"When it looks impossible, look deeper. Then fight like you can win."
Hello everyone!
I totally slept on this blog post because I swore to myself, when the game was first released, that I'd be doing a review as soon as I could go through the playthrough on Youtube.
As I don't own a console myself, that's kind of the only way I get to experience these games (my computer is also definitely not game friendly!).
But then ... life happened? I guess?
I really don't even know!
Given that this was one of my two most anticipated games of 2022, one would THINK I'd remember it all earlier, but apparently not, so here we are.
Without further ado then, let's jump right into it.
Horizon Forbidden West is calling. And it is amazing.
Links to the reviews I did on the first game and it's DLC can be found at the bottom of this page.
If we recap BRIEFLY, however: after a catastrophic war during which machines go out of control and consume biomass as fuel, a team of scientists led by Elisabet Sobeck create an AI called GAIA to terraform the Earth after it's all over and done with. GAIA succeeds, but after a strange signal wakes up HADES, the subordinate function meant to destroy life on Earth so they can begin again, she self-destructs and creates Aloy.
Aloy is a biological clone of Liz Sobeck, and Horizon Zero Dawn is her journey of discovering just who she is and what part she has to play in a world where HADES controls the machines that are trying to kill everyone.
She eventually does it, and in the Frozen Wilds DLC learns there may be more AI out there.
But by the time we get to Forbidden West, welp, she's in trouble.
See, six months after HADES' defeat, the world seems to be dying, and the only way for Aloy to try and stop it is if she finds a copy of GAIA somewhere, reboots her, and establishes the biosphere once more. But so far she's had no luck whatsoever, and she's on her last lead when Varl catches up to her (real talk: facial hair Varl is a sight to behold, even if Aloy likes him clean-shaven better).
Together, they make their way into the Far Zenith facility, on a hunch that Zero Dawn may have sent them a copy, which turns out to be bogus, and Aloy is understandably frustrated, as no one else can actually do anything to save the world. But, on Varl's advice, she heads back to the Carja capital of Meridian.
Thank goodness she does, too - aside from the fact you as a player need to let Avad down for a second time that NO there is NO RELATIONSHIP HAPPENING, AVAD - because the guy in charge of security, Marad? He tells her there's been weird activity at the Spire where HADES was defeated. Upon investigating, Aloy discovers that Sylens, whom she had allied with in the past, has tricked her.
Again.
Now he's waiting for her in the mythical Forbidden West, so off she goes - slipping away from Varl because, our girl is focused on doing this solo - to try and get the Carja/Tenakth Embassy started so she can secure passage. On the way, players will be MORE than thrilled to encounter Erend again, who gives Aloy a bit of a cold shoulder after she just dipped out when the HADES battle was finished.
But, after a lot of back and forth and basically single-handedly killing everything standing in the way of the Embassy, it finally begins ... only to be slaughtered by Regalla who pops up all of a sudden, riding overridden machines.
Apparently, she's a rebel Tenakth that wants to overthrow the chief, Hekarro, who Aloy's been pointed to by Fashav, a Carja soldier-turned-Tenakth (and a huge missed opportunity to have him stick around, rather than killing him right off the bat, IMO). Knowing this, and the fact that she'll be hunted by these rebels wherever she goes, a side mission for Aloy is hunting down their camps and trying to dismantle their network, if she can.
Here's the thing though, she kinda still needs to go to Sylens' coordinates first, which is where she finds not just a HADES Proving Lab where tests were run, but also HADES itself. Aloy puts it out of its misery and acquires a copy of GAIA inside, but any gamer knows that if there's two of something, that'll spell trouble.
Which it does. When weird looking floating people arrive that Aloy can't even touch with her weapons. More importantly, they have their own Sobeck clone, and contrary to Sylens' belief want Aloy dead.
Our favourite red head BARELY survives, and only does because Varl follows her after the Embassy to drag her half-dead carcass to the Utaru tribe and their gravesinger, Zo. Zo's people have been in danger from what feels like a Cauldron spitting out deadly machines for a while now, and their leaders aren't doing much to help, so naturally - once she heals from being all banged up - Aloy figures she might as well give it a go.
