Horizon: Forbidden West
Mar. 15th, 2022 08:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrI just played this and it was overall pretty good, modulo some issues with gameplay, storytelling, and the ever present Weirdness About Indigenous People. It's very much a sequel to Horizon: Zero Dawn, you'd miss a lot by playing this game first. If you're not familiar with the series, it's about shooting robot dinosaurs with a bow and arrow in a post apocalyptic future, but has engaging plot and characters around that (silly but fun) mechanic.
Here's the trailer.
We played it on a PS4, which worked fine. There was the odd visual glitch but nothing game breaking. Cam encountered one semi-game-breaking bug but that's since been patched.
No major spoilers for either game in this review, but at the end/under the second cut I give some minor spoilers for a section I didn't like.
So! Gameplaywise, this is pretty similar to HZD, with some tweaks and additions. I've heard complaints from people whose preferred playstyles have been nerfed/broken, but my preference for sneaking through grass and sniping with a powerful bow from a distance remained pretty satisfying.
I played on story mode, and found the combat fun and very doable: I one-shotted most of the enemies in the final fight with the right combo of skill and weapon, while still feeling like there was some challenge and thought involved. There's a wide variety of tweakable accessibility options, including the ability to auto-highlight the places you can jump/climb. But there is no option to make the jumps themselves any easier, and while I could do 99% of the ones in the major quests I needed Cam's help for the final 1%. I could probably have eventually managed everything vital without help, but can't say for sure. Note that I am very bad at jumping, though.
I'm not a completionist, which is good, because some of the optional parts were pretty frustrating, including but not limited to a lot of jumping puzzles. The jumping/climbing controls are intended to intuitively take the most logical next step, which sometimes felt fluid and natural and sometimes unexpectedly dropped me to my death.
There's a few extra abilities, like swimming underwater, which often felt kind of underused or pointless, but on the other hand the underwater parts are gorgeous, sometimes while unsuccessfully trying to catch fish I'd end up just noodling through kelp or sparkly caves. In general the overgrown post-apocalyptic environments are very pretty and pleasant to explore. The voice acting, models, and...motion capture acting (?) are all quite well done.
The writing and narrative is...mixed. The main plot is mostly great, an over the top but enjoyable scifi drama with high stakes, fun twists, emotional moments, etc. I liked the major characters a lot. The side quests are a mixture of good to meh, and afaict the minor quests are mostly dull (between us Cam and I did a chunk of them but eventually just stopped bothering unless it looked obviously interesting) and there were a lot of lazy, thoughtless storytelling choices when even a slight change could have been more interesting.
One thing HFW explores is how alone Aloy was during the previous game, through her own choice and otherwise, and this game forces her to confront and work through that and learn to connect more with others. I quite liked this arc, and the resulting friendships, some of which were enjoyably shippy but none of which end in romance.
One thing this game is really missing compared to HZD is evocative environmental storytelling and affecting little stories told entirely through recordings and messages from long-dead people from before the apocalypse. There's a few quests that do manage both of those things, but mostly it's just soldiers sadly dying in battle.
All of this is at its worst in the middle of the game, which is also the worst part for my final major complaint: the Weird Race Issues. Explaining that fully will involve some spoilers so I'll go into it later, but in general: even more than in HZD, there are a cultures which very clearly draw on various American Indian tribes in a rather exoticised Noble Savage kinda way, but are populated by a race-blind combination of people of various real world ethnicities, none of which, as far as I know, include Actual Indigenous Americans. In the rest of the game, these race issues aren't subverted or anything, they just come up less, and the plot/writing is generally a little more interesting.
There are a variety of POC major characters with complex motivations and engaging arcs, but I feel like the game does fall into some unfortunate race tropes here and there.
There's a few characters with significant acquired physical disabilities, and one with C-PTSD from an abusive upbringing, who I thought were handled moderately well. They encounter sometimes intense internalised and external ableism but have pretty satisfying arcs in the end. There's a minor character who I read as autistic who is sympathetic and happy but I'm not sure I liked her plot.
