If you missed out on the free download period for Horizon Zero Dawn, fear not, we at Go2Games HAD it on the store, but now it’s gone, oops.
Horizon Forbidden West is being developed by Guerrilla Games, who have recently made some statements regarding gameplay, tools, weapons and skills. For a little deep dive into other news on the game and rumblings of a new multiplayer game or mode, check my last article here. Here’s a 14 minute gameplay preview if, like me, you’re more a visual learner.
David McMullen, lead systems designer at Guerrilla, made some statements regarding the game in PlayStation’s official blog site: First, expanding on the 14 minute preview’s use of Alloy’s new Pullcaster, ‘a mechanical wrist-mounted device with two separate functions […] a grapple mechanic, allowing the player to swiftly and easily ascend the environment and providing a dynamic traversal/escape option to the player toolkit’. McMullen also describes that it’s possible to channel your inner Errol Flynn by going swing-swang from your dangalang while firing your bow off at enemies from using the Pullcaster to launch yourself into the air before giving a high-up location the good ol’ grapple-dapple… I’m exaggerating, but not by much.
Furthermore, the Pullcaster also has a winch function, allowing you to go full Nathan Brake on the environment to pull up hidden treasures large objects, like in Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, which we DO just so happen to have!
We also have more updates on the Shieldwing glider and if I didn’t know any better, I’d say that based on the naming, maybe the Shieldwing will have more than one basic function.
Slightly borrowing from Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (which we also have, wink wink), Horizon Forbidden West will also include a “shooting from above” skill, which, based on a similar skill in Zero Dawn, slowed down time briefly as you aim while in the air. That plus some new skill tree additions, including freeclimbing abilities so you can more easily scale the fatta the land.
New weapons mentioned in the skilltree that will have relevant effects includes the Spike Thrower: Presumably a harpoon-like weapon, specialized for fighting “larger targets”, coming with various elemental ammo types.
Dennis Zopfi, Guerrilla’s lead combat designer for the game has also made statements regarding character-accurate gameplay mechanics – “Aloy is not a character who deals with brute force, so we were looking for ways to have the player go back and forth between melee and range, where she could use her precise bow skills to work towards a big payoff moment”
“a (new) skill that does this is the Resonator Blast, where you charge up the spear with melee hits and when fully powered up, the energy can be placed on enemies (humans and machines alike) and followed up with a projectile – resulting in a big damaging explosion”! In addition, the article states that the open world will include encounters that mix up both human and non-human enemies, whereas the first game mostly had the bad robo boys and the bad human boys in separate contextual arenas most of the time, so that’ll lead to some interesting scenarios. Kinda like how in The Last of Us Left Behind DLC, you could stealth your way around and throw a bottle near a bloke with a gun so that you can go Napoleon on their ass to divide and conquer!
Sony has announced the game will be delayed till February 18, 2022. They have also decided to backpedal on its previous offer of free PlayStation 5 graphics updates to those who bought the Playstation 4 standard edition, mild downer but hey, at least that means more time to improve the main game.
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