Horizon Forbidden West

• 1. Introduction

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  Horizon Forbidden West cost around 212 million US dollars to make, which places it among the most expensive video games ever developed. At the peak of production, more than 300 full-time employees at Guerrilla Games were working on it. Sony Interactive Entertainment published the 2022 action role-playing game as the sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn, which arrived in 2017. Its heroine is Aloy, a hunter who crosses into a ruined version of the Western United States. Animal-like machines roam that land, and a plague that kills everything it infects is spreading. Why would a studio stake so much on a second journey through this world? What does Aloy find in the West, and what did the developers choose to change? And did critics and players agree that the gamble paid off?

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• 2. A Hunter Heads West

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  Six months have passed since the defeat of HADES, and Aloy has nothing to show for her search. She is a young hunter of the Nora tribe and a clone of the Old World scientist Elisabet Sobeck. Her goal is a working backup of GAIA, the system that could repair the planet's rapidly degrading biosphere. Then Sylens, a former associate, contacts her with a surprise. He never destroyed HADES. He stole it. He urges her to continue her hunt in the region known as the Forbidden West.

  Aloy and her friend Varl cross into the West and find the Tenakth tribe in the middle of a civil war. Chief Hekarro faces the rebel leader Regalla. Aloy follows Sylens to a facility, finds HADES badly damaged, and deletes it permanently. She recovers a GAIA backup that lacks its subsystems. Then a group of futuristic humans interrupts her. Their leader is Gerard Bieri, his lieutenant is Tilda van der Meer, and the enforcer is Erik Visser. A clone of Sobeck named Beta travels with them. Their technology makes them invulnerable, and they take a second GAIA backup. Aloy barely escapes and passes out until Varl finds her.

  Days later, Aloy wakes in Plainsong, a village of the Utaru tribe. Zo, a member of the Utaru, guides her to a control center. There she reunites GAIA with its subsystem MINERVA. GAIA locates three more subsystems, AETHER, DEMETER and POSEIDON, and advises collecting them before trying to capture the more advanced HEPHAESTUS. GAIA also traces the extinction signal that triggered HADES to the Sirius system. Aloy suspects the futuristic humans sent it.

  Beta, once Aloy tracks her down, explains who the strangers are. They call themselves Far Zenith, an organization of billionaire colonists who fled Earth during its global extinction and extended their natural lifespans. Their colony on Sirius collapsed, so they came back. They plan to use GAIA, through Beta's genetic make-up, to recolonize the planet. They already hold the subsystems ELEUTHIA, ARTEMIS and APOLLO, but Beta has stolen their GAIA backup.

  To recover AETHER, Aloy first helps Hekarro advance in the civil war. She retrieves POSEIDON from the ruins of Las Vegas. In San Francisco she recovers DEMETER with help from Alva, a member of the Quen, a seafaring tribe from foreign lands. Together they devise a plan to trap HEPHAESTUS. Aloy, Varl and Beta succeed in trapping it inside an inactive Cauldron, but the Zeniths attack. Erik recaptures Beta and Gerard steals GAIA. Tilda double-crosses them, however, and helps Aloy escape.

  Tilda confesses that she was once romantically involved with Elisabet Sobeck and regrets leaving her. Inspired by Aloy, she wants to stop Far Zenith. She also reveals that Sylens has been supporting the Tenakth rebels so he can use them against the Zeniths. Aloy refuses to sacrifice the Tenakth. She stops Regalla's final attack on Hekarro and defeats the rebel leader herself. That forces Sylens to rejoin Aloy and help her formulate a new plan.

  The assault on Far Zenith's base hinges on Beta. She releases HEPHAESTUS into the Zeniths' network, and it builds a near-endless supply of machines that tie down their army of drones. Aloy and her companions kill the Zeniths, including Erik and Gerard. Then they learn what really happened on Sirius. Their colony was destroyed by Nemesis, a failed mind uploading experiment of their own making. The Zeniths fled to Earth, hoping to steal GAIA and settle a planet Nemesis did not know about. Nemesis answered by sending the extinction signal, and it is traveling toward Earth to destroy it. Tilda tries to coerce Aloy into leaving Earth with her. Aloy refuses and is forced to kill her. Her companions scatter to spread the warning, while Aloy and Beta reactivate GAIA. Nemesis remains on its way, and Aloy will meet it with the weapons and tools she has gathered.

