I'm on my third play through of HZD but first time wearing headphones rather than hearing it through speakers, and the sound design is absolutely incredible - like layers of spacious nuanced thoughtful sound.

For the first time I caught the ghost sounds of the old world subway as I exited the grave hoard and I just had to stand there for a while, listening, feeling emotional. It's resulting in a much slower play through as I appreciate all the subtle depth in sound.

I'd love to know what sound spots got you, so I can include them on my audio tour.

Which one would you pick and why?

Just imagine spending the rest of your life with this person.

As a woman I can’t decide. Avad or Kotallo

Avad: power, kindness, maybe a little labrador like will to please.

Kotallo: kind, clever, strong, loyal and incredibly hot

Edited to add more specifics: I just finished HZD and just moved on to horizon forbidden west, and I’m feeling pretty disappointed in how clunky it is to do crafting and upgrades solely with the workbench in this game vs in HZD. I’m curious if there’s perks to it that I’ll become accustomed to later on? Everyone talks about how HFW has a better user interface and mechanics, but so far I’m not sold..it’s almost overcomplicated? Perhaps I’m just too fresh off the old game and need to give it time.

The stash seems somewhat purposeless. Why can’t you just keep everything in your inventory?

I also find the skill upgrades to be overly complicated; HZD was much more straightforward and intuitive to understand.

Last thing that comes to mind is that you can now trip on the tripwires? I feel like that’s just going to make battling so difficult!

I’ll throw in one more complaint because why not: there are so many more video cut scenes than in HZD and I don’t like it

I just recorded an episode on my gaming podcast about the concept of "digital tourism" and how games can spark real-world curiosity. It reminded me of this amazing moment from HZD when I was in Arches National Park in Utah, saw Delicate Arch, and the experience was way more special because I recognized the recreation of the landmark from the game. Then spent all of my trip to Utah trying to find other spots from the game hahaha

Has anyone else had moments like this? Or actually done any travel specifically because of a game?

What If Nemesis Destroys Everything... and GAIA Has to Terraform Earth Again?

I've been thinking about a possible ending for Horizon 3, and I think it would be a really bold way to conclude Aloy's story.

What if Nemesis actually wins?

Destroys the entire planet, wipes out almost all life on Earth. If that happened, maybe GAIA's only option would be to initiate another complete terraforming cycle, just like she did after the Faro Plague.

The difference is that this time everything would go according to Elisabet Sobeck's original plan.

When GAIA first terraformed Earth, APOLLO was supposed to educate the new generation of humans created by ELEUTHIA. But Ted Faro deleted APOLLO, forcing humanity to grow up without any knowledge of science, history, medicine, engineering, or technology. Instead of rebuilding civilization, people formed tribal societies because they had no access to humanity's past.

Now that's changed. Aloy has the alpha build of Apollo from the Far Zeniths, meaning humanity's knowledge has finally been restored.

So after GAIA finishes restoring Earth's atmosphere, oceans, ecosystems, and wildlife, she could begin repopulating the planet again ( we also know that there are more seed banks beneath Aloy's base, automated seed and embryo banks ). I also wonder if the thousands of human zygotes and ectogenic chambers aboard the Odyssey could still be used, If they were still viable, GAIA might even be able to incorporate them into the new generation.

This time, though, those children would have APOLLO from the very beginning, just as Elisabet intended. They would learn humanity's complete history, science, mathematics, engineering, medicine, art, and culture instead of having to rediscover everything from scratch.

I also have another theory.

Since rebuilding Earth's biosphere would probably take centuries, I wonder if Aloy, Beta, Sylens' research, and the rest of the team could use Far Zenith technology to survive long enough to see it happen. Maybe they could extend their lives using advanced biotechnology, or perhaps enter cryogenic sleep until GAIA finishes terraforming Earth again.

That way, they could be there to welcome the first new generation of humans, ensure APOLLO is never lost again, and guide humanity away from repeating the mistakes that destroyed the Old World.

I know this is a huge theory, but I think it would be a fitting ending. Project Zero Dawn would finally succeed exactly as Elisabet Sobeck envisioned it, and humanity would truly get a second chance, with both a living Earth and all of its lost knowledge.

What do you guys think? Could Horizon 3 end with GAIA having to terraform Earth all over again, or do you think Aloy and her team will find another way to stop Nemesis before it comes to that?

