DonJorginho
Banned
Sequels.
They exist to advance the story and to provide us with more time with the characters we love, all whilst advancing the game's design and offering more for the player to do with intuitive new design elements and using the faults from the first game to deliver numerous improvements that wildly enhance the game experience as a whole.
We all know some sequels that did just that and more: Assassin's Creed II, Uncharted - Among Thieves, Mass Effect 2, Silent Hill 2 and many more.
So in the lead up to Horizon Forbidden West you can imagine the excitement heading into the game's launch, the graphics were wildly improved upon, the combat looked snappier, the story looked ambitious and the new explorable areas looked like exactly what fans of the first game were desperate for if Aloy ever returned. But after spending 45 hours in the world of Forbidden West and having recently acquired the Platinum Trophy, I can't help but feel like Forbidden West is nothing but a series of missed opportunities and half assed game mechanics thrusted into a sequel that feels in some ways more like a DLC.
Let's start with the story, Forbidden West was always going to suffer story wise after the excellent narrative in the first game, you have already solved a lot of the mysteries about this world by the end of the first game so you're having to retread across already covered plot points and the writers have to drop in bigger threats to up the threat levels so that Aloy isn't OP upon their arrival. The problem with this is, the game seems to lack any feeling of urgency, the villains aren't compelling, the stakes aren't bigger than the first game and most characters show NO signs of development, the largest culprit of this is Aloy herself, she has remained the same wooden shell of a protagonist from the first game and hasn't changed at all heading into this game. Come the end of the game I felt like nothing had changed in the world except from one bad guy being taken out and another appearing to set up another game.
Horizon Forbidden West also has a tendency for setting up intriguing scenarios, only to either end them lacklustre or just ignoring them flat out. One has to be near the end of the game where you go into a certain characters "Tomb" under the ground, it uses environmental storytelling, atmosphere and tension to amazing effect to set up a monumental story in the wider narrative of the series and a potentially epic conclusion to one of the game's biggest plot points, but instead the devs cocktease the player and end it abruptly in disappointing fashion when the payoff they needed to utilise was (LITERALLY) right behind a door. After that point I felt robbed of a pivotal moment in the game's wider narrative and what could've been the highlight of the game, nothing ever came close to that moment again for the rest of the game.
Enough about the story, what about the amazing improvements to Gameplay? The advancements to quest design and mission structure?
There aren't any. The most credit I could give is the slight improvements to melee combat and the ability to eventually use a flying mount. Every "advancement" here feels like it was forced in to appease the crowds who compared the game to BOTW. Fine you enjoy gliding? here's a glider you never use that we actually will sometimes script it's movement and speed so you can't get to areas you should be able to get to. What you like grappling? Here's a grapple that stops momentum and is only useful for moving certain blue boxes and opening blue vents. You want to climb everywhere? Well tough how about only being able to climb 60% of the time and us on purpose making easily scalable areas impossible for Aloy to climb so you have to play through our shitty puzzles.
Every advancement is a setback to the overall design philosophy of the game, it doesn't add anything genuine to the game, it just adds more steps to solving problems. Most of the in-game activities haven't been improved, Cauldrons are worse with nothing new aside from some awful "timed" climbing puzzles that consist of you waiting for an animation cycle to end. What seem like cool additions like Ruins and Arena Challenges end up being recycled bore fests and don't go far enough to justify them being there. You are given a multitude of weapons and outfits but barely any of them feel useful and it always seems like you're given them way too late as your current gear set far outlevel what you've been given.
Also quest design has not improved at all, almost every quest in the game follows this path:
1) Follow NPC and have a slow trailing section where you talk exposition
2) Go to area and scan around using your detective vision, I mean eagle vision, I mean Focus.
3) Follow path of tracks using Focus
4) Short climbing/Puzzle section
5) Fight against robots/humans
And repeat, again and again and again, maybe the order of these 5 pillars may change slightly, but you generally do the same thing with some optional crappy stealth mechanics thrown in for good use. This game is a jack of all trades but a master of none.
This isn't a completely terrible game however, some of the environments, particularly further west are breath-taking and worth exploring, the sheer amount of things to do will make any Ubisoft fan cream in delight, the amount of content on offer (albeit not enjoyable or unique) do make up the price of admission in terms of price per hour of gametime. The robot designs are truly amazing as always and you can tell in some ways they did try to improve the game with how they approached the larger Rebel Camps, trying to make copy and paste content multi faceted. And for all my hate on the game, some missions are truly memorable like the one I mentioned in the "tomb". But all of this just makes the game's shortcomings all that more frustrating.
Now I want to stress that I am not calling this game a bad one, in some ways it is a good one, and in some ways it could've even been a great one. I just come away from this game extremely let down given the fact that this took 5 years to develop (3.5/4 if you take out time for COVID) and it hasn't even answered the problems of the first game, let alone improved upon them majorly or utilise elements from more successful and more intuitive titles like BOTW. In general this game feels like a more polished Ubisoft title and I'd give it a 7/10 if I was reviewing it officially, but overall this game just feels like a missed opportunity to create something special when Guerilla had all the pieces right at their disposal, all they had to do was put them in the right places.
TLDR FOR THOSE WHO HATE MY WALL OF TEXT: Horizon Forbidden West is a disappointing sequel as it fails to build upon any of the pillars of the gameplay, severely misses in the narrative and gameplay variety department, and a lot of it's "new" mechanics come off half assed in terms of implementation once the novelty wares off. I hope they nail Horizon III as I want to love this series so bad but it just isn't meeting it's potential.
