#hfw trees

[robo-dino-puppy]

liquid light

[i-lavabean]

Getting ready for the holidays

[thyminee]

Riverhymn

[han-ban-bam]

let the girl have a cool down a moment to decompress. good lord does she need it

[charger-lens]

[system-threat-detected]

Horizontober day 28: Tree

Elisabet is planting aspen trees!

[owl-s-feather]

Finally ! Finally done ! o/

[tare-otome]

Tall Trees

Whether these are Redwoods or Sequoias, i happened to be walking through this forest and the most magical and haunting of atmospheres. So great to just move slowly through the mist amongst these giants 💖🌳🌳🌳

[horizonlandscape]

Falloy

get it fall and aloy haha im so funny

but fr this outfit, her hair, the trees is just perfect fall vibes!

[fischlich]

(hzd ocs) he decorated the tree himself too

[robo-dino-puppy]

horizon forbidden west | trees in the restless weald

[tjerra14]

Things that happen when you photomode too much

[horizon-series-details]

There’s a lot to unpack with the plant life that can be found in this game, but something that really sticks out would be the different trees that you’ll see when exploring. These are just four different ones I found within 10 minutes of each other. I could be wrong, but it looks like we’ve got a Gray Pine, an Alder, an Oak, and a Cedar. There are obviously plenty more trees to find, such as Palm Trees in the coast, or what appear to be Redwood trees in Stand of the Sentinels. Regardless, even just looking at the small details between these four can be quite interesting, especially when compared to their real life counterparts.

[daisychainsandbowties]

it definitely didn’t fix me but i’m trying to use the warrior skill tree more in this playthrough of hfw and it’s tragically a lot of fun to use

maybe playing The Video Game instead of sleeping will fix me

[horizon-forbidden-memes]

Give my new car a Horizon name!

My car unfortunately lost a fight with a thunderstorm armed with tree branches, so it is time for a new car and I want you to help me name it! I like giving my vehicles geeky names (my high school/college car was Thundercat and my recent car was The Blade Ship, an Animorphs reference). I'm in the mood for a Horizon name, so I thought you all could help me pick a name from among the machine mounts.

My logic for each name:

Bristleback: my favorite of the HFW machine mounts, because who doesn't love a machine that finds money for you?

Clawstrider: I adore dinosaurs and my car will be dino themed so the most dinosaur-like mount would be fitting

Broadhead - my favorite of the HZD equine machine mounts, with their big sturdy horns

Sunwing - Nothing beats flying around the beautiful Horizon landscape and I do love long roadtrips

[semperintrepida]

Been taking a break from writing to replay Horizon Forbidden West—with the hope of actually finishing it this time around—and damn, this game is such a mixed bag of strengths and flaws. I like it quite a bit but it's a disappointment compared to its predecessor.

(This will be a spoiler-free offering of thoughts about the game.)

The opening storyline is so, so frustrating in how it undermines Aloy's exceptionalism at every fucking turn, an especially egregious blunder in a story where Aloy must be exceptional for certain plot beats in the later acts to hit with their intended impact. (Ask me sometime how I would rewrite the opening act of HFW to give Aloy the respect Elisabet Sobeck deserves.)

Story aside, the other frustration I have with the game is the combat system, which took the beautiful purity of the first game's bow-and-arrow based combat and made it overly complicated and fussy. Just give me bows, a few simple traps, and some specialized bow-like weapons (like the tripcaster). I don't need a machine gun, a wannabe melee combat system, or a fucking skill tree. A skill tree? You're telling me that Aloy is not already one of the most accomplished archers and huntresses on earth? That she somehow forgot how to place more than two traps in the field at a time? Needlessly dumb.

The draw in Horizon has always been the arrow versus the machine, cracking the puzzle of machine behavior and weakpoints. It's not dumping points into melee and healing so Aloy can tank a direct swipe from a Thunderjaw's tail. (We saw how that approach worked with Redmaw in one of the best moments in the first game!)

All the new machines are sick as fuck, though, especially the big boys (and girls or whatever).

Which brings me to the things HFW does well. Very rarely do I come across writing that makes me care about new characters so quickly, but HFW manages it with remarkable frequency. Sidequest NPCs are often so immediately memorable and compelling that even though I'm trying to focus on the main questline, I keep getting sidetracked wanting to help them out.

As in the first game, certain characters come to prominence in the story, some even choosing to join Aloy in accomplishing her mission. These characters are written and performed beautifully. They feel like real people with their own motivations, alive and distinct.

I love how HFW tells us more about the Utaru and Tenakth, who are mentioned but barely seen in the first game. The Utaru experience is uncomfortably close to listening in to a board meeting of my local hippie granola grocery co-op—are the Utaru all from Marin? I ask this fondly—while the Tenakth... Well, let's just say they're a fabulous surprise.

Guess I had a lot to say about HFW on a Sunday morning! 😅 I'll close by summarizing my experience of the game in a pithy line: After my first attempt at playing HFW, I didn't remember any of the story but I sure remembered the people Aloy met along the way.