Horizon Forbidden West, as a video game, has so many things going on that keeps you playing on and on that in my original review, I dubbed it an open-world buffet. Full of things to do that will get you full. Maybe too many of the same things. But still, the portion being served out is plentiful.
And after all that, there’s DLC? Developer Guerilla has made an expansion for Forbidden West, just like Zero Dawn before it, that serves as another serving of this open-world RPG. It’s a rather exclusive serving, with it being only available on the PS5 (the base game is available on PS4 and PS5). And it’s also designed to only be available once you finish the main story.
Is Burning Shores worth it? Well, for the price you’re paying for, rest assured that your Horizon game is throughly expanded with the expansion. But the best bit is the smart design decisions that the game has taken.
First, let’s set up the story of Burning Shores. The non-spoiler version is this: Aloy gets a call from an acquaintance that gives her a lead on possible new information to deal with an incoming threat and she heads to the Burning Shores, post-post-apocalypse Los Angeles. From there, she teams up with a new companion Seyka, figure out a local mystery and face the local baddie.
And for the spoiler-filled version, it’s the next paragraph (scroll down to the next image to skip):
Aloy gets contacted by frenemy Sylens, on a lead to the last remaining Zenith still alive. She heads to the Burning Shores and teams up with Seyka to investigate the mysterious disappearance of her people, and face off against the last remaining space-person from the pre-post-post-apocalypse days, Walter Londra and maybe learn more about the imminent threat of Nemesis along the way.
The story setup is fascinating and definitely has been alluded to in the base game before.
In the expansion, we get to see more of this cyber-tribal culture, this particular tribe discovered remnants of ancient techs, worship the people of the past as Ancestors and with various corpo-jargon being used as titles, like Compliance, Risk Manager and whatnot.
Aloy really meets her match with Seyka, in more ways than one. Seyka’s just as formidable in combat (she’s a Quen Marine, the tribe’s soldier class) and can be as sassy with the words as Aloy is. Her brash demeanour and willingness to go against rules to take action where everyone else does nothing also quite mirror our protagonist’s personality. It’s no surprise the two hit off rather well. It’s as if the writers decide that the best foil for Aloy is another Aloy, again. But figuratively this time.
I like the dynamic Aloy and Seyka have here. And it has a payoff in the end, which also makes you remember that this is an RPG after all. The dialogue system only has a few opportunities where you pick how to respond, but at least the few moments that do are all emotionally impacting, showcasing some of the best performances by the cast.
If you jump into Burning Shores all cold after completing the game back at launch last year, man, you’re in for some trouble. The game is designed around players at level 45 and above, with plenty of difficult machine encounters. And by difficult, I mean “fights drag on too long that another machine nearby says hello and tags in, dragging it longer”.
There are so many, maybe too many, instances of a machine hunt being too overwhelming thanks to the sheer number of them.
There are new machines as well, like the Bilegut. This frog-like machine can swipe you with its long tongue, but what’s more dangerous is that it can spawn swarms of bug machines to, again, overwhelm you with numbers.
You’ll need some time to warm up and get yourself comfortable with Horizon again. The game conveniently lets you go around and explore a bit before committing to the next story quest right after the intro sequence, so you can use that time to acclimatise to Horizon’s unique brand of gameplay compared to other open-world titles.
That point really resonates with me this time around, as I just been playing a couple of other action and action-adventure titles recently. This game controls differently and I have to unlearn some muscle memories to really get into the rhythm of things.
For example, I kept dying during ledge climbing sequences where I pressed circle (which in most games make you drop down a ledge, but in Horizon makes Aloy jump in the opposite direction) instead of square. It makes sense in Horizon’s logic to do so- square is also the default button to crouch. And you can change the button bindings. But I didn’t bother and this is the consequences of my actions.
Another interesting observation I’ve seen is how the world is designed. It’s a new, smaller open-world map yet the game won’t give you access to it all right up the bat. Activities aren’t dolled out in a checklist-y manner. There are no Tallnecks, and hence, there are no towers to climb. Most of the points of interest can be uncovered by just floating around that part of the map, since by this point you’re expected to travel by air more often.
Burning Shores doesn’t let you loose on an open world and say “have fun” immediately. You’re expected to progress the story quests bit by bit, and then go on and about with your little diversions to explore the many islands dotted around the new map.
Size-wise, the map seems so tiny compared to the base game, but you have to consider that Forbidden West’s map is gargantuan, bloated even. Burning Shores hit a sweet spot, Just enough land to run around and see what’s on there, plenty of sea (though not enough underwater exploring), and a playspace designed well to traverse around on a big mechanic bird.
