to what’s happening. There are new robots but a lot of them are still the same as last time, which is also kind of disappointing. It’s all fairly entertaining though and at first I was perfectly satisfied, until the game gets more into its story and things started to get boring.



The Horizon games are odd because the background lore of its post-apocalyptic world is interesting and original, but the story and characters are anything but. I don’t know if this means two different people wrote them but while I know exactly why there are giant robot animals in the games (I’m not going to spoil anything) I have no idea what the actual plot of either game is. A rogue AI or something in the first one and evil tech bros in the second, is about all I could tell you.



Then there’s Aloy and her friends and enemies. I use the phrase friends and enemies because I can’t remember any of their names. But there’s comically inept loyal male friend, obviously going to be a friend by the end of the game tribal leader, and the late great Lance Reddick as man with an agenda so well hidden you never have any idea what he’s doing and quickly lose interest.



As for Aloy herself… what is there to say? No, seriously, what is there to say? She is so completely and utterly dull, she’s just a complete blank slate, to the point where maybe that’s supposed to be on purpose? But if that is what they wanted they should have just made her mute instead of this boring, unnecessarily serious non-character with her monotone voice acting.



I think that may be on purpose too because Ashly Burch is great as Chloe in Life Is Strange, but here she has the personality of a toaster, and has presumably been told to play the character that way to… make her seem more realistic, maybe?







The combination of the boring characters and story are so much that they start to make the game as a whole seem worse. The combat is pretty shallow anyway but because there’s so little else going on it’s made to seem worse and then everything begins to feel boring. It’s a game with robot dinosaurs in it and it’s somehow still boring.



I think the problem is that a) Guerrilla Games don’t have any experience writing good stories and probably should have got someone else in for this and b) they’re worried their premise is silly and rather than lean into it they try to take it as seriously as possible, so that no one laughs it. But, actually, I’d appreciate a laugh or too. The game doesn’t have to be a farce, but it should be a lot more fun than this. Worse, it’s actively made less fun by choosing to be so self-serious.



It’s still enjoyable and I don’t hate it but there’s a much better game in there that just needs a writer with a lighter touch. I very much expect that won’t change with the DLC though, so you can count me out for the Burning Shores.



By reader Cabal









The reader’s feature does not necessary represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.



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