Horizon Forbidden West’s Gameplay Reveal Is Here And It’s Beautiful

Announced a few short days ago, Horizon Forbidden West got its own State of Play livestream this morning, giving us our first look at gameplay. Around 14 minutes of gameplay was shown off and it looks every bit as beautiful as the cinematic trailers have hinted towards.

The trailer takes place in a location that’s very different from any seen in the original game, as Aloy finds herself on a sandy beach that borders a dense jungle, with skyscrapers dotting the landscape in the distance. Here Aloy encounters a pack of raptor-like machines that, as well as looking insanely cool, give chase, forcing her to escape through an abandoned building. The traversal looks to have been improved upon a fair bit from Zero Dawn which I’m happy to see.

Aloy eventually escapes by diving into crystal-clear water, a feature that makes its debut in this sequel. After sight-seeing in the very chilly-looking water, Aloy has a combat encounter with some human raiders, which looked smooth and far more fleshed out than in the original. It seems like the human enemy AI has been hitting the books as well, as they seemed far less dull than in Zero Dawn.

Taking care of the raiders, Aloy then mounts one of the raptor machines and gets into a brawl with a Tremor Tusk (big elephant machine). This fight looks excellent. Though similar in many ways to Zero Dawn’s machine battles, Aloy now has the ability to use a grappling hook and a glider to help with mobility.

The gameplay ends with a short interaction with a friendly face from Zero Dawn before fading to black. You might expect a release date to pop up here, but unfortunately, there was no such luck. Looks like we’ll have to wait a bit longer for that information. For now, give the impressive trailer a watch for yourself:

Horizon Forbidden West is set to release on PS5 and PS4 sometime in 2021.

What do you think of this gameplay reveal? What else would you like to see included in Forbidden West? Let us know.