They exist to advance the story and to provide us with more time with the characters we love, all whilst advancing the game's design and offering more for the player to do with intuitive new design elements and using the faults from the first game to deliver numerous improvements that wildly enhance the game experience as a whole.
We all know some sequels that did just that and more: Assassin's Creed II, Uncharted - Among Thieves, Mass Effect 2, Silent Hill 2 and many more.
So in the lead up to Horizon Forbidden West you can imagine the excitement heading into the game's launch, the graphics were wildly improved upon, the combat looked snappier, the story looked ambitious and the new explorable areas looked like exactly what fans of the first game were desperate for if Aloy ever returned. But after spending 45 hours in the world of Forbidden West and having recently acquired the Platinum Trophy, I can't help but feel like Forbidden West is nothing but a series of missed opportunities and half assed game mechanics thrusted into a sequel that feels in some ways more like a DLC.
Let's start with the story, Forbidden West was always going to suffer story wise after the excellent narrative in the first game, you have already solved a lot of the mysteries about this world by the end of the first game so you're having to retread across already covered plot points and the writers have to drop in bigger threats to up the threat levels so that Aloy isn't OP upon their arrival. The problem with this is, the game seems to lack any feeling of urgency, the villains aren't compelling, the stakes aren't bigger than the first game and most characters show NO signs of development, the largest culprit of this is Aloy herself, she has remained the same wooden shell of a protagonist from the first game and hasn't changed at all heading into this game. Come the end of the game I felt like nothing had changed in the world except from one bad guy being taken out and another appearing to set up another game.
Horizon Forbidden West also has a tendency for setting up intriguing scenarios, only to either end them lacklustre or just ignoring them flat out. One has to be near the end of the game where you go into a certain characters "Tomb" under the ground, it uses environmental storytelling, atmosphere and tension to amazing effect to set up a monumental story in the wider narrative of the series and a potentially epic conclusion to one of the game's biggest plot points, but instead the devs cocktease the player and end it abruptly in disappointing fashion when the payoff they needed to utilise was (LITERALLY) right behind a door. After that point I felt robbed of a pivotal moment in the game's wider narrative and what could've been the highlight of the game, nothing ever came close to that moment again for the rest of the game.
Also fuck this game for using the most predictable trope in narratives by having the big baddy go from wanting to kill you, to apparently wanting to help you and being your best friend, to only wanting to actually kill you all along in their masterplan once you help them get to where they wanted to be, it was cheap.
Enough about the story, what about the amazing improvements to Gameplay? The advancements to quest design and mission structure?
There aren't any. The most credit I could give is the slight improvements to melee combat and the ability to eventually use a flying mount. Every "advancement" here feels like it was forced in to appease the crowds who compared the game to BOTW. Fine you enjoy gliding? here's a glider you never use that we actually will sometimes script it's movement and speed so you can't get to areas you should be able to get to. What you like grappling? Here's a grapple that stops momentum and is only useful for moving certain blue boxes and opening blue vents. You want to climb everywhere? Well tough how about only being able to climb 60% of the time and us on purpose making easily scalable areas impossible for Aloy to climb so you have to play through our shitty puzzles.
Every advancement is a setback to the overall design philosophy of the game, it doesn't add anything genuine to the game, it just adds more steps to solving problems. Most of the in-game activities haven't been improved, Cauldrons are worse with nothing new aside from some awful "timed" climbing puzzles that consist of you waiting for an animation cycle to end. What seem like cool additions like Ruins and Arena Challenges end up being recycled bore fests and don't go far enough to justify them being there. You are given a multitude of weapons and outfits but barely any of them feel useful and it always seems like you're given them way too late as your current gear set far outlevel what you've been given.
Also quest design has not improved at all, almost every quest in the game follows this path:
1) Follow NPC and have a slow trailing section where you talk exposition
2) Go to area and scan around using your detective vision, I mean eagle vision, I mean Focus.
3) Follow path of tracks using Focus
4) Short climbing/Puzzle section
5) Fight against robots/humans
And repeat, again and again and again, maybe the order of these 5 pillars may change slightly, but you generally do the same thing with some optional crappy stealth mechanics thrown in for good use. This game is a jack of all trades but a master of none.
This isn't a completely terrible game however, some of the environments, particularly further west are breath-taking and worth exploring, the sheer amount of things to do will make any Ubisoft fan cream in delight, the amount of content on offer (albeit not enjoyable or unique) do make up the price of admission in terms of price per hour of gametime. The robot designs are truly amazing as always and you can tell in some ways they did try to improve the game with how they approached the larger Rebel Camps, trying to make copy and paste content multi faceted. And for all my hate on the game, some missions are truly memorable like the one I mentioned in the "tomb". But all of this just makes the game's shortcomings all that more frustrating.
Now I want to stress that I am not calling this game a bad one, in some ways it is a good one, and in some ways it could've even been a great one. I just come away from this game extremely let down given the fact that this took 5 years to develop (3.5/4 if you take out time for COVID) and it hasn't even answered the problems of the first game, let alone improved upon them majorly or utilise elements from more successful and more intuitive titles like BOTW. In general this game feels like a more polished Ubisoft title and I'd give it a 7/10 if I was reviewing it officially, but overall this game just feels like a missed opportunity to create something special when Guerilla had all the pieces right at their disposal, all they had to do was put them in the right places.
TLDR FOR THOSE WHO HATE MY WALL OF TEXT: Horizon Forbidden West is a disappointing sequel as it fails to build upon any of the pillars of the gameplay, severely misses in the narrative and gameplay variety department, and a lot of it's "new" mechanics come off half assed in terms of implementation once the novelty wares off. I hope they nail Horizon III as I want to love this series so bad but it just isn't meeting it's potential.
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