@Fabricant451 So to change the subject. What would be your argument/sales pitch for the Horizon Forbidden West? Like, what does it do better than its predecessor? Or other "open world games" of its ilk. (Since you don't seem fond of Far Cry, BoTW or Elden Ring.)
I'd guess Monster Hunter would be something you'd be fond of. (If that's something you've played.) Since bow-style combat with large colorful monsters seem to be the core gameplay, from what little I've browsed from lets plays of the game. (And the minimap looks very much like an Ubisoft open world game. Which is more of an observation than anything else.)
Oh boy, I get to talk about a game I enjoy!
Okay, so, to talk about Forbidden West I have to mention its predecessor, Zero Dawn, and how it also came out at a time when the 'Ubisoft' style of open world game design hadn't yet truly gotten as stale as it has since but nor had we yet been given an example of the next step in that evolution of the genre. Skyrim was still basically held up as like the pinnacle of modern open world games (for some reason!) and of course Zero Dawn had a lot going for it and a lot going
against it. It was made by the studio that was known for making Killzone and this was a massive departure in terms of tone and gameplay and most of all it had the unfortunate honor of releasing mere days before Breath of the Wild came out and ushered in what many assumed would be new ground in open world games.
Zero Dawn came out of the gate swinging by giving you a simple premise of "hunter-gatherer girl against robot dinosaurs" and that alone could've made for a decently enjoyable game, but what Zero Dawn did was create a
world and craft a narrative that still is, for my money, one of the best in recent memory, though it comes with the caveat of so much of Zero Dawn is spent on answering the question of "What happened and why?" that less of it is spent on "Who are these people and why should I care about them?" because the characters with few exceptions are fairly one dimensional and Aloy herself is more of a means for the player to learn about the lore alongside her rather than a truly well defined character. But that narrative is genuinely compelling and by the end of it there's a truly satisfying story, one of video gaming's greatest villains, and enough there that a sequel was possible but not something that necessarily written with in mind.
All that said, Forbidden West doubles down
hard on the elements that worked while also improving a lot of what didn't, specifically and especially the characters. But I'll get to them.
What makes Forbidden West so much better than the Ubisoft style open world or even most other open world 'sandbox' style games is, quite simply, the attention to detail. Yes, the gameplay is great (again, more on that) but if you've played Far Cry 3 then you've played Far Cry 4, 5, New Dawn, and 6. Even if you haven't. You have. If you've played Watch Dogs 1, you've played 2. You've played 3. But you also know that when you pay a Far Cry game you're not going in expecting to really care about characters, story, or even give a shit about the world and the game knows this, it's why it's not trying to hide that you're not there to learn about the place and you just want to go crazy and shoot bad people. It's safe, it's fine, and it hits a certain niche similar to, say, the Dynasty Warriors games.
Forbidden West (and Zero Dawn) does have the same type of gameplay systems but it also has a fully realized and deeply rich and developed world with a variety of cultures, customs, characters, and creeds. It's a game where there are multiple different tribes of people and each and every one is distinct and different and it shows in every bit of their habitat. You start the game in a relatively small area hanging out with the metalworking tribe and you see how they operate and work and how it informs their culture without just reading a book you found on a shelf like in an Elder Scrolls game or something. They have their own expletives, their own clothing, their own antiquated beliefs. You spend a good amount of time with them and then you enter the real map and you almost immediately meet a tribe made up of three different clans under the same umbrella. And shortly after that an entirely new tribe. And another. And each of them are all developed so well just from context clues and immersive worldbuilding and design that by the time you realize
why the salute for the Tenakth looks so familiar it all makes sense. Because
of course. Of course all the Utaru have single syllable names that are named in reverence of their land-gods which have names that they don't understand the significance of (but we do).
Forbidden West is such an immaculately crafted world that it tricks you into not realizing that there are clear biomes like any other game of its ilk because of how seamless and well built its world is. The southern area is the desert, the northwest is the snow, the southwest is the jungle and beach, and so on, but every area flows together and makes the world feel so much more vibrant and well realized and immersive in a way that other games just don't really care about enough to make it more than fun little easter eggs. There's a real lived-in vibe in every corner of the game and combined with the visual story telling makes the world as much a character as the characters.