Using the big birds to open crates and open puzzle rooms are interesting ideas, but the bird controls lack the precision to make doing these often fun.
The amount of extra content- busywork for some- has been reduced, but that makes what’s there ever the more memorable.
The collectables of the expansion, collectable dinosaur figures, are great fun to find as you get to do mini-scavenger hunts that encourage you to read the notes. Those aren’t just lore dumps, there can be clues to where you need to go next. It’s great, more of these please (but keep the portion size similar- 20 of these would be tiring).
There are some teething issues that I have had in Forbidden West but was fine with them, but really feel off right now in 2023. Every five or so footsteps I take I press R3. And this is because the environmental graphics are now so rich and dense that I cannot for the life of me see by eye where the interactable items are. This is a game where all the traversable points marked in garish yellow are excusable- by default, these elements blend too well with the surroundings.
The other is how looting is such a tedious process. Component parts from machines can spew off way further than you might expect, and trying to loot the many, many, many machines in the aftermath of a fight is cumbersome.
And yes, this is another moment where the right analog stick gets clicked ever so often. And if you’re trying to loot the many machines, taking some time in doing so, during the main quest Seyka may berate you for taking time dilly-dallying. Shut up, I need to make sure I got all the purple an orange parts I meticulously shot looted properly!
There are probably some accessibility settings that I haven’t turned on to mitigate these two specific issues. But the one I did use, auto-pickup loot, is not as helpful as I expected. It indiscriminately pick up all the rocks laying about- which are useless when you have more than three of them at hand- while there are so many other important loot that doesn’t get picked up automatically because it’s technically a crate/box so you have to hold a button to open them. Scrapped parts as crates that just contain shards should be scrapped in the next game, that’s just busywork.
Loot is very generous in the Burning Shores. So many purple and orange chests that gives you plenty of shards to spend. And that is compensated by the abundance of new orange-rated weapons and gear to buy and upgrade. Most gear acquired from the Burning Shores require Brightgleam to upgrade, a new separate ore resource collectable.
But still, it’s worth pushing through all of this. The plot is decent too. It’s another riff of the base game’s main plot about “living ancestors”, but this time it gives a glimpse of what the rich and famous were up to before the world was doomed from rampant AI, egotistical CEOs and capitalism in general.
It’s always charming to see the people of the post-post-apocalypse rediscovering the past- the present for us in the audience- and either be amazed or utterly confused by our culture and practices. Why do we anthropomorphise creatures by having them wear funny hats?
There are some darker aspects too if you read through the lore dumps that are the datalogs. A reminder that there are bleaker aspects of the world that the game doesn’t show upfront.
The story sets up possible new threads for the next Horizon game to go. But I do fear that the charm of the cyber-tribal people may wear off as the plot is heading towards more sci-fi. Aloy is mostly caught up with the traditions of the old people now that she speaks like us and if more of her friends and enemies are, I fear the series will end up being a generic sci-fi story.
The appeal of Horizon, for me, is how it melds a world where humans live in a tribal society with rudimentary tech, but the world itself is full of futuristic machines and ruins of a more technologically advanced society which to them, seems like pure magic. That gap of knowledge between us the audience, the characters, and the future world we sort of know but everything that can go wrong with it have gone wrong, is what makes Horizon appealing.
If the story goes full sci-fi, then most of its fascinating twists and turns will be reduced to silly levels of threat escalations because power creep has occurred.
I took my time with the expansion, and with about 50% completion and the main story quest finished, I clocked in about 15 hours. A pretty hefty runtime for a DLC, and is more than enough. You still need to beat the main game first to even get access to this, which is about 30 hours or so if you rush through it.
Verdict
Overall, I find Burning Shores to hit the right spot. It takes a while to acclimatise again to Horizon’s brand of gameplay, and it does have its share of issues that might need revising when the next game arrives. But Horizon’s greatest strengths, its worldbuilding, its character moments, and the audio-visual fidelity being presented to you are still some of the best in video games. With Burning Shores, Horizon Forbidden West continues to be an excellent showcase of the PS5’s power.
If you love Horizon Forbidden West, Burning Shores must not be missed. It’s for the dedicated players and fans who finished the main quest and want more Horizon, while we wait for the next Horizon game which, from all the signs we’ve seen, is surely on the horizon.
Reviewed on PS5. Review code provided by the publisher