While the world is mostly fairly straight there's a moderate number of (implicitly cis) women unambiguously into other women, also a transfeminine character (I read them as a trans woman, Cam read them as non-binary) and cis mlm who show up very briefly but were written well enough. As in HZD, there's a lot of lovely friendship but this is not a game with many happy, healthy romantic relationships onscreen, and the f/f is no exception. Which I was fine with, especially since there's a variety of kinds of troubled f/f relationship, but YMMV. I feel like there wasn't as many women flirting with Aloy in this game, but I definitely came out with some f/f ships.
And now for my mildly spoilery rant about the issues in the middle of the game!
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS (ish)
The middle of the game is set in lands controlled by a Noble Warrior Race, the Tanakth, who make scifi Noble Warrior Races like the Klingons and Krogan look nuanced and complex. The individual Tanakth NPCs aren't terribly written, and some are quite engaging and emotionally complex. The problem is that every single Tanakth values honour, strength, and being a good warrior who cares for their clan/tribe, and follows their simplistic secular belief system without question.
There are fights between clans of Tanakth, some (violent) arguments about the best approach to these values, and some differences in personality, situation, and focus. There are shopkeepers for gameplay reasons, but even they say things like "This food will help you be a strong warrior!" etc. In HOURS of Tanakth related gameplay you do not meet ONE Tanakth NPC who's like "Eh, fighting's all well and good but I don't really enjoy it, you know? I'm happy with my job building bridges." etc, let alone, say, a healer who wishes people got into fights less. You meet one Tanakth who was considered too weak for fighting and got stuck on cleaning duty, but everyone, including him, considers this a horrible dishonour. There's one minor quest about Tanakth who make facepaint. Every other Tanakth is a warrior in training, current warrior, or retired warrior who maybe thinks the younger warriors need to chill out a bit but still happily fights when required. The fact that bridge-builders even exist is only implied by the existence of bridges. The fact healers exist is mentioned once, briefly, but the one time we actually see a sick person being looked after it's by...another warrior, who is sympathetic but only thinks of solutions in terms of what can be fought/destroyed. We can infer that there is Tanakth music, art, and games, but these are only ever discussed as a way to train for battle. Some Tanakth think it's better to just fight machines and avoid human bloodshed, and others think they should fight people, but literally noone is not super into fighting in one form or another.
And the Tanakth are very, very clearly based on the Aztecs. THAT IS NOT HOW AZTEC SOCIETY WORKED. THAT IS NOT HOW ANY SOCIETY WORKS.
It's not even how the other societies in this game work. The societal worldbuilding has always been simplistic but there's also always been characters who don't fit in, and an acknowledgement that every society has people with different priorities. For example, one of the main secondary characters in both games is Erend, who is basically Gimli from the Lord of the Rings movies: a boisterous brawler who comes from a society of clever tinkerers, the Oseram, but has zero interest or ability in tinkering himself.
Not only is this all racist, it just makes for boring storytelling. When every NPC you meet for hours of gameplay has the same base motivations, there's only so many stories you can tell.
There's also the real lost opportunity to subvert cliche and prejudice. People outside the Tankth tend to dismiss them as psychotic bloodthirsty killers, and the game does make it clear that there's more to them than that. But while Noble Warrior is a step up from Chaotic Evil Orc, it's still a racist cliche, and every time I read a note from modern Americans of the pre-apocalypse world in Tanakth lands I was struck by how much more complex and messy they got to be.
Then there's the uncomfortable parallels to the colonisation of (South) America, as the Tanakth clash with more technologically inclined tribes.
I'm not sure how I feel about the portrayal of the relationship between the Tanakth and the Carja: the Tanakth violently resent the more technologically advanced quasi-Egyptian Carja for having been slave-owning mass-murderers until recently, but every non-Carja tribe suffered at Carja hands and resents them for it.
But I am definitely uncomfortable with the portrayal of Oseram delvers exploring for parts in Tanakth lands, because the narrative seems to largely support their view of this as a perfectly reasonable and harmless usage of untapped resources. They sometimes pay off the Tanakth to not murder them, but otherwise only interact with them as a dangerous threat to be avoided and ignored. The Tanakth resent any foreigners on their lands on principle, but don't generally value the old world parts/information in and of itself. There's zero suggestion that there could be any sort of mutually beneficial cultural exchange, or that the Tanakth have any right to benefit from the discoveries made on their lands. At one point you meet Oseram making a large settlement, and there's a lot of talk about how Moving Out West Is A Chance At A New Start for Oseram who had troubles back home, but zero mention of this place offering a new start for any Tanakth, or even of trading with any nearby Tanakth for supplies. It's all very Manifest Destiny.