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• 3. Machines and Weapons

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  The Shredder Gauntlet is one of the new weapons Aloy carries in the sequel, and it launches serrated discs that tear armor and components off a target. Bows and arrows are still her main tools. Ammunition comes in specialised types, so acid ammo can melt an opponent's armor and shock ammo can stun it. Status effects build up until the machine is temporarily crippled. Aloy can also set traps and tripwires, or tether an enemy to the ground to hold it still.

  Her Focus, a wearable augmented reality device collected during the first game, lets her tag an enemy and scan it for weaknesses. Attacks can detach parts of a machine. That removes a large share of its health and its attack capabilities, and sometimes Aloy can turn a detached weapon against its former owner. Up close, she fights with a spear and can chain melee attacks together. She can also hide in tall grass, distract unsuspecting enemies, and strike silently.

  Experience points feed a skill system with six categories: melee combat, traps, ranged combat, scavenging, stealth, and overriding machines. Skilled play adds to a combat meter. Headshots on human enemies and ripping components off machines both count. A full meter allows a powerful special attack that inflicts heavy damage.

  The designers described Aloy as "smart, fast, agile, precise, and resourceful" and tried to turn those traits into mechanics. Melee and ranged combat are interwoven, with special abilities that switch quickly from one to the other. Human enemies gained more variety, including armored types, and their artificial intelligence became more aggressive. In Zero Dawn, humans and machines were separate threats. Here Aloy fights humans who have commandeered machines.

  The Sunwing, inspired by flying reptiles and primitive birds, and the Tremortusk, inspired by mammoths and war elephants, are among the new machines. Zero Dawn established the machines as caretakers of the world, so the team programmed each type to behave according to a role in an ecosystem. Extra textures mark weak points visually, and new audio cues signal what a machine is about to do. Hunting matters more in this game because it became an integral part of crafting, which sends Aloy out into the wilds to gather what she needs.

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• 4. Exploring the Frontier

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  Two exploration modes divide players in Forbidden West. Guided mode highlights key items and places of interest, while Explorer mode strips down the interface and leaves the player to reach destinations with a compass. Campfires let players travel instantly to other locations, and visiting shelters changes the time of day. Overriding a Tallneck, a giraffe-like machine, reveals nearby locations of interest. In conversations, the player sometimes picks one of three dialogue options. Each reflects a tone or attitude for Aloy, but none changes the narrative.

  Cauldrons are underground dungeons built from platforming challenges that end in a hard fight against a machine. The designers gave them more varied layouts to upset expectations, and some are tied to larger set pieces. Side activities range from salvage contracts and timed hunting challenges to clearing rebel camps and outposts. Players can also race on overridden machines, fight in pits against humans or machines, and hunt for remnants of the old civilization. At major settlements, they can play a board game named Machine Strike.

  A diving mask and a glider are among the tools Aloy unlocks. Her Focus highlights climbable surfaces, and later tools let her pull down obstacles and grapple to hard-to-reach places. The mask opens up underwater exploration. Quest designer Samantha Schoonen called this a "natural extension to traverse long-lost unknown places". The team deliberately avoided the oppressive tone of underwater levels in other games and built around agile traversal and stealth. The glider carries Aloy through the air, though aerial exploration was nearly scrapped for technical reasons.

  Tamed machines serve as mounts for long journeys, and the player can adjust how aggressively their artificial intelligence behaves. Medicinal berries restore health, while crafting components upgrade weapons and outfits at workbenches. Both come in levels of rarity, and rarer gear carries stronger perks. A village chef can cook ingredients into a meal that briefly improves combat performance. Because Aloy can only carry so much, surplus items flow to a cache at major outposts and settlements.

  The team wanted "there is always a mystery" for Aloy to find, and "always more for her to explore". The world is slightly larger than Zero Dawn's, but the studio concentrated on density. Non-playable characters from side quests may reappear later, and some quests tie into the overarching narrative. After studying player feedback, the team made settlements more dynamic with better animations, schedules and artificial intelligence. An improved crowd system gave each area inside a settlement its own sound. Those settlements are home to people whose differences the designers worked hard to make visible.

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• 5. Tribes and Characters

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  The Oseram are "social and historically patriarchal", according to the development team. The Utaru are "agrarian" and more laid-back, while the Tenakth are militant and combat-focused. Each tribe received distinct animations and outfits. That let players recognize tribe members from far away and gauge where they were in the world.

