Horizon Forbidden West developers share cool new gameplay details

Guerrilla Games has shared details Horizon Forbidden West and main character Aloy’s new capabilities in a new Playstation developer’s blog. Her toolkit expands to include free climbing, swimming, melee weapons upgrades, more traversal methods, and she’ll use them to fight new machine enemies.

Horizon Zero DawnIt is well-known for its open, lush, climbable worlds and stealthy and archery-based gameplay. There are many other ways to get in on the action. Forbidden WestGuerrilla tried to improve these elements while keeping an eye out for how players would navigate through a ruined world. The dev blog, published Monday, provided context for a lot of the play footage that showed up in a 14-minute gameplay reveal first shown during Sony’s State of Play in March. This blog has tons of play footage and fun details.

“Aloy can climb freely on and across huge sections of rocky terrain,” wrote Guerrilla Games’ community lead Bo de Vries, “even more machine types can be used as mounts; grapple points can be found throughout the environment which allows agile vertical traversal; swimming underwater has opened up a whole new aspect of exploration; and gliding with the Shieldwing provides the ultimate view of the beautiful world of Horizon Forbidden West — not to mention a quick way down from great heights!”

Some highlights are:

• A greater sense of verticality in world traversal, where “rocky surfaces in these areas are freely climbable without the use of tribal handholds!”
• A “high vault traversal mechanic” which allows Aloy to “hoist herself on top of any object of jumpable height with room to pull up.”
• A new Pullcaster tool, which players can use to grapple launch and “manipulate and destroy their environment.” While in the air, players may “grab a higher ledge, fire their bow, glide, strike-from-above or even grapple to a further point.” The Pullcaster can also be used as a winch for “pulling a hidden loot chest from a ledge, or tearing open a vent to create a new climb path.”
• Another new tool, called the Shieldwing, looks like Horizon’s take on a Zelda-style glider; it will help Aloy land gracefully from all this climbing.

• A workbench is an area where players can make improvements to their weapons or outfits.
• New skill tree with many unlockable perks
• New melee features for the spear, including a “Resonator Blast” and a “Valor Surge” designed to reward players for their melee ingenuity (a huge upgrade for fans who felt melee was less useful in Zero Dawn
• Some factions allow humans to have mounts or steeds as part of their fighting force. You can also find In Zero Dawn, Human and machine encounters are very distinct.
• Though the blog mentioned swimming, it didn’t dive into (pun intended) any additional mechanics or details.

In addition to the finessed tactile feedback that is woven into DualSense wireless controllers, there were some other highlights on the developer blog for PlayStation 5 owners. These features allow for subtle touches, such as adaptive trigger tension while drawing the bow or the sensation of high grass when Aloy sneakily crawls across it.

“We put a lot of effort into creating more choice and depth for the players, and are super excited to see how people will play as Aloy with so many new possibilities of skills, weapons and gear she can obtain throughout the mysterious Forbidden West,” Dennis Zopfi, Guerrilla’s Lead Combat Designer, said.