Horizon Forbidden West Therapy Challenge

Horizon Zero Dawn was originally released in 2022 on Playstation 4 / 5, and pc users had to wait for 2024.

The version i am reviewing today is the Complete Edition from Steam released in 2024 (including the DLC).
Patch version : 1.5.80.0

HORIZON FORBIDDEN WEST REVIEW

Horizon Forbidden West the sequel to the world acclaimed Horizon Zero Dawn !

Like its predecessor, the game plays far better with a gamepad than with the mouse and keyboard. Despite the fact that aiming with a gamepad is really difficult during the first 30 hours, there is a certain pride to be won if you try hard and finally master it !

Personally i already had 100 good hours on Horizon Zero Dawn, so i had my share of die and retry 😅 And i arrived in Forbidden West with a good knowledge of how to fight, even more as i had completed the first episode in Ultra Hard mode… Which between you and me wasn't so far from the difficulty slider of a Dark Soul 😁 1 Hit and you're dead !

That Said, Forbidden West is not as interesting as the first episode… The final note will be lower than the 90% i gave to Horizon Zero Dawn, because there were some paths taken by the studio direction, which for me really impacted the game in a negative way.

We'll talk about all of that… But you have to know that Horizon Zero Dawn got 90000 very positive reviews on steam since 2022, where this sequel only got 10000 in several months already… And i am quite sure we won't go further than 30000 in 2 years by 2026.

HORIZON FORBIDDEN WEST REVIEW

Alright ! Let's go for another round with Aloy ! The Savior of Meridian !

The good thing in Forbidden west (FW) is they kept the original skills that you could gather with skill points in Horizon Zero Dawn (HZD), and made them even more powerful in (FW), provided you spend the skill points to improve them. As an example in HZD, you could learn how to concentrate to slow time like the “bullet time” in Max Payne, and aim even more efficiently ! in FW you have this skill right from the start, but you can improve it to last longer !

And aside from these improvements of basic skills, you also have Weapon techniques to learn like to notch 3 arrows on your bow, or empty a whole cartridge clip for another weapon. Basic skills improvements + weapon techniques are adding some dynamism to the battles ! And it's not over… as FW also introduces the use of Valor Surges ! Basically Valor is a gauge that you fill every time you hit a weak spot or take damage… And it's a real Game Changer !

Valor Surges like every other things need to be learned with Skill points, and they have up to 3 levels of power each ! Like a potion to give you some Nice % damage resistance as long as the valor surge is active, and you can even keep it active for a longer period of time as the valor gauge will slowly deplete while the surge will be active, but you will still fight and hit weak spots and take damage, so you will also refill the gauge while fighting !! 😎

All of these are adding some real dynamism to every fights, and even more during boss fights ! Because these will require valor surges if you want to win in the hardest difficulty levels like Ultra Hard ! Where you can literally be one shot !

The New Aloy face on the right (just slightly older) and a small part of the Skills Tree on the right 😊

Speaking about the face of Aloy… There were some arguments on the net about how Aloy became Ugly in this sequel compared to how she was in HZD. Well first of all, she is older than in the first episode, and also her look really depends on the armor she is wearing… Yeah, long hours after this screenshot above taken during the very first cutscene, i found and equipped the Oseram Forester armor, and trust me Aloy looks GORGEOUS with it !

Well… more than just words, here are below the weapons and Armors you can find, and modify as well to make them even more stronger and resistant ! And if you know how the Horizon Series works, modifying your equipment is VERY IMPORTANT to make fights more easy ! You can also level up, but levels are just adding skill points and 10 more hit points every time… So it won't be about improving your strength or constitution or agility, no no… nothing of that in Horizon !

