Repost: Horizon Forbidden West Part 1

I will be doing some reflection on Game of the Year and I think it is important for my reflections on Horizon Forbidden West to be moved to this blog. I have no screencaps because I played this game in February before I was religiously taking screen captures to use for entries. I’m still mulling between a couple of games for my Game of the Year, and regret not being able to play Trails from Zero as that would be high on my list. Horizon is definitely in the running.

Here are the games I’m mulling for Game of the Year from what I have played:
Horizon Forbidden West
Inscryption
Xenoblade Chronicles 3
Final Fantasy Origin: Stranger of Paradise
Marvel: Midnight Suns

I’m going to do a Game of the Year Post as my last post of the year sometime around December 22nd where I will reflect on these five games and maybe some surprises.

Horizon is a four-part series so I will post these every couple of days before I do my Game of the Year reflection.

Part 1-Tribalism and Prejudice, an Overview

Horizon Forbidden West is a very deep game with a lot of layers so how the next series of posts will go is a combination between HFW posts and posts from other games I have been playing lately. It's backlog season, so all of the games I bought in January-March are now mostly played and I have a lot of ideas for content. Because of the amount I have planned for HFW, I do want to alternate since I tend to post about once a week on my good flows.

So first, Horizon Forbidden West is the second part of what looks to be at least a trilogy. Horizon Zero Dawn was the first game in the series and admittedly a game I got to very late. I had not heard of Guerilla studios before Horizon Zero Dawn and when I started listening to more video game podcasts it was past the coverage of Horizon Zero Dawn. I stumbled upon Horizon Zero Dawn on sale and loved the first game. In summary, Horizon takes place in a post-apocalyptic world 1000 years after the last humans on Earth launched the Zero Dawn project to try to prevent machines from destroying the world. What remained after Zero Dawn was a number of tribes scattered throughout the world with a lot of ancient relic sites. The main character Aloy is an outcast of the Nora tribe and finds out in her journey that she is a clone of the woman who led the Zero Dawn effort, Elizabet Sobeck. She found an ancient tool called a Focus which gives her access to information about the machines she fights and the people of the ancient world. The first game ends with defeating a machine called Hades who was trying to cause a mass extinction event for unknown reasons. Part 2 starts with Aloy trying to figure out the source of the "extinction signal" and how to prevent the machines from making Earth unlivable.

The Tribes of Horizon: Forbidden West

The first aspect of Horizon: Forbidden West which struck me right away was the tribalism. The first game took place in a relatively small map on the Eastern side of "America" and the main tribe, the Nora, created a lot of separation between themselves and everyone else. The second game focuses on relationships between the Carja, the Oseram, the Utaru, the Tenakth and the Quen. None of these tribes like each other and carry a lot of beliefs about how the other tribes behave. The Carja refer to the Tenakth as savages, the Utaru are a unique, peace-loving tribe connected with the Earth which the Carja and Oseram both find weird, the Quen are a reflective, intellectual tribe deeply curious about the past. Most of the prejudices become obvious through dialogue and time spent discerning how to advance the major events of the game.

The way the tribal tensions and the plot unfolds does a great service for how to manage complex relationships when conflicts start to spill over into other territories and trying to be an emissary through complex politics. To complicate matters further, the Tenakth have three clans all centered around different interpretations of the in-game lore about the Wings of the Ten, the last humans who fought in wars against machines. Each tribe has different dress, customs, and needs based on their topography. The Nora are not well known, outside of Aloy, who is the Savior of Meridian, a title she shrugs off every chance she gets. Aloy gets a lot of weird looks for being "so far West", because this world is very tribal and disconnected. Prejudice abounds and is a common political problem for Aloy to navigate as she gains cooperation of other tribes in doing her work to overcome the machines. Mythology is such an important part of world-making and the Wings of the Ten mythology is prominent and there will be a separate article dedicated to the Wings of the Ten mythology and how that influences the warrior culture of the Tenakth.

Prejudice in the Modern World

Prejudice is a common problem in our world. Because the media we are able to access easily is usually deeply slanted toward imperialism and the Western world, it is hard to find good resources which are truthful in their portrayal of the Western World and its effects on other people. It took me a lot of work and education and I'm still finding new resources and perspectives every day and have a lot of learning yet to do. The journey from tribalism and prejudice to even a tenuous peace takes study, patience, and deliberate efforts to build relationships. One of the genius ways Horizon Forbidden West develops the possibility of new relationships is by having one member of each tribe except the Carja join your base of operations. This happens integrally throughout the story and it didn't feel forced as is sometimes the case in games trying to bring together different factions. The in-base dialogue deals with the characters each having to deal with their own feelings about members of other tribes and the increased knowledge they are given when Aloy gives them a Focus from her collection. The next HFW article will be about how to engage with the process of finding new knowledge and how to sit with uncomfortable truths about their own belief patterns. 

Tribalism and prejudice are born from an active fear sensation created by encountering something different. It is very easy to get into a day-to-day routine which is isolating from new experiences and be comfortable in it, even if it is bad for us. Horizon: Forbidden West gives us a unique example of how an adventure which crosses into many lands changes many perspectives and creates grace, appreciation, and understanding while navigating challenging conversations about conflicting beliefs. What's nice in Horizon is that Aloy also changes as she encounters new tribes and legends. While her beliefs are not connected to those of ritual, she sees how the tribes her friends are a part of have shaped their belief and it does soften her a little bit throughout the course of the game. Also, if you feel like the odd one out in a lot of social situations, Horizon: Forbidden West is a special invitation to find those odd ones out in other circumstances and to build a special team. Seeing Aloy build a diverse community that she grows to care deeply about is one of the more heart-warming moments in the Horizon world and we all can build that beloved community as well. But to get there, we have to encounter, we have to see the truth, and we have to change. And in our world, if we don't want a Horizon: Forbidden West hellscape, we need to figure it out before it is too late.