This review contains spoilers
I’d like to start off by saying I was not a huge fan of Zero Dawn. The gameplay bored the hell out of me and I didn’t care much about the story. Now having said that, I came away kind of impressed with Forbidden West in a weird way. Not impressed at how much it improved, but how much it’s story felt like it was handled by people who were so good at ideas but couldn’t handle the execution, yet still managed to work on one of Sony’s premier exclusives.
I’ll start off being nice. I enjoyed the gameplay a lot more this time around. Everything felt snappier and more fluid while still greatly expanding some areas like the melee combat. The melee feels a lot better this time around. They clearly spent a lot of time refining it and even gave it its own skill tree this time around. The only major change they need is a lock on. Trying to keep track of fast moving enemies while also dodging and attacking is just too much.
One thing I really can’t complain about is the presentation. The graphics are stellar and are a good showcase for the PS5, even if I think Rift Apart still impressed me more. Seeing a game that looks this good in this large of an open world run at 60fps is frankly insane. The soundtrack is nice but not groundbreaking imo.
The characters this time felt much more fleshed out and like real people. All of the main cast members were well written… with one major exception that I’ll get to later. I genuinely really loved Beta, Alva and Kotallo, they were all great characters that felt fully fleshed out. Erend went through his character arc last time, but they did a much better job with Varl this time. He was a really great companion. Seeing him and Aloy grow together throughout the game was really great. I liked Zo too but… I’ll get there.
Now before I get to the bad, I would like to say that even if Beta isn’t meant to be neurodivergent, I think they did a really great job of creating a ND character that doesn’t make it seem like it’s a bad thing. She’s accepted by her friends despite that and it made me happy to see that kind of representation even if it wasn’t on purpose.
Now, I need to talk about this writing. Guerrilla does a great job making interesting characters and coming up with good ideas, BUT they cannot execute on those ideas. They fumbled the ball every chance they could. The Zeniths are maybe the best example of this. They start off interesting, but it doesn’t take long before they get hilariously stupid. The reveal that these aren’t descendants of Far Zenith, but are ACTUALLY THE ORIGINAL FAR ZENITH was incredibly dumb and immediately made me dislike them. It serves no purpose other than for a reason for Tilda to try to kidnap Aloy because she left Elisabet on Earth 1000 years ago. Her reasoning that leads to her being the final boss felt flimsy at best.
The final reveal of Nemesis made me fucking scoff. The sudden escalation doesn’t feel earned and comes off as a cheap way to add a sequel hook because Sony wanted a trilogy.
Now, the thing that genuinely made me stop respecting Guerrilla’s writers was Varl’s death and how they treated Zo afterwards. Varl’s death is the same level of contrived at Joel in TLOU2. They are both examples of writers needing a driving force in their story, but being unable to come up with a natural way to do it, so they make the character uncharacteristically stupid. Varl is smart. He’s a warrior that knows how to think on his feet. He saw what happened when Aloy fought the Zeniths before. He would not stand there and try to stand up to them. He would have tried to get Beta out as soon as he dropped the Machine on Erik. Instead they decided he needed to stand there and stare while he climbed out from under it and then started swinging at him so Erik could kill him so Guerrilla could have their driving force for the team going into act 3. It does a disservice to Varl’s character and makes the writing team looks like hacks. They also decided that after he died they should reveal that Zo is pregnant because that’s the only way to use a female love interest in a story like this right? It feels so hackish and not like something that should be coming out of one of Sony’s premier devs. It’s a cheap attempt at making the player sad and only leads to frustration.
Forbidden West has lots of highs and some very low lows. I enjoyed the gameplay and the most of the characters were really well done, but the lows the writing reaches are unacceptable for a AAA game. On gameplay alone this could easily be an 8 or 9. The story on the other hand is maybe a 5. So I’ll split the difference and give it a 7/10 I guess.
I’ll start off being nice. I enjoyed the gameplay a lot more this time around. Everything felt snappier and more fluid while still greatly expanding some areas like the melee combat. The melee feels a lot better this time around. They clearly spent a lot of time refining it and even gave it its own skill tree this time around. The only major change they need is a lock on. Trying to keep track of fast moving enemies while also dodging and attacking is just too much.
One thing I really can’t complain about is the presentation. The graphics are stellar and are a good showcase for the PS5, even if I think Rift Apart still impressed me more. Seeing a game that looks this good in this large of an open world run at 60fps is frankly insane. The soundtrack is nice but not groundbreaking imo.
The characters this time felt much more fleshed out and like real people. All of the main cast members were well written… with one major exception that I’ll get to later. I genuinely really loved Beta, Alva and Kotallo, they were all great characters that felt fully fleshed out. Erend went through his character arc last time, but they did a much better job with Varl this time. He was a really great companion. Seeing him and Aloy grow together throughout the game was really great. I liked Zo too but… I’ll get there.
Now before I get to the bad, I would like to say that even if Beta isn’t meant to be neurodivergent, I think they did a really great job of creating a ND character that doesn’t make it seem like it’s a bad thing. She’s accepted by her friends despite that and it made me happy to see that kind of representation even if it wasn’t on purpose.
Now, I need to talk about this writing. Guerrilla does a great job making interesting characters and coming up with good ideas, BUT they cannot execute on those ideas. They fumbled the ball every chance they could. The Zeniths are maybe the best example of this. They start off interesting, but it doesn’t take long before they get hilariously stupid. The reveal that these aren’t descendants of Far Zenith, but are ACTUALLY THE ORIGINAL FAR ZENITH was incredibly dumb and immediately made me dislike them. It serves no purpose other than for a reason for Tilda to try to kidnap Aloy because she left Elisabet on Earth 1000 years ago. Her reasoning that leads to her being the final boss felt flimsy at best.
The final reveal of Nemesis made me fucking scoff. The sudden escalation doesn’t feel earned and comes off as a cheap way to add a sequel hook because Sony wanted a trilogy.
Now, the thing that genuinely made me stop respecting Guerrilla’s writers was Varl’s death and how they treated Zo afterwards. Varl’s death is the same level of contrived at Joel in TLOU2. They are both examples of writers needing a driving force in their story, but being unable to come up with a natural way to do it, so they make the character uncharacteristically stupid. Varl is smart. He’s a warrior that knows how to think on his feet. He saw what happened when Aloy fought the Zeniths before. He would not stand there and try to stand up to them. He would have tried to get Beta out as soon as he dropped the Machine on Erik. Instead they decided he needed to stand there and stare while he climbed out from under it and then started swinging at him so Erik could kill him so Guerrilla could have their driving force for the team going into act 3. It does a disservice to Varl’s character and makes the writing team looks like hacks. They also decided that after he died they should reveal that Zo is pregnant because that’s the only way to use a female love interest in a story like this right? It feels so hackish and not like something that should be coming out of one of Sony’s premier devs. It’s a cheap attempt at making the player sad and only leads to frustration.
Forbidden West has lots of highs and some very low lows. I enjoyed the gameplay and the most of the characters were really well done, but the lows the writing reaches are unacceptable for a AAA game. On gameplay alone this could easily be an 8 or 9. The story on the other hand is maybe a 5. So I’ll split the difference and give it a 7/10 I guess.