Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores - The Sound of Sylens (RIP Lance)

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores - The Sound of Sylens (RIP Lance)

VideoGames: Aug 18, 2003

Kazzah posted:

There's this novel, Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky, that is about long-abandoned terraforming projects going haywire (specifically one of them where a race of gene-modded spiders becomes sentient and builds a civilisation, it's cool as hell). Anyway there's this part where a human ship visits one of the failed projects, which overlaps with Horizon in a neat way; it presents one of the scenarios where you'd need Hades to step in, which might be what's happening with that red weed in the new game. Anyway:

This was so engrossing. I want to read the whole thing now! Thank you for posting it.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2022 11:33

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 17:37

VideoGames: Aug 18, 2003

Crossposting myself:

VG posted:

Yesterday I finished the main story of Horizon Forbidden West.

Spoilers:

That was excellent. I never trusted Tilda and I am glad to see I was right. There was something off about someone with a thousand years of experience still pining for something that happened as long ago. Love is powerful, but for it to last that long despite living in a 'paradise' it had become an obsession.

I am very interested to learn who the main personality of nemesis is. It might sound corny, but in a way I would like it to be a broken version of Elisabet created because Tilda could not drop her obsession with bringing her back. Elisabet being the harbinger after the saviour also allows Aloy to even more sever that link of 'she has to be as great as Elisabet' which plagued her throughout this game. She found so much information in the first about who she shares genes with that you could tell the whole idea of being as great as Elisabet weighed her down so much. This is why she was so angry and lashed out at her friends. I cannot imagine the weight of knowing you share all that genetic material with someone who saved humanity's existence, and then started to get call the Saviour of Meridian by everyone she comes into contact with.

The pressure alone to not make a mistake, to live up to that ideal, is killer. Bloy helped her to realise that she is not Elisabet. More importantly, she does not have to be Elisabet. Aloy is who her friends care about. Aloy is who saved them, not the memory of someone from the past. If anything, Aloy is stronger because she is being her own person, and Sylens believes that about her as well, which is endorsement enough for me because that dude is not a dummy.

I also like that every single world ending problem we have to deal with is caused from people in Faro's time. Faro and the Zeniths were alive at the same time and just keep causing massive issues and it keeps enunciating that the old ones are the absolute worst and we need to divulge from them as much as we can. Humanity's new era has a ton of potential and a much rosier future than you might think, even though Apollo was gone. It IS worth saving. Maybe Elisabet would have joined Sylens and populated another planet with another offshoot of humanity. Aloy would not. That is the best difference. A lot of the black boxes where we heard people accepting their fates and doing their best in the face of overwhelming odds I think had a cause in this too. It is one thing to read the words, but hearing them and the emotion is incredibly powerful to the brain.

Now I am onto the burning shores and it looks like I somehow have to find a billion brimshines to buy some cool oranges!

# ¿ Sep 25, 2023 14:05

VideoGames: Aug 18, 2003

Finished Burning Shores.

I class that as the end of the game, it packs so much more of a punch than the Tilda fight.

No villain will ever come close to Ted Faro, but boy does Londra feel like they are on the same wave length. So much revealed stuff in backlogs, the way their plans were made, the sheer incredible voice acting of them. And while everyone was worried about how they would approach Thebes I too was worried about if they would ever Bring to life one of the big bots, the Horus that we know just rained down destruction without it feeling weak. If the humans of the past had no hope, then we should have had even less - but they utilised it in such a smart way and instead it was the truly wonderful spectacle that a final mission should be.

That whole thing was glorious and I am once again, severely excited for the next game. Probably one of if, not the, my favourite new series of the last decade.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2023 11:28

VideoGames: Aug 18, 2003

From when I first bumped into Tilda I thought it was SO weird she had feelings for Aloy/Elisabet. If some dude or gal is pining after a one who got away for 10 years or so, we think that is weird.

She did it for nearly 1000 years. That is a seriously long time. It made me think she was bad from the get go because someone who lives a thousand years should have so many more experiences and memories and such.

I also think of the actual end of HFW as the end of the DLC - they are joined as one full experience in my mind and I think the (dlc spoiler) spectacle of the end of Burning Shores works SO well as a cap to the main storyline. They pulled it off having the enemy be one of the big boi machines without making you feel too powerful or it too weak. I absolutely loved it.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2024 18:00

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