Horizon Forbidden West: Everything you need to know before you play

Horizon Forbidden Due west: Everything y'all need to know before you play

(Image credit: Sony)

Sony first appear Horizon Forbidden Due west on June xi, 2020. After a few delays and a lot of fevered speculation, the game will finally arrive on February. eighteen. As a long-awaited sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn, Forbidden Due west will follow protagonist Aloy as she ventures to the post-postal service-apocalyptic ruins of San Francisco, uncovering more almost the deadly robots and bloodthirsty warriors that stalk the land every bit she does so.

Horizon Zip Dawn came out in 2017. As such, if you played the game when it first came out, your memories of what happened may be a little fuzzy. Similarly, if you've heard a ton of fizz almost Horizon Forbidden W, but don't really know what the series is all about, this is the place to learn. Just be warned that if yous're in the latter army camp, you'll probably want to check out before the "Story and then far" section. We'll recap the events of Nix Dawn, and if you want to play the sequel, you're probably better off just experiencing the kickoff game for yourself.

Read on to learn what you lot need to know before yous play Horizon Forbidden West.

What is Horizon Forbidden West?

New Horizon Forbidden West trailer image key art — (Image credit: Sony)

Sony has marketed Horizon Forbidden West aggressively, and then you've about certainly seen some kind of ad, trailer or printing coverage related to it. But if yous didn't play the outset game, it may exist difficult to parse what'southward going on with this red-headed archer, her robotic dinosaur foes and the colorful globe they all inhabit.

Briefly, Horizon Forbidden Due west is a sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn. Like its predecessor, Forbidden Westward is an open-globe activity/adventure game from Sony-owned studio Guerilla Games. You lot play every bit a warrior named Aloy, who wields a bow and a staff as she does boxing with both animalistic robots and cunning humans. In i sense, Horizon'south setting is post-apocalyptic, as it takes place subsequently a calamity has wiped out about of humanity. However, plenty time has passed that plant and animal life has recovered, and humans have fix complex, semi-technological societies again. Think less Mad Max and more Terminal Fantasy Ten.

What sets Horizon apart from many other open-world games is its focus on ranged gainsay. While Aloy has some melee moves at her disposal, most enemies require complex tactics and pinpoint precision to take down. Each robot has a dissimilar weak betoken, besides as unlike behaviors. The skittish, fragile Watchers, for case, require only a standard arrow or two to acceleration, while the towering, aggressive Sawtooths may require a combination of traps, stealth and specialized arrows to take down.

Horizon Forbidden West appears structurally similar to Zero Dawn, following Aloy as she explores wilderness areas, towns, ancient ruins and everything in-betwixt, fighting off both flesh and metal foes as she does so. If you want a polished open-world game with a unique gainsay arrangement, setting, story and key character, this serial is probably a proficient bet.

What happened in Horizon Zero Dawn?

Horizon Naught Dawn is a long game with a circuitous narrative. If yous haven't played it, frankly, you should probably take some time to do and so before you leap into Horizon Forbidden West. (Granted, nosotros'd expect some kind of recap to kicking things off in Forbidden West, just it's not going to requite you every nuance of the plot.) This PS4 game is piece of cake to find on the PlayStation Shop or in most retail shops, and fans even had a chance to snag it for free concluding year. If you're looking for a refresher, though, read on.

Horizon Zero Dawn stars Aloy: an outcast from the secluded Nora tribe in the 31st-century American West. When she grows up, Aloy proves her worth and claims her place among the Nora. Merely just every bit she does so, a warlord named Helis attacks, killing many of the Nora and setting Aloy on the path of vengeance.

As she pursues Helis across the vast, mountainous, robot-infested mural, Aloy learns a nifty deal nigh both herself and the world she inhabits. Among other things, she discovers that she looks just like a pre-apocalypse scientist named Dr. Elisabet Sobeck. In Sobeck's time, out-of-control self-replicating robots began a war confronting humanity and used Globe's biomass to fuel their self-replication. Sobeck devised a plan to terminate the robots. Unfortunately, it resulted in the extinction of all life on the planet.

The plot twists and turns for a few dozen more hours, but Aloy eventually learns the truth about herself: she is a clone of Dr. Sobeck, created by a beneficent AI called GAIA, in order to combat an evil AI chosen HADES. GAIA, being true to her name, was responsible for re-seeding Earth with life and for creating machines meant to aid humans build a utopian society. Merely HADES, being an evil AI, mucked everything up.

In the end, Aloy confronts Helis, thwarts HADES, and generally pieces together how humanity arrived in its current predicament. Without rehashing the whole plot, the bottom line is that Aloy survives, and humanity is safe — for now. But the AI threat remains, and the dangerous robots haven't gone anywhere, either.

Aloy has further adventures in The Frozen Wilds expansion, which is standalone story. There are 2 more AIs: a good one called CYAN, and an evil one called HEPHAESTUS, both of which survive in the stop. It's possible we'll run across some more of them, as well as the taciturn chieftain Aratak.

What to look from Horizon Forbidden West

At present that Aloy has ane big hazard under her belt (ii, if y'all count The Frozen Wilds separately), Horizon Forbidden West can hitting the ground running. The devs at Guerilla Games accept revealed a lot of data well-nigh Horizon Forbidden West, and what we can expect from both the setting and the gameplay. (Understandably, we haven't heard much most the story withal.)

First and foremost, the setting for the second game will be quite dissimilar, set in the ruins of coastal San Francisco and the Yosemite Valley rather than Colorado/Utah/Wyoming. This as well means that swimming will play a much bigger function than before, and that Aloy will be able to explore diverse underwater environments.

The devs accept too shown off some of Forbidden West'due south improved melee gainsay, which will give Aloy a wider range of staff skills and upgrades. While melee gainsay was available in Zero Dawn, it was generally either a last-resort tactic, or a way to push enemies off while y'all scrambled to put distance between Aloy and her target.

Beyond that, Forbidden West seems like it will play to the same strengths every bit Zero Dawn, with a bold, colorful art manner, a diversity of hitting robots to fight, an inspired setting and a memorable principal graphic symbol. Nosotros hope that the story volition forge some new basis equally well, but we'll take to play the game to discover out.

In the meantime, if yous're looking for an open-earth game from a Sony studio, you can (and should) effort Ghost of Tsushima or Spider-Man, both of which are all-time-in-form experiences.

Marshall Honorof is a senior editor for Tom's Guide, overseeing the site'south coverage of gaming hardware and software. He comes from a scientific discipline writing background, having studied paleomammalogy, biological anthropology, and the history of science and technology. After hours, you can find him practicing taekwondo or doing deep dives on classic sci-fi.