Guerilla Games gave details Horizon Forbidden West and the new skills of main character Aloy in a new Playstation developer blog. Her toolbox will expand to include free climbing, swimming, melee weapon upgrades, and more traversing methods, and she will use them to tackle new machine enemies.
Horizon Zero Dawn is known for its lush and climbable open worlds, stealth and archery-based gameplay, and fearsome robotic enemies. In Forbidden west, Guerrilla tried to expand on these elements, keeping an eye on how players would travel through an overgrown world of ruins. The developer blog released on Monday provided context for many of the game footage that was featured in a 14-minute gameplay reveal first shown during Sony’s State of Play in March. The latest blog is full of fun details and game material.
“Aloy is free to climb on and over vast stretches of rocky terrain,” wrote Bo de Vries, Guerrilla Games community leader, “even more types of machines can be used as mounts; Gripping points can be found everywhere in the area, which enables agile vertical traversal; Swimming underwater has opened up a whole new aspect of exploration; and gliding with the Shieldwing offers the ultimate view of the beautiful world of Horizon Forbidden West – not to mention a quick descent from a great height! “
Some of these highlights are:
- A greater sense of verticality when traversing the world, where “rocky surfaces in these areas are freely climable without the use of tribal holds!”
- A “high vault traversal mechanism” that enables Aloy to “lift himself onto any object from a bouncy height with space to pull up”.
- A new pullcaster tool that allows players to get started and “manipulate and destroy their surroundings”. In the air, players can “take a higher lead, fire their bow, slide, strike from above, or even reach another point.” The Pullcaster can also be used as a winch to “pull a hidden box of loot off a ledge or to tear open a vent to create a new climbing path”.
- Another new tool called the Shieldwing looks like Horizon’s version of a Zelda-style glider; it will help Aloy land gracefully from all that climbing.
- The addition of a workbench where the player can upgrade weapons and outfits.
- A new skill tree with many unlockable advantages.
- New hand-to-hand combat features for the spear, including a “Resonator Blast” and a “Valor Surge,” intended to reward players for their close-range ingenuity (a huge upgrade for fans who want to Hand-to-hand combat was less useful in Zero tomorrow).
- In some faction encounters, humans can have machines as steeds or mounts. In Zero tomorrow, Machine and human encounters were very separate.
- Although the blog mentioned swimming, it didn’t delve into (pun intended) any additional mechanics or details.
The developer blog also mentioned a few highlights for PlayStation 5 owners, including finer haptic feedback woven into the DualSense wireless controllers. This enables touches like the adaptive trigger tension when pulling the bow and the feeling of tall grass when Aloy is secretly crawling through.
“We’ve worked hard to give players more choice and depth, and we’re excited to see how people as Aloy will play with so many new options in skills, weapons and equipment to obtain in the mysterious Forbidden West. “That’s what Dennis Zopfi, Lead Combat Designer at Guerilla says.
