#10 Horizon Forbidden West - The Embassy

Horizon Forbidden West is an open world action-adventure game developed by Guerilla Games and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) as the direct sequel of the 2017 game Horizon Zero Dawn. The story starts 6 months after the previous game and still follows the same protagonist, Aloy, now in her journey in finding a working backup of the AI GAIA to help her restore the rapid degradation of the Earth’s biosphere. Through her journey, she would then be contacted by her mysterious former ally, Sylens, whom she discovered to have kept HADES (the previous game’s antagonist) instead of destroying it, and would lead her to continue her search to the lands of the titular Forbidden West. Joining her in the journey to the West are her returning allies Varl and Erend where they would be encountering the various dangers of the land including its ongoing civil war between the tribes living there, the worsening condition of the lands, as well as a secret organization whose interest would clash with Aloy’s goal. Will Aloy’s drive to save the Earth will prosper? Or will it be in vain?
A game that received decent to great Metacritic Average scores of 83 (PS4) and 88 (PS5) which is noted to be lower than the previous game despite having improved most aspects of the game. Even then, the game would still win awards including its 5 GOTY awards it won among gaming media and awards ceremony. The praises were given on its improved graphics and animation which made its characters alive, the bigger map and its beautiful and varied design among its different locations, the more worthwhile side quests and other activities and their rewarding experience both in the story and its impact later on, and the interesting side characters and the differences in their personalities, and its improved battle design, particularly in its melee combat, which gives players more options in handling different combat situations. Anent the criticisms, the game was noted to be far from being revolutionary as it did not do anything new to push the genre and merely adapted all generic open-world tropes and mechanics; its bland, annoying, and less appealing main character compared to its supporting casts; its upgrade system which sometime feels worthless due to some useless skills; and how its narrative suddenly moving forward into sci-fi instead of the wilds was considered a baffling or nonsensical choice.
As for me, the game was a mixed bag. It is true that the game has an improved graphics, enemy designs, animation, mission relevancy and gave us a bigger and beautiful world. However, it is also true that the game felt boring after some time of playing due to lack of any exciting addition in its open world design. I also found Aloy to be less appealing compared to the previous game despite having “realistic” improvements. They made her uglier, staying more away from the image her real-life body model, the beautiful Hannah Hoekstra, due to having a bigger face and was given more man features including making her voice lower compared to the her more lady-like voice in the previous game. They also made her less interesting to the other characters due to her bland and inconsistent personality. However, unlike the critics, I found the narrative to be interesting when it went full sci-fi since it was meshed well with its wilds counterpart and was the understandable element to push the game’s story forward. As to the gameplay, it was still solid and the fights with the machines is always an engaging experience of the game. However, despite its numerous improvements in the gameplay, I still felt it was not much difference to the first game since you still waste your time fighting by pointing and shooting your bow (maybe just a personal experience, since I played the game starting from Ultra Hard immediately). Regardless, a recommended buy to those who are not yet tired of the overused open world games. Enjoy the walkthrough!!!