Phew! Got that off my chest!
So yeah, the game has issues. But I did enjoy it overall.
Here's the trailer.
We played it on a PS4, which worked fine. There was the odd visual glitch but nothing game breaking. Cam encountered one semi-game-breaking bug but that's since been patched.
No major spoilers for either game in this review, but at the end/under the second cut I give some minor spoilers for a section I didn't like.
So! Gameplaywise, this is pretty similar to HZD, with some tweaks and additions. I've heard complaints from people whose preferred playstyles have been nerfed/broken, but my preference for sneaking through grass and sniping with a powerful bow from a distance remained pretty satisfying.
I played on story mode, and found the combat fun and very doable: I one-shotted most of the enemies in the final fight with the right combo of skill and weapon, while still feeling like there was some challenge and thought involved. There's a wide variety of tweakable accessibility options, including the ability to auto-highlight the places you can jump/climb. But there is no option to make the jumps themselves any easier, and while I could do 99% of the ones in the major quests I needed Cam's help for the final 1%. I could probably have eventually managed everything vital without help, but can't say for sure. Note that I am very bad at jumping, though.
I'm not a completionist, which is good, because some of the optional parts were pretty frustrating, including but not limited to a lot of jumping puzzles. The jumping/climbing controls are intended to intuitively take the most logical next step, which sometimes felt fluid and natural and sometimes unexpectedly dropped me to my death.
There's a few extra abilities, like swimming underwater, which often felt kind of underused or pointless, but on the other hand the underwater parts are gorgeous, sometimes while unsuccessfully trying to catch fish I'd end up just noodling through kelp or sparkly caves. In general the overgrown post-apocalyptic environments are very pretty and pleasant to explore. The voice acting, models, and...motion capture acting (?) are all quite well done.
The writing and narrative is...mixed. The main plot is mostly great, an over the top but enjoyable scifi drama with high stakes, fun twists, emotional moments, etc. I liked the major characters a lot. The side quests are a mixture of good to meh, and afaict the minor quests are mostly dull (between us Cam and I did a chunk of them but eventually just stopped bothering unless it looked obviously interesting) and there were a lot of lazy, thoughtless storytelling choices when even a slight change could have been more interesting.
One thing HFW explores is how alone Aloy was during the previous game, through her own choice and otherwise, and this game forces her to confront and work through that and learn to connect more with others. I quite liked this arc, and the resulting friendships, some of which were enjoyably shippy but none of which end in romance.
One thing this game is really missing compared to HZD is evocative environmental storytelling and affecting little stories told entirely through recordings and messages from long-dead people from before the apocalypse. There's a few quests that do manage both of those things, but mostly it's just soldiers sadly dying in battle.
All of this is at its worst in the middle of the game, which is also the worst part for my final major complaint: the Weird Race Issues. Explaining that fully will involve some spoilers so I'll go into it later, but in general: even more than in HZD, there are a cultures which very clearly draw on various American Indian tribes in a rather exoticised Noble Savage kinda way, but are populated by a race-blind combination of people of various real world ethnicities, none of which, as far as I know, include Actual Indigenous Americans. In the rest of the game, these race issues aren't subverted or anything, they just come up less, and the plot/writing is generally a little more interesting.
There are a variety of POC major characters with complex motivations and engaging arcs, but I feel like the game does fall into some unfortunate race tropes here and there.
There's a few characters with significant acquired physical disabilities, and one with C-PTSD from an abusive upbringing, who I thought were handled moderately well. They encounter sometimes intense internalised and external ableism but have pretty satisfying arcs in the end. There's a minor character who I read as autistic who is sympathetic and happy but I'm not sure I liked her plot.
While the world is mostly fairly straight there's a moderate number of (implicitly cis) women unambiguously into other women, also a transfeminine character (I read them as a trans woman, Cam read them as non-binary) and cis mlm who show up very briefly but were written well enough. As in HZD, there's a lot of lovely friendship but this is not a game with many happy, healthy romantic relationships onscreen, and the f/f is no exception. Which I was fine with, especially since there's a variety of kinds of troubled f/f relationship, but YMMV. I feel like there wasn't as many women flirting with Aloy in this game, but I definitely came out with some f/f ships.
