Horizon: Forbidden West Reworks Skill Tree And More

Earlier this year Sony held a State of Play event to showcase the gameplay of their upcoming sequel Horizon: Forbidden West, developed by Guerilla Games. While much of the combat should seem familiar to players of the first title, we did get a few glimpses at new abilities, gadgets, and moves that will be featured.

Today a new PlayStation Blog post from Guerilla Games has offered more clarity on a few of those things showcased then as well as a few new abilities. While no new gameplay has been shown since then, this should still help boost excitement for fans awaiting the game.

First and foremost, the game has upgraded the way the player can explore the world. This was showcased with Aloy climbing around on vines, as well as using a grappling hook to traverse. The choice to add features like this was stated to be “in service of increasing dynamic interactivity with the world around you.” This of course led to the team rethinking the level design of the game, allowing for more destructibility and more traversable paths.

Another addition to exploration is the free climbing system similar to the Uncharted and Tomb Raider franchises. Aloy will be able to see foothold and grabble ledge pathways on walls, pillars, and so on which she will be able to traverse along. This is by design to make the game more vertical than its predecessor.

In addition to this, two new tools Aloy will have will factor into this mechanic. Those are the Pullcaster and the Shieldwing. The Pullcaster is a arm-mounted grappling hook that will allow Aloy to pull herself across gaps or up to ledges. It will have a secondary ability that will also allow Aloy to Manipulate objects such as crates. The Shieldwing on the other hand will allow is a sci-fi version of Mary Poppins umbrella, allowing Aloy to easily glide down from high places.

Combat has also seen a large redesign in order to increase player choice. Guerrilla’s Lead Combat Designer, Dennis Zopfi stated this:

One of the focus points that influenced all our combat decisions was increased player choice, and we applied this to everything: melee, weapons, outfits, skills and other new mechanics. We wanted to give players more tools, depth and dials to play with.

One of the new features to help with combat is the workbench. This will allow Aloy to improve both her weapons and her armor for the challenging fights that lay ahead of her. Another way to power up Aloy is through her redesigned skill tree. While unlocking skills remains relatively the same, there will be new tracks and skills present within the skill tree. They will also synergize with abilities present on armor for added buffs.

There are also practical abilities that will add you during combat. As stated on the blog, “we were looking for ways to have the player go back and forth between melee and range,” before stating “A new example of a skill that does this is the Resonator Blast, where you charge up the spear with melee hits and when fully powered up, the energy can be placed on enemies (humans and machines alike) and followed up with a projectile – resulting in a big damaging explosion!”

The game has also added multiple close-range combos that are designed to reward players willing to take the fight so close to their enemies. This time around, human enemies will be able to mount robotic dinosaurs so expect that added level of challenge when facing off against robots.

There will definitely be a lot of both subtle, and not-so-subtle changes coming to Horizon: Forbidden West that should hopefully make the game fun for new and returning players alike. We will see when the game releases on February 28, 2022, for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.

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