Modifying your gear ! And as you can see on the right… Aloy is definitely not Ugly in Forbidden West ! 😊

As you can see on these screenshots above, modifying your weapons and armors will require many ingredients ! And for the latest upgrades, you'll need to spend time killing the most deadly machines in the field, and hope that they will drop what you need… Because there is always a % of chance that it doesn't 😅

Also just on a physical argument… For me the problem of Aloy is not that she is not as beautiful as she was in the first episode, for me she is still beautiful as an angel… No for me the issue is… Look at her body in the above picture, look at her arms… This woman is capable of climbing mountains with her bare hands, and even jump from one part of a cliff to another part… She is capable of fighting HUGE machines, she is capable of pulling a bow string 200 times in a row…

And you want to make me believe that this woman have fragile arms like a model ?!? Let's cut the crap…

Who the hell designed Aloy ? A designer who loves cute little girls ?! lol… 🤣

With the feats she is capable to perform, she should… No ! She MUST have muscular arms ! Did you see in real life these Fitness Models who are capable of pulling their own weights ? Exactly what Aloy is doing 100 times a day ! Did you see their arms ? They're sometimes even bigger than mine and i am a man lifting big weights ! Frankly even women who are not training in a gym, but who are climbing, have muscular arms ! It's only a result of all the hard work !

Horizon Forbidden West Review

Anyway… So the physical attributes / traits of Aloy are not realistic at all, but well… This is only aesthetic and could be seen as an optional discussion that we could all easily forget.

No the real issue in Forbidden West, the issue which is impacting the game in a negative way, the issue why i have put “Forbidden Therapy” on the picture cover of this page, the issue which is literally destroying the interest of this game is…

THE CUTSCENES AND THEIR FUCKING DIALOGUES !

The cutscenes in themselves are good in terms of graphics and animations… Even VERY GOOD !

On a graphical level, Cutscenes are just TOP NOTCH ! They even managed to improve from the first episode ! 😍

But who the hell decided that every cutscenes, would be a “Psychoanalysis” where every characters would speak like an open book, to the very first stranger they would meet ?!?! That's fucking crazy ! Every time there is a new quest, You can be sure that Aloy is going to act like Mother Teresa, trying to feel the emotions of every single NPC she comes across !

So just to remind you… It's a world where people are trying to survive… So primal instincts like kill, gather food, find shelter should be the main priorities ! Speaking about feelings and trusting people you don't know should be THE LAST things you would do if you want to stay alive ! And still… When you encounter any NPCs in this game, they all speak like if they were on the couch of a psychoanalyst !! 🤣 Better laugh about it than cry…

Oh by the way… here is Aloy climbing mountains and sliding with her fragile little arms 🤣

Horizon Forbidden West Review

Some dialogues are so Ridiculous that it completely DESTROYS the atmosphere of the game !

Like you encounter a woman or a man for the first time, and she / he begins to tell yourself about her / his childhood… I was like what the fuck !!! I just met you and you literally open yourself to me like if we were best friends since 20 years !! So again who the fuck designed these dialogs ?!? Who the fuck decided to…

Production director : You know what guys ? the first episode of Horizon was too good and too realistic ! We got 90000 positive reviews, that's too much ! We need to make our game worse ! what could we do ?

Non Violent Activist in the team : What about making every characters speaking nonsense about their own life ? Let's make them all speak about their feelings, their emotions… So basically useless stuff to fill the cutscenes !

 

Production director : Great idea ! with some luck we'll be able to divide our sales by 3 !

Again with her Fragile little arms she can literally break walls, or plunge her spear in Hard as Rock flowers 🤣

Jesus Christ… There is even a cutscene with a small argument between Aloy and her double (play the game to understand), and Aloy elevates the voice by just a little… The kind of thing that could happen like 50 times a day ! We basically all have arguments with other people, we don't agree and so we speak louder because we're angry !

Well… It seems someone in the production team decided to include “Non violent communication” in Forbidden West… Why ? Because after this cutscene… All the other NPC's in your team will talk to you about it ! Like if they all heard you from the other side of the base, like if they all had to understand what were your motives to be angry, like if to be “angry” was bad, it wasn't a good emotion… Who the fuck did they design that for ? It's a game for adults for fuck sake !

The feeling i have when i play to this game… is that someone in the team decided that “Anger” wasn't a good emotion, which is totally bullshit because if you decide to be positive at all times and suppress anger, you will provoke your own downfall, as “Anger” is a natural feeling and you must face it, not suppress it !

So if it was a way to educate the players, it's a very bad one and besides it's a game for adults, not for small children! The result is simple… There are tons of threads online where you can read that players have SKIPPED most of the dialogues… I didn't but trust me it was a PAIN IN THE ASS to listen to them… And in the end the Interest i have in this game is always HIT HARD by the next cutscene. It's like whenever i find the motivation to play to Forbidden West, there is always a cutscene to remind me why i have put this game on pause for the last week or even 2 weeks 😤

Horizon Forbidden West Review

Apart from this major dialog and “non violent communication” issue… The game is graphically superb !