And the characters in Forbidden West are a gigantic improvement over Zero Dawn, not even just Aloy (who is a much more realized character now) and her band of important NPCs, but side quest characters or characters you meet and deal with through the main quest, there's a craft and attention to making you care about these characters that you may not even really see more than twice that is just so rarely seen that it stands out. Obviously the main cast get the most development, but even the supporting get their time, like how early on you can do a side quest for sisters who craft weapons and want to use explosives in their design and then later not only do you find them in a different place but you continue to help them deal with more than just "how to make a spear explode when thrown".
Whereas in other games of its type, like Far Cry or yes even Skyrim, the things you do in game have a very clear and important effect that makes it feel like you are genuinely impacting the world around you. Take out a camp of rebels? They don't come back and later some friendlies will have set up camp and shop there and turn it into a nice outpost and you'll see fewer rebels out in the wilds because of it. Do a character's side mission to help with crops? Come back after it's done and you'll see the effects and the crops growing. It's things like that that make the game worth exploring, the tangible sense of player involvement, of feeling less like you're going through the motions. It makes the world feel alive and that you are as much a participant and not just a player.
And even if that isn't what someone cares about, the gameplay is solid and fun with distinct playstyles that offer their own benefits. The first game was optimized in such a way that the best way to play it was to just use your whistle and kill lower rank machines/humans in one go and then use your tearblaster and ropecaster to make the big enemies harmless. Forbidden West takes away the whistle and changes the way the ropecaster works and upgrades the enemies (which also is lore justified!) to where you can't just do the same thing for every enemy and you have to genuinely think about your approach (unless you play on lower difficulties). An enemy has a lot of armor? Acid melts armor. But the enemy is resistant to acid? What do you do now? These enemies have parts you need but are too fast for you to shoot off the part before they die? Better think of how to handle this. You're making moment to moment decisions which keeps every encounter fun and engaging without feeling too chaotic. In the first game, you never got to fight a Thunderjaw and a Stormbird (the two biggest, hardest machines in that game) together. In Forbidden West not only do you get to and not only is it a fucking genuine tense thrill, but there are even bigger and harder machines to fight. Even the smaller enemies are dangerous (to a point, of course) because they travel in packs and getting hit by them
hurts especially if you're wearing an outfit that has, say, bad frost resistance and the enemy shoots ice at you.
There's a variety of weapons and playstyles that make it so any approach is viable but no singular approach is going to carry you. My favorite weapon in the game is a risk/reward weapon that sends out a shredder disc that comes back to you like a jai alai ball and if you catch it two times then the third attack of it makes the disc do more damage and explode, blowing off armor or causing an elemental burst based on what kind of ammo you use. But you could also just override a machine and let it fight for you or use traps and guide the robots into them or use a rapid fire turret to quickly rack up elemental effects, or DoTs or sniper focus on taking off components and machine weapons to use against them. It creates a fun, often chaotic experience that offers the flexibility and freedom to solve a problem your own way.
Yes, there are Ubisoft style towers to climb to unlock map icons, but even those are environmental puzzles and not just 'climb to the top', and yes Aloy does offer too many hints to the player who might want to solve a puzzle on their own but I don't care, that doesn't bother me nor does it take me out of the game.
Everything I do in Forbidden West feels like meaningful progression in a way that most open worlds just don't. My issue with BOTW was that I stopped getting excited to find a shrine because at the end it would just be the same reward. My issue with Ghost of Tsushima was that 60 percent of the map icons were just fox dens. My issue with Elden Ring is that the optional dungeons are eerily similar and offer, thus far, no real good reason to do them. Yes, there are similar things in Forbidden West but considerably fewer of them and the meaningful stuff is much more relevant and present to where it never feels like I'm ticking a box.
BOTW and Elden Ring aren't bad games at all but the kind of experience they offer is different than the one Forbidden West does. Forbidden West is, hands down, the best of its contemporaries when its contemporaries include the Far Cries and Tushimas of the gaming world. And if Horizon 3 sticks the landing then I'll comfortably call it the greatest video game sci fi trilogy to date.
