What was the Horizon series, and came before the genre-shattering barnstormers? Horizon: Forbidden West Very good, has some tricky weaknesses, like Horizon: Zero Dawn used to be.But now my life is everything Eldon Ring For the foreseeable future, and some other pretty hot titles coming out…I just don’t see myself getting more time to play it.
This all happened before, remember? Horizon: Zero Dawn was released on February 28, 2017. It’s a neat open world game with beautiful graphics, a personable protagonist, a really cool vibe and a sense of style. However, four days later, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was released. Nintendo’s foray into open-world action-adventure design has wiped the board clean.
It doesn’t matter how cool Horizon (metacore 89) is; the conversation right now is all about Zelda (metacore 96). Yes, Zelda launched with the new console – but the conversation wasn’t really dominated by the Switch itself; it was about Zelda. Omg, did you find this shrine? Have you seen this unorthodox puzzle solution? Did you see this guy beat Cannon in half an hour and see the credits?
Ultimately, I didn’t go back to Horizon until the PC version three years later. Playing it on PC (it’s awesome on the Steam deck by the way), I’ll admit I missed the second half of a really cute game…but I also know I definitely made it in 2017 correct prioritization decisions.
Incidentally, Horizon ended up selling well – but its moment at the center of the game world’s mind was unceremoniously interrupted by Zelda. Arguably, it deserved more attention than it ended up getting.
And now…it happened again. You have to get a feel for Guerilla Games, the good developers behind Horizon, who have graduated from not-so-good, visually stunning shooters to games that feel like they have more heart and soul, mostly by players really The protagonist seems to love it. Arguably the second “true” PS5 game, Forbidden West is a truly stunning next-gen visual after Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.
Forbidden West has made huge leaps in some niche but particularly important areas for me, like how its lighting renders really gorgeous, realistic black skin – something I’ve always been interested in, one with lots of melanin The People. In fact, from what I’ve played so far, it’s a solid improvement over the original in almost every way—except maybe Aloy keeps talking to himself as you explore, which is as uninterrupted as ever.
But… now it doesn’t feel like it matters. Seven days after Horizon Forbidden West released, Elden Ring hits shelves. Oh, Elden Ring. I think the industry’s tendency to compare everything to Breath of the Wild is misguided at best (although everyone is making comparisons, Pokemon Legends Arceus has very little in common with it), although Elden Ring is indeed a The game does share some of the DNA of a groundbreaking open-world adventure – but it brings enough ideas of its own to be a genre disruptor in its own right.
I don’t think Elden Ring is quite Perfect, but I have zero problems with it being a masterpiece. Very rarely, I finish an exhausting open-world game after 90 hours and then… start over, hit the New Game Plus button. It’s easily as good as Breath of the Wild, but in a different way.
I think it’s going to be seen as one of the most important games of the decade, even if we only have two years. I think anyone else coming out with a medieval fantasy action RPG in the upcoming future has to seriously bite their nails by now (sorry, Final Fantasy 16). Unsurprisingly, it has captured the attention of the industry and will dominate the next few weeks and months. Just like Zelda.
But… Horizon, a great game, slid into the middle distance between me and the public consciousness. I haven’t seen a tweet about it this week. Everyone just posts their victories, their jokes, and their fiasco in The Lands Between.
As for me? Well, I’m trying to keep Horizon at the forefront of my mind and make a note to get back to it sooner rather than later to avoid the inevitable, ever-growing temptation to wait for a PC. If I can do that, it may depend on the release schedule for the rest of the year. While with Final Fantasy spinoffs, Two Points Campus, Forsaken, Saints Row, Xenoblade Chronicles, Fire Emblem, Living and StarCraft are ready to waste my time — and now, Gran Turismo 7 is clearly a must-play game – I know it probably won’t happen.
Ian Fleming wrote in Goldfinger: “Once by chance, twice by coincidence”. So I think it’s still just a coincidence that Horizon is being swept away by a once-in-a-lifetime genre disruptor for the second time. But, from the outside, this is starting to look like a dangerous curse – if you believe it. It’s nonsense, of course – but it’s still fun to entertain.
So, you know…I’m looking forward to Horizon 3 sometime in 2027…and GTA 6 a week later, I guess.
