Horizon Forbidden West releases soon, so prepare with this short story

“I saw both banks of the river — I saw that once there had been god-roads across it, though now they were broken and fallen like broken vines. Very great they were, and wonderful and broken — broken in the time of the Great Burning when the fire fell out of the sky. And always the current took me nearer to the Place of the Gods, and the huge ruins rose before my eyes.”

So wrote Stephen Vincent Benét in The Waters of BabylonA 1937 story called ‘The Short Story of Hubris and Religion,’ which tells the tale about a tribe whose history has been long forgotten.

It centers on a character who embarks on a journey to abandoned places to make sense of the knowledge with which he’s been burdened. In many ways it is a great overture. Horizon Forbidden West. As a Hill People tribal member, the protagonist is allowed to become Priest to allow him to travel to the Place of the Gods. The only thing he carries is a bow and an arrow. Wild animals are what he encounters. He avoids rival tribes. He examines relics from an old civilization.

I first read the story as a freshman in high school, when my reading comprehension was … Subpar. I was also a dog’shit at attention span. Yet, I still remember feeling immediately hooked and completely captivated by the story. Benét’s writing unfurls with the simple ferocity of great prose and a thick fog of mystery enshrouds the whole endeavor. There’s You can also find out more about a Surprise that I won’t spoil here — but I will say that similar twists have popped up in a handful of major stories in the intervening decades. (It’s obvious by today’s standards, sure, but it’s still a thrill to see how Benét deployed it in 1937.)

The Waters of Babylon It is melancholy also in the ways that Horizon Zero Dawn was. Aloy and the Priest are both solitary characters, cursed with loneliness but blessed by solitude. The two were forced to confront a terrifying situation, with little preparation and no direction. They had played approximately 25 hours. Horizon Forbidden West, I can confirm that the same melancholy — and Aloy’s same savior complex — is present in the sequel. As she sifts through the wreckage of the Old Ones (21st-century humans), she uncovers increasing evidence of humanity’s weaknesses, and the last-ditch efforts they made, and failed to make, as their society crumbled.

Robot dinosaurs are not found in The Waters of Babylon. But you’re not a priest. Horizon Forbidden West. But Guerilla Games’ rapidly approaching sequel is as good an excuse as any to revisit one of my favorite short stories and, like an adventurer sifting through the past, relive a brief moment in time.

It is possible to read The Waters of Babylon here. It’s a 15-page PDF, and should take you about 20 minutes to finish.