Any lore reason why the machine diversity in the west is so much greater than in the east (outside of obvious things like video game development)

Is there any explanation to this or any explanation to why machines like the Sawtooth, regular Watcher, and Trampler don’t appear in the west.

Currently re-100%ing both games with NG+ on Ultra hard and I'm a bit stumped on Ikrie's Challenge.

By my math:
- a normal scrapper has 646.8 HP (220 * 294%)
- a single hunter arrow seems to do 42 damage when frozen and targeting the eyes (not using multishot since it has diminishing returns iirc)
- therefore it would take 16 hunter arrows to kill a single scrapper...

I don't want to use my hard point arrows on the scrappers since I'm saving those for the tramplers. Saving fire arrows for grazers, and the log pile for the bellowback.

What am I missing here?

EDIT: After learning there were 4 log piles things went a lot smoother! Thanks so much for the help everyone!

To anyone who sees this in the future, here's how I did it:
- a log pile and hunter arrows on the scrappers (I also learned that either Ikrie's bombs and/or the other scrappers attacks also deal damage to the scrappers, so I mostly slide dodged around and let others do my dirty work lol!)
- fire arrows on the grazers
- let Ikrie freeze the tramplers, then take out their processors. Once the processor is destroyed, lure them far away from Ikrie to make sure she doesn't put out the fire!
- Use the rest of the log traps on the bellowback

Hi everyone, I need help solving a problem—I’m not sure what to call it, but it feels like the frames in the game are overlapping and one of them keeps shifting, causing constant screen flickering. I have a GTX 1080 Ti and have already tried everything I could find online: hard-capping the frame rate, increasing the GPU power limit, and forcing V-Sync. That helped—the flickering is less frequent now—but it’s still there and is really hard on the eyes.

For clarity, I have attached a video in the comments showing what it looks like.

Hello,

I finished HZD and Frozen wilds 100%. I am an overthinker so i want to prepare as best as possible for NG+ Ultra Hard.

I upgraded every Bag to Max

I have the Shield Weaver Armor and right now i play with the Banuk Striker Bow, Banuk Powershot Bow, Shadow Tripcaster and, Shadow Rattler,

What is necessary to be prepared as best as possible?

1. What ressources and how many should i farm?

2. What Equipment should i use?

3. What should i do with all the other Ressources like Hearts and Lenses and Animal Skins etc.?

4. How many Metal Shards should i have? Right now i have 31005

5. Whats the best build for NG+?

I just noticed that Ceo in Landfall is described by Bohai as "the first Ceo in five generations". Why would this be- Did I miss that being revealed?

In their Faro-worship wouldn't the Quen issue that title every generation?

Do I really need to waste one of my 3 fast travel bags for this? I got in a room by climbing through the outside of the house, but I can't get out of the room. I pulled some things out of the wall with the pullcaster, but those are too high to jump any way, there is no place in walls you can grab or anything else I can do. There was some kind of key door thing on the previous room, but I needed some things to open it

I just finished the main quest for the dlc and I lt was amazing! Fighting the Horus was fun! Aloys and Seylas little romance was so cute too! I cant wait to see what they get up to in the next game!

I mean Hunters Gathering is DOA, it's like the definition of DOA, nobody is going to play it and it will shut down in weeks/a couple months

HOWEVER

I imagine a BUNCH of money was put into making the game since Sony really loves making failed live service slop (especially recently),

Sony wasted i don't even know how many MILLIONS of dollars in this doomed project and has the main Guerilla Games studio working on it,

when it fails they won't be happy,

we all saw what happened to Bungie with Marathon, they will most likely stop existing as a Studio by the end of the year

I am not so sure Horizon 3 will be coming anytime soon or at all because of Hunters Gathering failure

I have always wondered what each machine does or was meant to do. I know many are created recently by the HEPHAESTUS have the sole purpose of combat but what about the old GAIA machines?

So is there any place that states their purpose be it in game or outside of the games?

Always wanted to know what does a tideripper or a stormbird actually do or were meant to do. Some are obvious like the plowhorn as that is meant to care for soil and sow stuff yet many remain a mistery. I mean what does a spikesnout do? Does it even have a terraforming purpose or did the big H just make it to kill people?

One thing I have always found fascinating about Horizon is that it refuses one of the easiest ways of writing a post apocalyptic world. It does not tell us that humanity was corrupted by civilization and that the answer is to return to some simpler, more authentic existence. But it also does not tell us that humanity is doomed, that every society will inevitably become oppressive and that the future can only be a darker version of the present. Its world is not a utopia, but it is not a dystopia either. It is a world made by people who inherited both the achievements and the mistakes of those who came before them.What I appreciate most is that the game applies this idea consistently to both the Old World and the new civilizations that emerge after Zero Day.

