Horizon Forbidden West has been a big success for Sony, only falling behind FromSoftware's Elden Ring as the most-downloaded PS4 and PS5 game in February 2022, according to PlayStation Blog. As players make their way across a post-apocalyptic America to reach San Francisco, voice actor Ashly Burch gets to really flesh out protagonist Aloy, who makes plenty of alliances along the way. Much of the series' acclaim comes from its protagonist, who has become a modern PlayStation icon alongside titans like Kratos and Nathan Drake, but Guerrilla Games also intends to expand its universe.
When Sony announced its PlayStation VR2 headset at CES 2022, Horizon Call of the Mountain was revealed to be its killer app. This Horizon spin-off positions Guerilla as a major force for Sony, and it notably moves away from the story of Aloy to flesh out other parts of the world. There are plenty more opportunities for Horizon spin-offs, but one of the most obvious ideas Guerrilla could attempt is a sort of prequel that depicts Operation: Enduring Victory, in the style of its own sci-fi first-person shooter franchise, Killzone.
Killzone, the 'Halo Killer'
After Halo: Combat Evolved took the world by storm, Sony tapped a young Guerrilla Games to develop a competitor for the PlayStation 2. The result was 2004's Killzone, which launched just before Bungie's Halo 2 hit shelves that November. It may not have seen the same overwhelming success as Halo, but Killzone spawned two sequels on PS3, followed by PS4 launch title Killzone: Shadow Fall in 2013. The franchise also saw portable spin-offs with 2006's Liberation and 2013's Mercenary, but fell dormant as Guerilla shifted attention to the open-world Horizon franchise that kicked off with 2017's Zero Dawn.
Similarities to Halo are clear when looking at Killzone's plot. The series takes place in the 24th Century and centers a conflict between the Interplanetary Strategic Alliance, a military connecting Earth with its space colonies; and the Helghan Empire, the totalitarian regime overseeing a race of mutated humans who hope to conquer Alpha Centauri. This antagonistic force began as the Helghan Corporation, a mining and energy conglomerate that reorganized over time as wars broke out between the universe's big powers. Every game has players take the role of soldiers in the Second Extrasolar War, and all are first-person shooters with future tech — except the twin-stick shooter Liberation.
Horizon's Faro Plague Could Come to Life in a Killzone-Style Game
Though Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West's main gameplay loop sees Aloy killing animalistic machines in a far-future where humanity has reverted to tribal stages, a lot of the appeal comes from players uncovering what happened to the contemporary "Old Ones." The world's backstory is a cautionary tale about global warming and corporate power, with climate disasters leading humanity to great technological leaps like true AI during a "Claw-Back" era in the late 21st Century. One of the most successful corporations, Ted Faro's Faro Automated Solutions, then pivots to military tech.
The resulting Chariot line of "peacekeeper robots" go rogue and present an apocalyptic threat given their ability to autonomously reproduce using biomatter. Under dire projections, scientist Elisabet Sobeck spearheads a Hail Mary project called Zero Dawn that would bring life back centuries after the "Faro Plague" destroys it all. To accomplish this feat, the world's militaries enact Operation: Enduring Victory, which sees civilians hold back the Plague long enough for Zero Dawn to finish. Remnants of these battles can be found all over the planet, and many of the text and audio logs that Aloy discovers delve into the horrors of humanity's slaughter.
A Horizon Zero Dawn prequel covering Operation: Enduring Victory could be a hard sell given its bleak conclusion, but may have merit in the same way Rogue One filled in gaps between Star Wars Episode 3 and 4. Battles with futuristic military tech are something Guerrilla Games has experience with thanks to Killzone, even if its focus has been different over the last few years.
Even if the game is just quick simulations of major battles in another PSVR2 title, this kind of Horizon prequel would help build the universe's backstory in a more concrete way — while giving fans the chance to take on Scarab (Corruptor), Khopesh (Deathbringer), and Horus (Metal Devil) machines in a whole new light.
Horizon Forbidden West is available now on PS4 and PS5.