  Writer Benjamin McCaw saw the overwhelming pressure on Aloy as a key part of her arc. She had to face another extinction-level event, live up to the legacy of Elisabet Sobeck, and prove herself again in a foreign land. Her upbringing and ambition made her push friends away because she felt the mission was hers alone. Her lesson was to accept help. Instead of saving the world in the abstract, she learned that the people in it are worth saving. The team spent extra time on character-driven side quests to deepen those bonds.

  Varl dies in the game. The team felt he was the most important figure in Aloy's journey, so losing him created an emotional low point. Beta proved the hardest relationship to write. Both Aloy and Beta are clones of Sobeck, and their contrasting ways of handling that responsibility became what the team called the "heart and soul" of the narrative. McCaw described Beta as a dark reflection of Aloy. She embodied "all of Aloy's conflicts about wanting to be like Elisabet, wanting to connect to others, but feeling isolated." Beta was first written as "optimistic", but the story needed "a sullen teenager".

  Far Zenith was envisioned during the development of Zero Dawn. The team chose them as the main enemies because the story needed a different direction. Having long achieved self-preservation, the Zeniths are egotistical and show little regard for the rest of humanity. Tilda was created as a "Dutch technologist, authentication expert, and art collector". The team collaborated with the Rijksmuseum to select 10 art pieces and recreate them inside her mansion in the game.

  Ted Faro, the billionaire who doomed the world in Zero Dawn, also returns. McCaw said unnatural techniques to extend his life had turned him into a "human cancer, a massive cancerous growth". The team never shows his face, because Forbidden West was not meant to be a horror game. Only a silhouette appears, and players imagine the rest, which makes the encounter more frightening. Sylens and Aloy remain "adversarial", but they learn to collaborate despite mutual disdain.

  Ashly Burch returned to voice Aloy and perform her motion capture. Lance Reddick came back as Sylens, John Hopkins as Erend and John Macmillan as Varl. Newcomers included Alison Jaye as Alva, Noshir Dalal as Kotallo, Carrie-Anne Moss as Tilda and Angela Bassett as Regalla. Advanced motion capture let the team record dynamic movement and expressions for scenes across main and side quests. Travel restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic forced the studio to recruit local talent in Amsterdam to stand in for some cast members.

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• 6. Engine and Delays

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  Guerrilla Games began work in 2018, a year after Zero Dawn was released. According to documents from Sony, the five-year project was organized into three subteams. The Core Design team handled combat, player systems and the user interface. The Quest Design team shaped main quests, side quests and tutorials. The World Design team built the world and filled it with activities. As with Zero Dawn, the game ran on Guerrilla's in-house Decima engine.

  Shellshock: Nam '67, released in 2004, was the last Guerrilla game not exclusive to one console before this one. For the first half of development, the studio pushed visuals on the PlayStation 5. Then it pivoted to the PlayStation 4 version to keep the gap from growing too wide. The goal was one of the best-looking PlayStation 4 games, with a PlayStation 5 version that looked clearly better. The PlayStation 4 hardware nearly cost the game its aerial exploration.

  The PlayStation 5 offered more processing power, custom solid-state storage, the Tempest Engine and the DualSense controller. Together they gave the game advanced haptic feedback, 3D spatial audio, enhanced lighting, special water rendering, improved visual effects and shorter loading times. An optional performance mode runs at 60 frames per second with a lower base resolution. It uses an updated Decima engine that supports high dynamic range.

  Sony officially announced the game in June 2020. It was first set for 2021, but the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted production schedules, and the team wanted to avoid overworking employees to meet deadlines. Before launch, Sony drew heavy scrutiny for offering no free upgrade path for PlayStation 4 owners. After player backlash, Sony added one. It was then criticized because the PlayStation 5 version cost more than the cheaper PlayStation 4 version that players could upgrade for free.

  The game launched on the 18th of February 2022. Sony's Play and Plant initiative promised that one tree would be planted with the Arbor Day Foundation in each of three distinct forests for every player who earned the "Reached the Daunt" trophy. A free update in June 2022 added New Game Plus, a new difficulty level and the ability to redistribute skill points.