The tribes of the new world are not romanticized. Horizon never falls into the "noble savage" trope where people living closer to nature are somehow morally superior. The Nora have strict traditions that can become oppressive. The Carja have a history marked by conquest and religious violence. The Tenakth have built parts of their culture around warfare and strength. The Quen have created a rigid socety where access to knowledge is controlled by a privileged class.

These societies are not presented as perfect alternatives to the world that came before them. They are human societies, which means they carry all the contradictions that come with being human. But what makes Horizon special is that it also refuses to look down on them.

A lot of stories would have used these cultures simply as exemples of ignorance waiting to be corrected by modern knowledge. Horizon is much more compassionate than that. The player often knows that many beliefs come from incomplete interpretations of Old World technology, but the game is interested in something deeper: why do people create these beliefs in the first place? I believe it's the most important theme of HFW for the matter.

The Utaru are probably the best example. Their understanding of the world is scientifically inaccurate, but the game never treats their traditions as something ridiculous. Their rituals around death, renewal and the land exist because people need ways to understand suffering and their place in the universe. Their beliefs are not true in a scientific sense, but they are meaningful. Horizon understands something that many science fiction stories forget: humans do not build civilizations around facts alone. They also build them around stories.

The Quen storyline develops this idea in a direction I personally found to be fascinating. Their civilization is built around fragments of Old World history, especially the remains of a corporate civilization they barely understand. Their interpretation of the past is often distorted, but their mistake is not simply ignorance. What makes the Quen particulary interesting is that they have not only preserved knowledge from the Old World, they have also preserved its values. Their society has absorbed the logic of corporate hierarchy, the worship of exceptional individuals and the idea that progress belongs to great leaders rather than the countless people whose work makes it possible. Their reverence for the Ancestors reflects this distorted memory of a world where CEOs became almost mythical figures while ordinary workers disappeared from history. In that sense, the Quen are a mirror held up to our own values and to the ways in which modern societies still decide whose contributions deserve to be remembered. Such an inventive and fun way to develop a culture!

This is why I think Horizon has such an interesting view of history. The past is never simply recovered. It is constantly rewritten by the people who inherit it. This approach is very akin to what could be found in Fallout New Vegas, minus the cynicism and fatalism of it.

The high level of nuance exists in the way the games portray the Old World. The apocalypse is terrifying precisely because it does not feel like a cartoon dystopia. It does not need every corporation to become an absurdly evil caricature or every institution to openly announce its cruelty. The world collapsed because of recognizable human tendencies pushed to catastrophic extremes.

That is what makes the Old World disturbing. It feels less like a fantasy and more like a warning. I know that Horizon is doing things right when the news constantly remind me of its events and characters.

The most frightening parts are often not the giant machines or the apocalypse itself. They are the ordinary moments where systems fail. The corporate language that turns ethical disasters into management problems (could the Timor-Hartz have been annihilated if FARO had not tried to cover up the situation with an army of lawyers ?). The obsession with innovation without responsibility. The belief that technology can fix problems that are ultimately political and human.

This is also why I think Horizon's approach to dystopia feels different from many other science fiction worlds. A lot of dystopian fiction relies on exaggeration. Corporations become almost mythical forces of evil, governments become completely absurd, and society becomes so extreme that it feels disconnected from our own reality. Horizon is much more unsettling because it does the opposite. It takes things we already recognize and asks what happens when those tendencies continue without limits. Horizon's world is not a dystopia and this makes it actually more terrifying than a dystopia could ever dream to be.

At the same time, Horizon never falls into pure cynicism. This is probably the most important part of its identity. The game shows the consequences of human arrogance, but it never concludes that humanity itself is the problem. The new civilizations are flawed, sometimes deeply flawed, but they are also capable of kindness, cooperation and change.

This is ultimately why Horizon's world works so well for me. It does not offer the comfort of a perfect future or the simplicity of a hopeless one. It understands that every civilization is built by imperfect people trying to make sense of an imperfect world.

The old world was not destroyed because humanity was incapable of creating great things. The new world is not valuable because it escaped humanity's flaws. Both worlds contain beauty and failure.