And now for my mildly spoilery rant about the issues in the middle of the game!
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS (ish)
The middle of the game is set in lands controlled by a Noble Warrior Race, the Tanakth, who make scifi Noble Warrior Races like the Klingons and Krogan look nuanced and complex. The individual Tanakth NPCs aren't terribly written, and some are quite engaging and emotionally complex. The problem is that every single Tanakth values honour, strength, and being a good warrior who cares for their clan/tribe, and follows their simplistic secular belief system without question.
There are fights between clans of Tanakth, some (violent) arguments about the best approach to these values, and some differences in personality, situation, and focus. There are shopkeepers for gameplay reasons, but even they say things like "This food will help you be a strong warrior!" etc. In HOURS of Tanakth related gameplay you do not meet ONE Tanakth NPC who's like "Eh, fighting's all well and good but I don't really enjoy it, you know? I'm happy with my job building bridges." etc, let alone, say, a healer who wishes people got into fights less. You meet one Tanakth who was considered too weak for fighting and got stuck on cleaning duty, but everyone, including him, considers this a horrible dishonour. There's one minor quest about Tanakth who make facepaint. Every other Tanakth is a warrior in training, current warrior, or retired warrior who maybe thinks the younger warriors need to chill out a bit but still happily fights when required. The fact that bridge-builders even exist is only implied by the existence of bridges. The fact healers exist is mentioned once, briefly, but the one time we actually see a sick person being looked after it's by...another warrior, who is sympathetic but only thinks of solutions in terms of what can be fought/destroyed. We can infer that there is Tanakth music, art, and games, but these are only ever discussed as a way to train for battle. Some Tanakth think it's better to just fight machines and avoid human bloodshed, and others think they should fight people, but literally noone is not super into fighting in one form or another.
And the Tanakth are very, very clearly based on the Aztecs. THAT IS NOT HOW AZTEC SOCIETY WORKED. THAT IS NOT HOW ANY SOCIETY WORKS.
It's not even how the other societies in this game work. The societal worldbuilding has always been simplistic but there's also always been characters who don't fit in, and an acknowledgement that every society has people with different priorities. For example, one of the main secondary characters in both games is Erend, who is basically Gimli from the Lord of the Rings movies: a boisterous brawler who comes from a society of clever tinkerers, the Oseram, but has zero interest or ability in tinkering himself.
Not only is this all racist, it just makes for boring storytelling. When every NPC you meet for hours of gameplay has the same base motivations, there's only so many stories you can tell.
There's also the real lost opportunity to subvert cliche and prejudice. People outside the Tankth tend to dismiss them as psychotic bloodthirsty killers, and the game does make it clear that there's more to them than that. But while Noble Warrior is a step up from Chaotic Evil Orc, it's still a racist cliche, and every time I read a note from modern Americans of the pre-apocalypse world in Tanakth lands I was struck by how much more complex and messy they got to be.
Then there's the uncomfortable parallels to the colonisation of (South) America, as the Tanakth clash with more technologically inclined tribes.
I'm not sure how I feel about the portrayal of the relationship between the Tanakth and the Carja: the Tanakth violently resent the more technologically advanced quasi-Egyptian Carja for having been slave-owning mass-murderers until recently, but every non-Carja tribe suffered at Carja hands and resents them for it.
But I am definitely uncomfortable with the portrayal of Oseram delvers exploring for parts in Tanakth lands, because the narrative seems to largely support their view of this as a perfectly reasonable and harmless usage of untapped resources. They sometimes pay off the Tanakth to not murder them, but otherwise only interact with them as a dangerous threat to be avoided and ignored. The Tanakth resent any foreigners on their lands on principle, but don't generally value the old world parts/information in and of itself. There's zero suggestion that there could be any sort of mutually beneficial cultural exchange, or that the Tanakth have any right to benefit from the discoveries made on their lands. At one point you meet Oseram making a large settlement, and there's a lot of talk about how Moving Out West Is A Chance At A New Start for Oseram who had troubles back home, but zero mention of this place offering a new start for any Tanakth, or even of trading with any nearby Tanakth for supplies. It's all very Manifest Destiny.
Phew! Got that off my chest!
So yeah, the game has issues. But I did enjoy it overall.
