Horizon: Forbidden West and Sequels Messing It Up

A couple of weeks ago, we talked about Horizon: Zero Dawn. A surprisingly engaging game once the mystery of the world gets established. The game lays three mysteries on you from the get-go:

1. You are an outcast from birth. Why are you an outcast?
2. Your tribe got attacked by outsiders during your coming of age ceremony. They specifically wanted to attack *YOU*. What’s the deal with that?
3. The world, which we come to find out is Colorado Springs and its environs, is full of robot dinosaurs and it’s the year 3000 something. What? What the heck?!?

And the story progresses in such a way to explain that these are all part of the same overarching story and the big boss battle at the end of the game involves SAVING THE WORLD.

Whew. So how do you top that?

Well, I’ve recently started Horizon: Forbidden West and I’m only a little bit into it and the answer seems to be: “Okay. The stuff you did in the last game saved the world from the *DIRECT* threat. Well, there’s an indirect threat. You have to save the world from that now.”

The main thing that I’m noticing is that the first game had me asking a whole lot of questions and I kept playing it because I wanted to get answers. And, wouldn’t you know it, the answers were *REALLY GOOD*. So *THAT* is why I was an outcast from birth. So *THAT* is why the tribe attacked me. So *THAT* is why there are robot dinosaurs.

Now? I’m going through and thinking “Yeah, yeah. I’m the savior of Meridian. Let me do some side-quests so I can get enough skill points to regain the skills I had, according to gametime, a couple of months ago.”

So, so far, the game has done two Sequel Things that irritate the heck out of me. One is perfectly understandable, the other is much less forgiveable.

Thing the first: They start you over at level 1. Now, I understand that not everybody played the first one and one of the great joys of any RPG-adjacent game is getting new skills, unlocking new abilities, and progressing from being someone who struggles to fight a robot stegosaurus into being someone who blows them up without thinking about it.

I know that I’ve complained about this in the Batman games as well BUT! AND HERE’S A DEFENSE OF HOW THEY DID IT IN ARKHAM CITY!!! They start Arkham City with you as Bruce Wayne who then gets unceremoniously tossed into the titular municipality. Why doesn’t he have any of his stuff? Well, it’s because he was wearing Bruce Wayne clothing at the start of the game and then they airlifted some stuff to him and he only had access to the stuff that fit in an airlift batpod. Okay. Fine.

That doesn’t explain why he needed to relearn how to throw two batarangs at once or relearn how to do a blade dodge takedown but… okay fine. Part of the fun is learning skills in addition to acquiring equipment.

But Forbidden West didn’t explain why you don’t have your weapons from the last game (though they kind of explained why you needed a new spear…). The skill tree has been 100% revamped and so I understand, on an engineering level, why you don’t have the skills you had a month ago… they go to great lengths to explain that this happens somewhat soon after the end of the first game and point out that you have not been idle. So what happened?!?

Ah, it doesn’t matter. I’m probably overthinking it. And, let’s face it, if Aloy started the game with a full skill tree and a full arsenal, I’d probably complain about that too.

The second thing is really bad, though: The game does not have you asking questions.

They quickly establish that something is going on that requires your intervention but there isn’t really a mystery to it. There’s a threat, you know what you need to find to address the threat, the only mystery is “where is the McGuffin?” not “holy cow, what is going on with the world?”

The good news is that the game is fun and the story, so far, keeps leaning into the whole thing where Aloy gets told something that underestimates her and then she goes on to prove her detractor wrong (Seriously: If your favorite trope is “When Pigs Fly“, you will enjoy this series).

But the story does not have me questioning anything. I’m the savior of the world and the world needs saving. Again.

So… what are you playing?