She knows what's what, after all.
Together with Zo, now the third other person with a Focus that Aloy gifts her (after Varl), they get through the Cauldron, disarm it, and Aloy is now sure HEPHAESTUS, which we meet in Frozen Wilds, is at it with a vengeance. But she also secures the entire facility within the mountain and manages to boot up GAIA, merging MINERVA with her.
GAIA proceeds to show her three other sub functions that are scattered across the map, the nearest one being in Tenakth territory, so while Varl heads back to grab Erend and give him a Focus, Aloy continues her mission and lands herself squarely in the middle of a Tenakth civil war.
As you do.
Chief Hekarro proves to be more than her equal in terms of figuring out puzzles, and tells her that he knows what she wants - the first person EVER to actually know of the sub functions - and that he will grant her access to it, on the condition that she helps him bring the tribes together again against Regalla.
Having no other choice, Aloy tags along with Kotallo - a man who happened to attend the Embassy where he put himself and his body in the way of a raging machine, an action which cost him his arm and his self-worth - to get all the challengers from the three Tenakth clans to the Kulrut, a ceremony during which Hekarro will choose his Marshals, who will then travel between the clans to help keep the peace.
Naturally it doesn't go smoothly because Kotallo's former commander is an idiot, but Aloy doesn't much care for anything but her own goals, so she brings down the massive rock wall the capital's hiding behind. This forces said idiot to send the challengers along, and it establishes a rapport between Kotallo and Aloy, too.
This is a good thing, because what follows is almost a disaster when Regalla attacks the Kulrut and Aloy is forced to defend the Chief from certain death. Having thus won the trust of the Tenakth, she's finally able to claim AETHER and bring her back to GAIA for a second win after MINERVA. It's then that she's told of a strange SOS signal that GAIA received while Aloy was out fixing everyone else's problems.
It's from Beta.
Not taking 'it's a trap' for a deterrent, Aloy, Varl and Erend head on over to grab the girl, who they bring back to the facility with them; this begins a lengthy process of Aloy suddenly realizing - and having to learnt to accept - that this other clone might also help her, now that she knows she exists.
It's fraught with tension though, and there are more sub functions to grab, considering they need HEPHAESTUS in the end ... and for that, GAIA needs more boosting power.
Thus Aloy treks along into the desert around Las Vegas to retrieve POSEIDON from its underwater home (the player earns themselves an infinite rebreather during this quest and can then stay underwater indefinitely), marveling that it would pick THAT particular region for its home base. Ah well.
After helping some delvers and an old friend (Talanah), there's no such thing as rest since DEMETER is the final target, and potentially the most complicated one.
For the first time in Horizon history, Aloy runs into people who use Focuses ... but the Quen aren't as enlightened as they seem. They revere and worship the Ancients, so Sobeck and the likes, but they don't actually have all the information and are convinced that Ted Faro saved the world.
Yeah. THAT Ted Faro.
One idiot is even sure that he's the new host for Faro's essence, and unfortunately, after all this back and forth with the sub functions, Aloy knows that she needs a stronger clearance than the Sobeck one she controls with her DNA - the only other higher than hers is Faro's. So she kinda needs the Quen and the Quen need her (even if their constant calling of her as Faro's assistant is sooo annoying).
In what's probably the most chilling game sequence ever, the group find Thebes, Faro's bunker where he shut himself into with others ... who he then killed with the switch he built into their brains when they annoyed him.
And he made himself immortal, but turned into a blob we never get to see.
Oh and also, killing him activates a self-destruct switch on the nuclear reactor the bunker just so happens to be powered by.
It's a cluster-bleep of epic proportions, but at least Aloy gets the omega clearance - and the Faro-worshiping idiot dies in the process. Anyone associated with the Faro name is just the worst, I'm telling you.
With Alva now joining Aloy and the others, the team concoct a plan to grab HEPHAESTUS so that they can gain control of the machine-making cauldrons and thus defeat Far Zenith. While we're at it, did I forget to mention the Far Zenith people aren't descendants of the ones who ran off from Earth during the war with the bots? Oh no, after they pretended their ship never made it, they made themselves immortal, and now they're basically indestructible.
