In Horizon: Forbidden West, Guerilla Games have created the most satisfying combat experience that I’ve had in a game—maybe ever. I will try not to stray into hyperbole in this piece, but clearly, HFW hit almost every note right for me, and I will have more to say about the rest of the game in the coming weeks. For now, though, we will concentrate on the kinesthetics of Aloy, her combat abilities, and the enemies she faces.
Years ago, I questioned the common wisdom that first-person games are more immersive and ‘visceral’ than third-person games. Supposedly, the camera-through-the-eyes experience places the player more squarely in the shoes of the player-character, and creates a deeper sense of immersion. For me, however, I find myself distracted by the way the incorporeality of the character affects movement and vision, and the extremely strange way that one’s hands are almost always visible. The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim in particular suffers from this, in that the player-character can be sprinting across an open field, not even carrying a weapon, and still their hands are held out in front like a cartoon mummy’s.
In the first-person perspective, I find I lose all sense of the physicality of the character I am playing as. Of course, I cannot see much of my own body in the real world while walking or running, but I can feel its presence. Because I can’t do that in a videogame, I find that the visual information about just how my character moves and interacts with the environment is crucial to identifying with that character. In a game like Assassin’s Creed, for example, the fluidity of movement, the costumes, and the interactions that Altair, Ezio et al have with their environment is essential to the experience of those characters.
I put Aloy in the same category—she is an accomplished athlete and warrior, able to run, jump, climb, and fight in myriad ways. Her weapons are visually striking, as is her characteristic red hair. In fact, Aloy’s hair color is how many, many characters in the world come to identify her. Furthermore, her red hair allows her to blend invisibly into the tall grass of the same conspicuous color throughout the environment. So both
narratively and mechanically, the visual appearance of her hair is important, and would not be visible to the player at all in a first-person perspective.
I also feel that the third person perspective creates the type of combat that appeals to me more than first-person. HFW (like its predecessor) combines ranged and melee fighting but leans heavily in favor of various types of bows, slings, and other projectile weapons. Despite this, I never feel that Horizon’s combat descends into the chaotic sprint and spray kind of action that typifies most first-person shooters. There was a very brief window of time during which I enjoyed Unreal Tournament, but I always found Quake far too fast. Modern FPS games such as Overwatch or Apex Legends remain simply too fast for me, frustrating and nauseating in their speed. There is a reason that the FPS I spent the most time in was DayZ, when it was still a mod on the Arma 2 engine. In that game, the combat was slow, methodical, and characterized more by hiding and not shooting than by running and gunning.
Horizon relies on slower-paced weapons, mostly bows. Even the boltblaster, a gatling gun of sorts, takes a long time to wind up and beginfiring. Bows and slingshots must all be drawn back before firing, encouraging careful aiming and time between shots. Most bows gain a damage bonus for a full draw, and every type of shot benefits from careful aiming. The exception to this is the warrior bow class, which is designed as a short-range, rapid fire bow, for those who prefer to mix arrows with close-range melee combat. Still, it feels more like a semi-automatic handgun than either a sub-machine gun or assault rifle. The hunter bow is a mid-range weapon, and the sharpshot bow is a long-range, sniper-like option.
The ability to shoot is only one half of the equation, though. The target is just as important. In Horizon, the typical enemies are an assortment of animal-like machines which come in a broad array of shapes and sizes. Beginning with roughly human-sized burrowers which look and move somewhat like ferrets or otters, and progressing steadily to enormous hog/rhino hybrids, crocodiles, a number of avian archetypes, long-horned antelopes, hippopotamuses, big cats, enormous cobras, velociraptors, woolly mammoths, and tyrannosaur variants, there is no shortage of variety of opponents.
Each machine type possesses a particular behavior, attack repertoire, and elemental component that gestures towards their animalistic features. Some are fairly logical connections, such as the plesiosaur machine which sprays a water-type attack being weak against ice and electric damage. The mammoth swings massive tusks as it charges forward and the huge cobra deals acid damage. Others are somewhat more abstract, with different variants of bears, for example, using either ice or fire damage.
This elemental concept of damage and weakness is evocative of (usually fantasy-themed) role-playing games such as World of Warcraft. Many enemies will have strength against certain elements and weakness against certain others. They also generally produce an attack which the player must in turn prepare to resist by applying appropriate armor, enchantments, potions, or similar counters. This was especially true in the earliest incarnations of WoW. The trick in the Horizon world is that these fantasy elements have been applied to a high-tech, sci-fi aesthetic in the machines.
Thus, the combination of a third-person perspective, with a slow-fire weapon, elemental damage, and high-tech enemies creates a sublime pastiche of elements of an array of game tropes (and sci-fi/fantasy literature in general) that I find irresistible.
