Horizon Forbidden West has been on every PlayStation user’s watch-list ever since we got our first look at the game. While it has been delayed to February 2022, Guerilla Games has provided us with a consistent flow of information regarding many aspects of the game. The latest talks about the towns, tribes, and how the crowd functions in the sprawling Forbidden West.
Horizon Zero Dawn was as much about hunting down different machines as exploring what was left of the world. The way humanity banded back into tribes, each with its personality and history, was fascinating to explore. This time around as well, it seems the Living World team at Guerilla Games has pulled out all the stops to create a world that is not only impressive visually but is rich in lore as well.
This information comes to us from a recent PlayStation Blog post that goes into the finer details of Horizon Forbidden West’s open world, including tribes, towns, and even more. The team has gone to great lengths to give each tribe its unique “personality.” The Tenakth are combat-focused, while the Oseram use their brains and ingenuity to get things done.
The Utaru are a more relaxed group that sustain themselves through their agriculture. These three tribes are just the beginning, and we expect several more to be in the whole game. The behavior of the NPC crowd will be based on the tribe of each person.
Every non-combat NPC in Horizon Forbidden West is part of a crowd system. Within that system, you can create rules such as reactions, walking paths, and other animations. We then also have the attitude system, which determines a personality. This means we can create unique people who behave like individuals within the world.
PlayStation Blog
The crowd system will be most prominent in settlements, and Guerilla Games has said there are several scattered across Horizon Forbidden West. These towns will allow Aloy to buy new gear, potions, and meals.
What is available at the vendor will be dependent on the tribe of that settlement. An Oseram vendor will have equipment suited for hunting, while a Tenakth vendor will have weapons perfect for combat. One of the first settlements you’ll enter in the game is Chainscrape, an Oseram outpost hub that offers players a lot of new adventurous opportunities.
With so much activity, so many visual cues, Chainscrape was a place where we could demonstrate many new systems and animations that make the world and its people feel much more alive. In Horizon Zero Dawn, there were a lot of assets and things in the background. In Horizon Forbidden West, they’re not just textures: they’ve been elevated into actual objects that are being used by people in-game.
PlayStation Blog
It looks like Horizon Forbidden West is shaping up to be a truly unique experience, and we can’t wait for February to come sooner. The game will be going up against other heavyweights such as God Of War: Ragnarok and Elden Ring, but from what we’ve seen so far, we feel it can hold its own against the most prominent names out there.
About Horizon Forbidden West
Horizon Forbidden West is the sequel to 2017’s Horizon Zero Dawn by Guerilla Games. An open-world, action adventure game, players control Aloy, a Nora hunter who is on a quest to reverse the effects of a strange crimson blight which is infecting the land. Set in a completely new world, Horizon Forbidden West has many new machines, threats and adventures for Aloy.
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