Horizon Forbidden West: The First Hundred Hours

Supergirl meets up with the Justice League of Future America to once again, save the world. But first, she will have to defeat the Legion of Doom. What evil plot does Lex Luthor have up his sleeve?

We meet outcast Aloy in the first game, Horizon Zero Dawn, as a child, who, with her adopted father, exists on the periphery of their tribe, not long after some unspecified disaster changed humanity’s relationship with the machines that cared for them but have now turned hostile. Over the course of the game, we learn of a parallel Aloy from far in the past (though in our future), and her struggle to plant the seeds of Earth’s rebirth in the face of total desolation.

In Horizon Forbidden West, Aloy is a different kind of outcast. She is now the Savior, and after the shocking death of the previous ambassador, the only link between the familiar tribes of the East, and the unknown tribes of the West (the Ultara, a peaceful tribe who live among the Very Large Array and have built their culture around a demo program an ancient engineer used to impress tourists, the Tenahk, a tribe that worships a near-future splinter fighter squadron that rose in the Southwest during some climate wars, and the Quen, a tribe that worships 21st century capitalism).

While the rest of the world would enjoy just keeping Aloy as a celebrity and out of day-to-day tribal affairs, Aloy finds the fight is not yet over, and once again spars with frenemy Sylens over their competing visions on how to meet the new threat.

Unfortunately, Aloy is Supergirl, and as much as she would like to settle down, she has a world to save, but beyond that, every single person she encounters or village she visits is staring down the face of one existential crisis or other, and Aloy must again pause her quest to save the world to resolve intertribal disputes, help a family struggle with a father’s aging, gather flowers and solve murders. Aloy’s future armor from the first game has become unpowered and useless, and the robodinos unlocked in the previous game are once again the enemy in this one. Many of the skills from the first game have come to the second, but there are six new trees of skills to unlock.

There were plenty of legitimately startling things in HFW that I did not expect. I liked best the base building aspect; as Aloy cultivated allies (including a couple of welcome friends from the first game), they moved in with her and had their own offscreen adventures that they would occasionally need Aloy’s help with. Once the final fight is over and the Earth saved once more — for now — most everyone drifts away, back to their own lives, and Aloy is left, largely alone, once more, to prepare for the next fight.

My one hope for Aloy was that, at the end of the game, she had found someone with which to share her burden and her life. Her friends have access to all the same tech she has, now, and know the fights, but in the end, they mostly drift away. The ones who stay have issues of their own, and little time for Aloy.

She ends the game as she started it. A hero, acclaimed by everyone in the known world, a godlike presence who can solve any problem, and very much alone.

This story parallels that of Elisabet Sobeck, the scientist from the past of whom she is a clone. We learn more of Sobeck’s lonely life. She never had time for anything or anybody, but her work, even though she had several people in her life who would have liked to have shared her life. If she had opened herself up to other people, the history of the world may have gone a different way, and perhaps the threat of this game and the next game could have been averted.

There will be a next game. The threat is only delayed, and the ending shifts how we see the events in both the first and second games as we discover the real threat, and the real chance that the next fight might not take place in the American West.

A hundred hours in, I’m more or less done with the game. I have the legendary weapons, the legendary armor, both fully upgraded or almost so. I need to wait for NG+ in order to grab a one-time chance to get a trophy that I missed the first time through. I may or may not be back for the DLC — though if it offers a chance for Aloy to find some love in her life, or to just be a little less alone, I will be there day 1, hour 1.

A wise man was said to have asked, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”. Aloy needs to pay a little more attention to her own needs.

I did enjoy the game. But maybe Aloy could be a little less Supergirl, and a little more Kara Danvers occasionally. Get the Justice League back together. Spend some down time with Steel… er, Erend.