In an almost fourteen minute long gameplay demo, Guerilla Games showed off some gameplay of Horizon Forbidden West, the follow-up to their hit, Horizon: Zero Dawn. The trailer shows Aloy employing many new tricks Forbidden West adds to her arsenal, as well as a glimpse into some of the new machines she'll have to overcome in her journey.
Taking place during today's State of Play by PlayStation, Guerilla gave players a meaty first look at Forbidden West, which was running on PlayStation 5 according to the team. The gameplay shows Aloy setting out to find a friend who was captured by rebels in the area. Aloy has to avoid velociraptor-esque machines, especially as the rebels have learned how to ride them as well, using new tricks and gameplay elements to evade them. One such trick is a new smoke bomb, which can obscure enemy's view, as well as the ability to find handholds and parkour more seemlessly around the terrain.
Aloy's focus has more upgrades than just being able to see hand holds to climb trees and grapple objects in the distance. The Focus also allows her to take over more machine types to use either as a conveniet way to get around or to use while in combat, as shown in the trailer when Aloy attacks the group of raiders holding her friend, Erend, captive.
The trailer itself is set in the ruins of San Fransisco, and Aloy has her hands full dealing with the rebels and new creatures, including a large Mastadon-like machine, the Terrortusk (it still only counts as one, though). More options to take down enemies, such as adhesive grenades or an improved spear are shown off in the trailer, which ends with Erend and Aloy looking at a massive red storm on the horizon, ruins of the Golden Gate Bridge towering in the distance.
Crucially, though, no release date was given by the team as to when players could go hands on with the sequel to the 2017 hit. The game's narrative director, Ben McCaw, stated on the PlayStation Blog the following:
"We don’t have an exact release date yet, but development is on track and we’ll have an update for you very soon"
Horizon Forbidden West is slated to release on both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, though the latter will obviously take advantage of the perks of the more powerul system. No news on a possible PC release, which isn't out of the question as Sony has released its predecessor, Horizon: Zero Dawn on the platform in recent years.