It’s easy to look at the gameplay of the Horizon Zero Dawn games and be amazed by the majestic robotic fauna inhabiting their vast worlds. Robots are kind of the point of these games, so you’d be forgiven for only having eyes for them. But may I suggest that you cast your eyes elsewhere from time to time? Far below the sky-scraping Tallnecks or the fearsome Robo-Stegosaurusyou’ll probably find the best buddy you’ll ever need: the raccoon.
Both Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon forbidden west feature raccoons in their starting areas. They scurry around doing raccoon things with their cute raccoon tails and little bandit mask faces. In the context of gameplay, they exist to be hunted. Specifically: you need a raccoon pelt to craft a quiver so you can carry more arrows. Later upgrades require all sorts of fishbones and pelican guts, but the earliest ones basically just require raccoon parts. And that makes me sad.
Behold, for all the technological advances that are in Horizon forbidden westwhat strikes me is that Guerrilla Games somehow made the raccoons cuter.
See progress:
I’m not going to analyze exactly what makes these new raccoons more lovable, but I don’t think anyone could come out of this game who doesn’t think the same thing. just open your eyes
Many of the non-robot creatures in Forbidden West cannot be interacted for long. Birds jump up and fly away, and lobsters burrow into the sand, never to be seen again. But the raccoons? You can have a good time with these guys.
Their AI follows a simple pattern: they stroll away from Aloy at a leisurely pace before tiring and chilling in one spot for a few seconds. Keeping this in mind, they’re easy to cage and steer, allowing you to lead a specific raccoon far and wide.
Take my buddy Jerry for example.
I found Jerry chilling out in a quarry near the early town of Chainscrape. He was surrounded by Chargers who seemed to pay little attention to him and he to them. However, the Chargers didn’t particularly care for me, so I had to dissect them before I met my new best friend.
Man, we’ve been everywhere together. Anywhere in this quarry. And also just outside the quarry! At one point I decided that Jerry might like to take a water trip, so I guided him to a nearby raft on the river bank. Here we posed for photos and reviewed the day. Just me and Jerry.
After about 30 minutes I decided it was time to wrap things up with Jerry. We had our fun, but I had a long search ahead of me, and it was meant for raccoon things. There was no way he could ever accompany me on my long journey to the Forbidden West, crammed with its various dangers.
But then it occurred to me: He could accompany me on my journey … sort of.
So I made a quiver of arrows out of Jerry.