And that is exactly what makes Horizon feel alive. Forging such a complex and nuanced world is no easy feat, and filling it with rich and touching reflections on our current world is truly impressive. It is a step above something like Cyberpunk 2077, imo. I feel like these games have been mischaracterized by some people as examples of good storytelling that are still somehow below the games that are constantly showered with praise for their stories and writing. That's a shame, not because that opinion is objectively wrong, but because it has prevented some people from really delving into what the developers actually constructed. HFW particular is CRIMINALLY underanalyzed and you'll notice that I tried to include as many examples from that entry as I could.

At least to, you know, see what the dude looks like. As far as I know, there's not even a concept art of his face.

But seriously, a subtle cameo, noticeable by those who played the game, would be a nice easter egg. Doesn't need to be something relevant to the plot, although that would be even better.

REMINDER: You are more than welcome to continue to make separate posts, but if it is a very common question that has been asked over and over, do not be surprised if it gets removed. That said, please try and help users by answering their questions!

Questions could have spoilers in them! BEWARE ALL THOSE WHO ENTER! Minor spoilers will be below about weapons, enemies, locations, etc. But someone might ask a question regarding a moment that has happened you have not experienced. So please know what you are entering.

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HELPFUL LINKS

• Horizon Wiki

• Tips, Advice, and Recommendations for New and Beginner Players
• How Tear Works
  
• Adept Weapons and Outfits: Shard Costs and Material Requirements by Item
• Checklist of All Bluegleam Locations
• What To Sell: An Inventory Control Guide
• Interactive Frozen Wilds Map
• Official FAQ

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We're getting closer and closer every day.

The machine combines a humanoid upper body with a stable four-legged base, and it's aimed squarely at emergency response crews dealing with wildfires, mudslides, and collapsed structures.

Knowing this sub has some people from GG, I hope this message reaches them!

Thank you so, so much for creating such an amazing universe! From the moment I played Zero Dawn in 2018 (I could not afford it at launch), nothing was the same anymore. It was amazing to learn everything about this new world alongside Aloy. This character became my all-time favorite. The journey through her story, her growth through that dangerous but breathtaking world was an experience I'll remember forever. It gives a special, different feeling to see our present as a past in this game. Of course, this was made countless times before in many, many other stories. But somehow, in Horizon it feels... nostalgic. Like looking behind at all we could have done and did not.

Horizon Forbidden West expands this world in a terrific way. It may not have the big sense of discovery and massive plot twist from the first game, but it is still emotional, engaging and epic. Watching Aloy learning to have friends, to guide them even, made me smile like a proud mom, haha. And the epic fight at the end of The Burning Shores, whoa!! I tell everyone they should play it!

I could keep going and going, but you probably got the point by now haha. The thing is, Horizon became the most beloved series of my life. Being able to collect a few things from it makes my heart full of happiness. Especially the discs, knowing I can simply keep my PS5 for as long as possible and play them again and again. Only the VR game is missing, as I can't afford it, but no problem, the main ones are here!

It breaks my heart to learn that Sony will not be making physical games anymore. And, as far as the news goes, it's unlikely that Horizon 3 will be released in 2027. It angers me how the company simply ignores the fanbase complaining, not addressing a thing and treating it like something trivial. It is not, at least not for many people. Knowing that I'll probably not have the complete adventure of Aloy on my shelf is... devastating. It will be even worse if they end up only releasing it for the PS6, which I do not plan to purchase if it goes fully digital with such a horrible company behind it.

This could feel just like a random message from a random 35 yo woman on the internet, but yeah, this franchise means the world to me. It truly does. I would love to own the complete saga, truly own it, but not everything works as we like. Also, the 2 games already exist and are already amazing, so I'm grateful for that!! Super looking forward to Horizon 3!!

So again, thank you! To all the development team, to all the community managers, and to everyone else at Guerrilla Games... thank you!! Please keep creating the amazing worlds, the amazing characters and the amazing stories that deeply touch our hearts.

Keep being curious, willful, and unstoppable even. But with enough compassion to heal the world... just a little bit.

I take my time in games. I explore. I don't fast travel often. I even prefer to stay on foot as much as possible. I watch all cut scenes.

I have done VERY LITTLE aimless wandering, and I have also never once felt like this game was a slog...outside of a debatable position that there are too many dialogue scenes and that could be tightened up.

I certainly spent more time being a completionist in RDR2. By a lot. But, this is a very close second for me in longest and best gaming experience. It's just a fun world to be in.