Horizon Zero Dawnproved itself to be one of the most popular PlayStation 4 exclusives when it was released in 2017. The brand new IP from Guerrilla Games introduced a world that blended both ancient tribalism with modern AI to create a stunning post-apocalyptic landscape, where the protagonist, Aloy, must explore and conquer to uncover the answers she seeks. However,Horizon Zero Dawnisn’t without its flaws.
Thanks to the success ofHorizon Zero Dawn, a sequel titledHorizon Forbidden Westis in development and looks to be one of themost highly anticipated titles heading to the new PlayStation 5.Horizon Forbidden Westis set to expand on its predecessor in many ways, particularly by utilizing the PS5’s next-gen technology and bring an even more amazing visual world to life. But there are some issues fromHorizon Zero DawnthatHorizon Forbidden Westcould improve on to make the game an even better experience.
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Aloy’s Combat and Movement Systems
Horizon Zero Dawnintroduces a fairly advanced upgrade and skill tree system for each of Aloy’s bows. But on the flip side, this meant her melee combat felt neglected and was limited to a few basic light and heavy strike movements, which resulted inHorizon Zero Dawn’sclose combat situationsfeeling like button-mashing the majority of the time. Giving Aloy a larger range of offensive and defensive moves as well as an upgrade system for her spear would be the easiest way to make the melee system feel smoother inForbidden West, particularly with the haptic feedback of the DualSense controller being a function most developers are excited to use.
Horizon Zero Dawnalso introduced a climbing and parkour system for Aloy; however, this also came with its own issues. When compared with games such asAssassin’s Creed: Odyssey,Horizon Zero Dawn’sclimbing system is fairly basic. Improving the free-running system forHorizon Forbidden West will help eliminate some of the clunkiness from the original and could go a long way in making the new game genuinely feel next-gen.
More Engaging Map Traversal
Many quests inHorizon Zero Dawnrequire Aloy to traverse the large map to get from one location to another. While the world is visually stunning to explore, running from one place to the next does lose its appeal after a while. While fast travel will likely be enhanced inForbidden Westthanks to the SSD of the PS5, there is one extra feature that could be added to really set the bar high.
Horizon Zero Dawnallowed players to call mounts to help travel through the map quicker, but withHorizon Forbidden West’smap set to be even larger, it would make sense to expand the range of available machines to ride as well. One feature that many players are hoping for is that some of the new aerial machines,such as Sunwings, will be rideable allowing Aloy to fly around the map. While this feature may be a long shot, it would definitely be a way to push the graphical power of the PS5 and keep map traversal engaging.
Impactful Conversations
Horizon Zero Dawnhad a massive new world and history to set up, hence many of the conversations Aloy has tend to be long-winded information dumps.InHorizon Forbidden West,this should already be streamlinedthanks to the player’s familiarity with the world, but the pacing of information can still be improved to avoid overloading on plot. Conversations inHorizon Zero Dawnalso offer players choices in how Aloy’s reacts, similar other RPGs such asThe Witcher 3.
But apart from small differences in dialogue, the reactions a player chooses never have a huge impact on the narrative. With these conversations also tending to be on the lengthier side, many players tend to just skip conversations altogether, which is something that could be improved on forForbidden West. It seems that Guerrilla Games should choose to either give more weight to a players narrative choices or just cut conversation trees all together to maintain efficiency with the game’s large plot.