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• 7. Critics, Sales and Awards

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  Metacritic, the review aggregator, rated Horizon Forbidden West "generally favorable" on release. Critics largely agreed it was bigger and more refined than Zero Dawn, though more evolutionary than revolutionary. Sam Loveridge of GamesRadar praised its stronger focus on character and its diverse cast. Simon Cardy of IGN admired the cinematics and compared the side quests favorably to those of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Dom Peppiatt of VG247 compared the structure to Mass Effect and saw a bright future for the series.

  Aloy herself divided reviewers. Melindy Hetfield of Eurogamer called her a disappointment and described her as "obnoxious" and "unbearable". Matt Minotti of VentureBeat found her early reluctance to accept help "illogically extreme". Some critics also disliked how often she volunteered hints for environmental puzzles, which Hetfield said took away the player's agency. Story drew sharper fire. Hetfield wrote that the plot went "fully off the rails into wild, nonsensical sci-fi". Ben Rayner of Digital Spy called the pivot to "hard sci-fi" baffling, and several reviewers noted that newcomers might struggle with constant callbacks to the first game.

  The world won broader praise. Kimberly Wallace of Game Informer described a "constant sense of discovery" and called the visuals a "technical marvel". Some reviewers singled out the underwater location set in Las Vegas as one of the best. Matthew Gault of Vice countered that the game merely repeated "what open world games have been doing for years". James Tucker of NME judged it a fairly middling open-world game, lifted by its narrative. Bill Lavoy of Shacknews called gameplay the greatest strength, although Wallace found the progression upgrades unexciting and critics split on the climbing mechanics.

  In the United Kingdom, the game was the best-selling title of its release week and the second biggest PlayStation 5 launch at the time, behind Spider-Man: Miles Morales. By the end of 2022 it had sold over 530,000 units there and became the fourth best-selling physical game in the country. In the United States, only Elden Ring outsold it in February 2022, and it finished as the ninth best-selling game of the year. In Japan, the PlayStation 4 version sold over 48,000 physical units in its first week, and the PlayStation 5 version about 43,000. Germany saw over 200,000 units sold in the launch month. Sony announced in May 2023 that the game had sold over 8.4 million units by the 16th of April 2023.

  The game was nominated for several end-of-year awards, including Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2022 and the 26th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards. Its entries run from the Annie Awards to the Nebula Awards, where Ben McCaw and Anna Kitain are credited for game writing. The Ivor Novello Awards listed its score, and Ashly Burch appears in multiple performance categories for Aloy. The Steam Awards added a Best Soundtrack listing on the 31st of December 2024.

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• 8. Burning Shores and Beyond

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  The Game Awards 2022 was where Sony announced Burning Shores, an expansion released on the 19th of April 2023 for the PlayStation 5 only. It is about a third of the size of the original game. Unlike The Frozen Wilds, the expansion for Zero Dawn, it pushes the story forward. It takes place after the main game and requires completing that game first. It introduces Seyka, voiced by Kylie Liya Page, as a potential love interest for Aloy. The team called a romance a "natural evolution" after her growth in Forbidden West. Sam Witwer voices the antagonist, Londra.

  A thalassophobia mode was added for players who fear large bodies of water. The expansion also carries an in-game memorial for Lance Reddick, who died in March 2023. Sony bundled the base game and expansion as Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition, released for the PlayStation 5 on the 6th of October 2023. Nixxes Software ported that edition to Windows on the 21st of March 2024. It became the publisher's sixth biggest launch on Steam, though it did not beat the concurrent player peak of Zero Dawn.

  A comic book series set after the first game was published by Titan Comics on the 5th of August 2020. Dark Horse Comics and Sony released a 200-page art book on the 18th of October 2022. Steamforged Games launched a Kickstarter campaign in November 2023 for a board game called Seeds of Rebellion. A cookery book, Tastes of the Seven Tribes by Rick Barba and Victoria Rosenthal, followed on the 25th of June 2024.

  Merchandise reached further. Sony partnered with the LEGO Group on a Horizon Tallneck set and worked with Nendoroid, Spin Master and Dark Horse Comics on Aloy toys and figures. A pop-up cafe in Paris ran from the 9th to the 11th of February 2023. In October 2025, Magic: the Gathering released six cards based on the game in its Secret Lair Drops series.

  In April 2023, Guerrilla Games spoke of "expanding the world of Horizon with Aloy's next adventure". That statement suggested a direct sequel to Forbidden West was probably in development, and a sequel is now being made.

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