Aside from Nemesis as a looming threat, Horizon 3’s story doesn’t have as many hard-and-fast expectations ascribed to it as, say, Marvel’s Spider-Man 3 does. Gameplay, however, has many low ceilings it could shatter, but it’s unknown how much Horizon 3 will commit to either elaborating on currently established mechanics or introducing new features to the franchise, which, at least at a macrocosmic level, hasn’t budged too drastically from the core gameplay formula it’s clung to for two games. That may not be wholly fair, though, when brand-new machine enemies have demanded new strategies to optimally hunt and dismantle them with the weapons that are available, and that’s the Horizon experience’s unctuous beef bone marrow.
Between Bellowbacks, Snapmaws, and Thunderjaws, there is no shortage of excellent machine enemy designs in both Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West. Not every machine may be as fun to fight as the next, as is the case with any ensemble of enemies in any game, but it can be particularly jarring when players go from a harrowing battle against Horizon Forbidden West’s Slaughterspine to nonchalantly clicking human bandit heads. Having human enemies around is a great way to extrapolate on worldbuilding, to be sure, yet there are rarely any human enemy combat scenarios that can compete with white-knuckled Frostclaw and Slitherfang encounters, and Horizon 3 ditching human enemies wholesale could unshackle the franchise at long last.
Horizon Forbidden West Struck the Perfect Balance of Tribes for Horizon 3
Horizon Forbidden West may have struck the right balance after adding several new tribes to the series, something which Horizon 3 should try to keep.
Horizon’s Human Enemies are Somewhat of a Necessary Evil
Human enemies aren’t intrinsically a negative aspect of open-world action-RPGs, but there is at least one glaring, inescapable issue that actively works against them in the Horizon series: human enemies aren’t nearly as interesting as machine enemies. In any other post-apocalypse story, humans have the potential to be terrifying, morally complicated individuals when the sci-fi backdrop they’re placed in front of isn’t as prominent as they are.
This is true of the enduring Walking Dead franchise, where dogged, unremarkable zombies are rarely more menacing than the people that Rick Grimes and his companions have been unfortunate enough to come across, for instance, and even The Last of Us, whose infected are unique and horrifying but are no less a backdrop for the tragic relationships between characters. In Horizon, the backdrop is as novel as it is exciting, and that’s what Guerrilla has successfully led with thus far, but that’s arguably put humans on the back burner as far as enemy variety is concerned.
Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West’s human enemy factions include:
- Bandits
- Eclipse
- Rebels of established tribes, such as Regalla’s Tenakth rebels
It’s also important to note that Horizon isn’t a typical post-apocalypse story depicting society’s collapse and peoples’ struggles to cope. Rather, because Horizon’s story events take place far enough into the future that it’s become an overwritten landscape with little knowledge publicly known about what came before, humans don’t have to reconcile with the alarming state of the world as some nightmarish purgatory that’s disfiguring and challenging the kind of people they are.
This is the world they’re familiar with and, even if they all knew about a previous civilization where animal-themed machines hadn’t been ubiquitous yet, it wouldn’t affect them beyond knowing that’s how everything they know came to be, but it’d still be of little consequence for most people who live their lives in distinct tribes and must meet the demands of their humble lifestyles nonetheless.
Still, even if Horizon’s tribe conflicts are intriguing enough to reinforce human versus human quarrels, machines eclipse them in every regard. Human enemies are valuable as they give weight to these conflicts, yet they’ll never equate to machines concerning set-pieces or epic battle sequences.
Horizon 3 Can Fix a Forbidden West Problem by Copying Another PlayStation Game’s Homework
Of all the possible features Horizon 3 could have, one borrowed from an open-world PlayStation colleague could be the most fascinating.
Horizon’s Machines Have Always Been the Star, Not Humans
Horizon Forbidden West’s Far Zenith are one of the most exciting human factions that the IP has introduced, and it’s largely because of how distinct, advanced, and alien they are in Horizon’s brand of sci-fi. That said, as long as new animals are represented as enemies in the Horizon franchise, machines may always be the most popular part of the IP, and that’s perhaps how it ought to be.
Massive machine creatures have proven to be a fascinating element of Horizon, providing players with diverse bow-and-arrow/ranged-weapon combat while strategizing how to tackle each autonomous beast. Indeed, there are many more animal-esque designs the series has yet to adapt, too, such as there hypothetically being enormous, mechanical spiders in Horizon 3, spinning some sort of artificial silk between mountainsides, and that’s a beautifully blank canvas it gets to paint on.
Horizon will eventually need to become quite niche and suspend disbelief when it comes to new machine creatures, since there might only be so many animal archetypes left that’d immersively make sense within the world they’ve been produced for, but it’d be surprising if players perceived Guerrilla’s imagination and ingenuity as narrative friction if it meant that they’d be treated to incredible machine designs.
Horizon Forbidden West’s underwater features could be a terrific foundation for the threequel, and a dreadful, horrifying shark machine, for example, could make dipping a toe in the ocean a paralyzing proposition. Miscellaneous human enemies, such as rebels, and even Zeniths, would have to become preposterously fascinating in order to emerge from machines’ shadows, especially when the shadows they cast are as gargantuan as Horus’ tentacles in Horizon Forbidden West’s Burning Shores DLC.
In Horizon, the backdrop is as novel as it is exciting, and that’s what Guerrilla has successfully led with thus far, but that’s arguably put humans on the back burner as far as enemy variety is concerned.
Humans can continue to have an integral emphasis in the story, intertwining various side characters into Aloy’s life with possible decisions for the player to make about what their societies’ fates may be, but Horizon 3 should be able to shed old skin and withdraw from human enemies and their open-world filler content. Meanwhile, depending on how much Horizon 3 actually stretches its legs, human enemies may not be going anywhere if they’re deemed a vital facet of Horizon’s enemy variety.
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 89 /100 Critics Rec: 90%
- Released
- March 21, 2024
- ESRB
- T For Teen Due To Blood, Language, Use of Alcohol, Violence
- Developer(s)
- Guerrilla Games, Nixxes
- Publisher(s)
- PlayStation PC LLC
- Engine
- Decima
- Franchise
- Horizon
WHERE TO PLAY
Join Aloy as she braves a majestic but dangerous new frontier that holds mysterious new threats. This Complete Edition allows you to enjoy the critically acclaimed Horizon Forbidden West on PC in its entirety with bonus content, including the Burning Shores story expansion that picks up after the main game.
- Genre(s)
- Action-Adventure, Open-World
- How Long To Beat
- 30 Hours