If you have the right computer to put everything in Ultra Graphics, it's literally Jaw dropping ! 🤩

The map of the game is HUGE ! I remember it took me at least 120+ hours to complete Horizon Zero Dawn, but in Forbidden west i am already at more than 120 hours… And i still have like 100 more hours in front of me, and i am not even kidding ! The thing is… Will it be that interesting to do ? I don't know, that's why i began this game since several months, and still haven't finished it… Because at some point i get bored and lose my motivation (thanks to the dialogs 😅)

But also because they made the same mistake as in the first episode, they limited the max level to 60…

Already in HZD it was a mistake, even if i only managed to reach the max level by the very end of the game, as it kept me away from fighting random machines in the field to prevent fast level up. But in FW as i said the map is HUGE ! And still the max level is the same… So the result is, most of the time i simply avoid encounters if i don't need to kill the machines, otherwise i would arrive very quickly to max level and then the rest of the game would be even more boring…

Killing machines for like 50 hours to finish the entire game but no XP out of them… how Fun is that ?

Nevertheless there are good ideas, like to manufacture special devices which will help you to open hidden passages. And so every time you manufacture one of these special devices / tools / abilities, you can go back to re-explore areas you previously discovered, but where there was a locked tunnel or a place you couldn't explore.

A device to breath under water on the left (most useful device ingame!), and one for sky diving on the right 😎

Horizon Forbidden West Review

I also heard that FW included some “Woke” shit…

The only thing i could see as “Woke” would be that GAIA is Black… And it's not an issue in itself, it's just because once again… They take the highest intellectual and Wisest being ingame, which is an Artificial Intelligence, and they make it Black… Why ? The question could be asked 😉 Why take the Wisest people / non-people ingame and make them black ? Like in Block Busters in Cinemas, the Army Colonel / The War Veteran is most of a time… a Black person !

Are black people wiser than white people and deserve higher positions ? The question could be asked as well 😁

Are studios doing that to present their apologies to all the harm done to “minorities” like black people ? And then show as a sign of good faith, that Black people have the best positions in their games ? Again the question could be asked 😉

It reminds me about the first successful mmorpg Everquest, where there were several races to choose from… And the highest intellectual race were… The Erudites ! And Erudites were… ? Black of course ! 😅

This is a subject i talk freely about because… my ex-wife is black and so my 2 children are Metisses 😍

Personally… If i was a lone scientist working very hard to save the world, most of the time confined to my scientific studies, i would think first about “World Survival” and not care about representing “minorities” or #blacklivematters.

Why would i care about minorities if my project was to fail in the end ? Nobody would even be alive to see that i cared about Black people… So when designing this SUPER AI… Gaia ! I would have made her to my image, because that would be the only image i would see in the mirror every fucking day !

Elizabet Sobek ingame is White, If we think in a realistic way, GAIA should have been made as her image.

Fighting against machines has never been more fun and rewarding ! Great Improvement from HZD !

Anyway, what's done is done… Horizon Forbidden West is far to be as interesting as the first episode was, but like Mass Effect Andromeda was to the rest of the series, it brought more dynamism and tried to include some “wise speech” to educate the people… The problem is we don't buy these games to be educated.

Some people designing these games think they're wise to “spread their good word”… but we don't have to agree, and if we don't agree the gaming experience for us will be bad. I'd rather have these designers think like if they were in the heads of their virtual characters, without being influenced by the external politics and activism of our fucking world.

We are already the targets of media brainwashing every day… i don't want video games to follow up in that direction.

+ Dynamic fights, it's really enjoyable to win a fight !
+ Superb Graphic design, even better than Horizon zero dawn
+ The Map is HUGE, feels like we're playing to Elder's Scrolls !
+ Quests and Side-Quests are Very interesting ! as long as you…

– …Don't listen to the Dialogues which are Ruining the game !
– Again Max Level of 60 which is quickly becoming a problem !
– Dialogues again… Who the hell supervised these ?!?