Because things have been SO easy thus far.
They get more complicated still: they're planning on tricking Far Zenith with big energy bursts in different cauldrons to mask their capture of HEPHAESTUS at Gemini, but of course it doesn't work. Not only do the Far Zenith gain GAIA and Beta, but they also kill Varl.
YES, VARL DIES. AND ZO IS PREGNANT WITH HIS CHILD THAT HE NEVER GETS TO EVEN HEAR ABOUT. I'M STILL NOT OKAY.
The only sort-of good thing is the fact that one of the Zeniths, Tilda, saves Aloy from certain death and spirits her away to what was once her house here on Earth. She praises Aloy, having known Liz and all (actually, they were together for a time), and catches her up on what Sylens plans to do (mostly get a lot of people killed) and how they can sneak into the Far Zenith base while he's doing it.
But Aloy's had enough of people dying and being recklessly tossed at enemies beyond their strength, so she goes to finish what she started, overriding a flying machine to descend upon Regalla's attack on the Tenakth capital from above, challenging and dueling the other woman, then promptly beating her and thus saving her rebels from certain death.
With Regalla out of the picture, Sylens has no army and has no choice but to team up with Aloy and the rest of them: the bonus here being he's developed something that can take out the shields these Far Zeniths wrap around themselves, making them vulnerable.
The entire team then attacks the Far Zenith base, with Beta (after previous instructions by Aloy) separating HEPHAESTUS from GAIA to have it print machines out aplenty for their army. The rest of them do what they do best, which is retaliate: Zo kills the Zenith that killed Varl, and Kotallo and Alva discover there's something called NEMESIS in the Far Zenith logs before they're locked out.
Reaching Beta, Aloy confronts Tilda about NEMESIS, which turns out to be the origin of the mysterious signal that awoke HADES back in the day: Far Zenith being bored out of their skulls, they uploaded their minds (egos included) into an AI and then abandoned it to stew, making it crazy and mad. It broke out, destroyed their space colony, and forced them to run to Earth to try and salvage supplies to planet-hop somewhere else again.
But NEMESIS wasn't done, because after HADES failed, it launched after them and is even now on the way to Earth for the final, ultimate destruction.
Tilda's solution, after everyone else is pretty much dead?
She's totally taking Aloy, the SUPERIOR Liz, with her to space so she can wine and dine her and live happily ever after. Aloy peaces out so hard it turns into a boss battle, in which she kills Tilda and resigns herself to another fight on the horizon, one even Sylens is going to actively participate in, despite the fact he initially wants to bop out of there like a bat outta hell, using Far Zenith's ship.
But as the game winds down, everyone's committed: Aloy and Beta re-establish GAIA with all the sub functions they've recovered (them and Far Zenith, both), and the rest of the companions ride out to spread the word and gather allies for NEMESIS' arrival.
There's even a functioning copy of APOLLO floating about on the Far Zenith ship!
As for Aloy herself?
She learns that she DOESN'T have to do it all alone. There's strength in numbers, after all, and now she even has a sister, along with people willing to lay down their lives if it comes to it. So she finishes off the game stronger than ever, and as ready as she'll ever be.
And we're with her!
Forbidden West builds on the foundation that Zero Dawn laid out, forming a majestic, stunning game that really explores Aloy's character and takes her from loner to team player. The graphics are just beautiful and the character beats are on point; there's only a few missed opportunities in my opinion, like the Fashav one, but all in all it feels like a worthy sequel leading us into the final installment of the trilogy with the impending arrival of the threat NEMESIS represents.
The one thing I will say I was slightly disappointed by though was the very narrow and sporadic use of companions during the game - the cut scenes were fine and all, but most of the time Aloy was still running around doing her own thing, unless you were doing companion missions. Given how hyped up this was, everyone expected to actually have help throughout as the characters joined the cause, but alas, it was not to be.
OVERALL, however, this is a solid second installment with a large, open world area to explore, and it makes sure that Aloy's purpose isn't squandered.
Now ... we wait for part three. Or a DLC. As patiently as we can.
xx
*images and video not mine
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