Review-bombing has diluted video game user scores and diminished the ability for interested players to accurately assess whether a title is worth purchasing, and the recent incident with Horizon Forbidden West has caused Metacritic to take a stab at addressing the issue head-on. The Burning Shores DLC for Horizon Forbidden West came out on April 19, featuring a brand-new area for Aloy to explore accompanied by a story that matches the quality fans have come to expect from the Horizon franchise.

Over the course of her adventure in Burning Shores, Aloy gets introduced to Seyka, an ambitious marine of the Quen tribe who becomes Aloy's new companion. Promotional artwork and trailers touted Seyka as Aloy's equal, with developers stating that Seyka represented the next chapter of Aloy's overarching story. While Horizon Forbidden West features companions that help Aloy on her journey, Seyka is the next step towards creating a dedicated companion system for the Horizon franchise, as well as the first character that Aloy can romance. Unfortunately, therein also lies the source of the controversy.

RELATED:Horizon Forbidden West DLC Review Bomb Is HBO's The Last Of Us All Over Again

A non-negligible number of players have protested Guerilla Games and Sony's decision to pair Aloy up with another woman, sparking a rather heated debate across Twitter and other social media platforms. Moreover, websites that aggregate video game scores such as Metacritic have received a flood of negative user reviews on the DLC of Horizon Forbidden West, sinking its score all the way down to a low of 2.7. The current Metacritic user score for Burning Shores sits at 3.9 (in stark contrast to its 82 Metascore critic rating), with many fans arguing that it doesn't accurately reflect the consensus of the Horizon community.

horizon forbidden west burning shores dlc aloy seyka kiss romance

In a statement to Eurogamer, Fandom and Metacritic have confirmed that they're aware of the abusive, disrespectful, and low-effort reviews for Horizon Forbidden West's latest DLC, expressing a desire to improve the website's moderation in the coming months by evolving their processes and tools. While Fandom has not clarified the nature of these improvements, a process has begun to remove the most obvious offenders among Burning Shores' user reviews.

Whether Aloy romantically involves herself with Seyka at the end of Burning Shores is left entirely up to the players, though many argue that Kylie Liya Page's performance effortlessly creates an endearing, three-dimensional character that has great chemistry with Ashly Burch's Aloy. Seyka seamlessly joins the cast of interesting Horizon characters, and players can decide how to engage with her.

Ultimately, it feels that the negative arguments to one specific aspect of the DLC and the accompanying user reviews are being done in bad faith, prompting Metacritic to explore more proactive measures in limiting the effects of review-bombing in the future. Though it is reassuring that Metacritic has plans to address this increasingly normalized behavior, it's an extremely delicate subject that may take more than a few months to solve.

Horizon Forbidden West is available now on PS4 and PS5.

MORE:Horizon Forbidden West DLC's Villain and GTA 5's Protagonists Are Two Sides of the Same Coin

Source: Eurogamer