This is not to say that the game itself is slow-paced, or even that the combat feels slow. Indeed, many of the machines move very quickly, and can easily cover the ground between themselves and Aloy. To deal with this, there are two main techniques: the first is the slow-down mechanic that is often referred to as ‘bullet time’ which allows the player to aim Aloy’s bows more carefully. This way, she can hit and detach armor plating or cause elemental explosions with much greater precision. This slow down effect is a limited resource, however, so in longer fights the player must strategize in other ways.
Preparation for more difficult fights is key. Even on the easier difficulties, it is simply not possible to defeat larger, more dangerous machines (which Aloy must eventually do) by standing still and firing the wrong kind of arrow. Thus, the player must take the time to review the strengths and weaknesses of the machine, and match them against their currently available weapon loadout. Ideally (for me) I would have a bow that fires every type of ammunition, and so can simplify my strategy to a guerilla-style of mid-range shots. Otherwise, one must be more creative with, for example, a bow, thrown spear, or disc launcher. Each requires different tactics regarding moving Aloy in relation to the enemy machine.
Even with my array of bows, if I am unable to defeat the machine in a first salvo, I must do something else to survive. Smoke bombs are a powerful option, giving Aloy the ability to disappear back into the long grass and set up for more long-ranged shots on the machine. In other cases, she can lay various kinds of tripwires and traps which can target the machine’s weakness to knock it down. This will give Aloy the opportunity to flee to a safer distance and resume firing. Therefore, preparing Aloy’s arsenal and setting up the battlefield with a few traps of various types will be essential in the
more difficult fights.
Although planning is one of the strategic elements encouraged by the game, one of the best features of other open world games is also present here: even the best-laid plans can go awry. With echoes of the Far Cry series, many fights descend into chaos with the unexpected addition of additional machines or an environmental problem the player did not account for. One of the best ways this can happen is that the new machine might have a different weakness that can be exploited to damage the original foe. For example, bellowbacks sport large elemental reservoirs which, if detonated, will cause massive acid or fire damage to anything caught in the blast area. Similarly, shock cores can be hit with electrical damage and cause any nearby machine to suffer a catastrophic overload.
The ideal outcome for these unplanned battles is enormously satisfying. The combination of Aloy’s athleticism and ability to run, slide into slow-motion, quickly adjust ammunition type, target a specific part of the new enemy, fire and strike the small weak point that triggers a cascade of corrosive acid to cover both machines, all within a few seconds, is action-hero gold.
On the higher difficulties, precision becomes even more important. Defeated machines provide Aloy and her allies with a vast range of parts and supplies for everything from basic arrows to upgrades for legendary armor. On the low to medium difficulty, these drop from downed machines as a matter of course, much like any other RPG loot system. With harder settings, the player must make very careful decisions about how to attack the machine, because the parts used in the crafting system are likely to be destroyed during the battle. Therefore, the player must carefully target only the weak points which are not part of their current objective in order to collect them after downing the machine. If, for example, your legendary bow upgrade requires the ‘fireclaw sac webbing’ then it is best not to detonate the sacs of blaze that the fireclaw carries.
For me, these kinds of combat mechanics are at their best not when the player-character is given, develops or earns massive, overwhelming firepower but rather something of a butterfly effect, when a small intervention by the player-character has an outsized impact. When the single arrow of the right type, in just the right place causes a huge explosion and downs two machines, especially when the wrong arrow at the wrong time is less than meaningless—that is so much better than Aloy having access to a rocket launcher that blows everything up in one shot.
For all its success, I won’t say that Horizon’s combat is perfect. The melee options could be explored a little further, even if the focus will remain on ranged weapons. Upgrading Aloy’s melee combat amounts to adding different patterns of pressing R1 to create combos which I found less than compelling. I am not sure how much controller real estate can be dedicated to the spear in this game, but R1 and R2 didn’t quite feel like enough. I’d say most third person action games could learn a thing or two from the Ezio series of Assassin’s Creed games, and certainly from Batman: Arkham Asylum. B:AA in particular created a very muscular sense of melee combat that managed to connect Batman to his enemies with impressive variety and power.
Much more can be said about Horizon, even about its combat—I haven’t even mentioned the human adversaries—but I will return to the game again soon. I found so much of it engaging, from Aloy’s personality and relationships with companions, the environment and its embedded storytelling, the explicit plot, and the many other characters that occupy the world were all worth noting. So too is the fact that Horizon is a relatively new game series in an industry replete with many, many serialized franchises. Establishing a new character with such personality, in a world so recognizable and compelling, is a major accomplishment that I hope to explore further in future posts.