With Horizon Forbidden West launching February 18, enthusiasm surrounding Aloy and her post-apocalyptic world is seemingly at an all-time high. Sony has spent the last five years positioning Horizon Zero Dawn as the start of a new flagship PlayStation brand, crossing Aloy into various games like Genshin Impact and Fortnite while greenlighting projects including Horizon Call of the Mountain; a showcase for its new PlayStation VR2 headset.
For all its successes, Horizon Zero Dawn had its share of issues that Guerrilla is addressing. Combat and traversal options look to be a priority in Forbidden West, with Aloy gaining new ways to fight in far-future California. There will be an updated skill tree, new weapons like the Spike Thrower, and unlockable abilities like Resonator Blast for her spear. However, Forbidden West (or whatever games come after) could pull inspiration from the weapon diversity in Capcom's Monster Hunter franchise to exentuate unique aspects of Horizon's universe.
Horizon Zero Dawn's Aloy Shines as a Hunter
It's clear Guerrilla Games had a specific kind of playstyle in mind when developing Horizon Zero Dawn. Aloy is a hunter through-and-through, raised on the outskirts of a society that trains in stealth and precision to eliminate targets as efficiently as possible. Much of the game is spent crouch-walking between patches of tall grass, setting down traps and tripwires, and firing off various types of arrows that exploit weak points on each machine.
There is room for some variety, as Aloy could just as easily run into a crowd of machines and pick them off with bundles of arrows shot three-at-a-time. She could also use the hacking device attached to the end of her spear to override machine programming and have enemies as menacing as Thunderjaws fight for her.
However, stealth and precision with different ammo types is where the brunt of development was spent. Each encounter is like a puzzle, with Aloy using elemental arrows to attack weak points and canisters that deal massive damage. Brute-force melee combat with her spear is almost non-existant, limited to light and heavy attacks that either cast off a machine's armor or leave them open to critical hits and stealth strikes.
Monster Hunter Shares a Focus on Precision
In many ways the Monster Hunter formula honed since its original PlayStation 2 game is a lot less careful. Teams of up to four players take on numerous boss monsters with different habitats, attack patterns, and weaknesses using one of 14 weapons (or up to 18 depending on exclusivity in games like Monster Hunter Frontier Z). There are a variety of melee weapons focused on blunt or cutting damage, and three main ranged weapons centered around arrows or shell ammo.
While combat may look like running at a monster and spamming buttons to the untrained eye, there's a lot more to consider. Stealth is less important when players aren't approaching their target, but each monster weakness begs for different combat options similar to Horizon's machines. Every Monster Hunter weapon comes with different element or status affinities depending on which monster parts were used to craft, and some enemies will be weaker to elements such as fire or ice.
Another way Monster Hunter and Horizon are similar is with precision. Monster Hunter foes take more damage at some areas of their body than others. Many are also prone to losing body parts that affect their abilities, and it's often said blunt weapons like Hammers should go for the head to stun monsters, meanwhile cutting weapons like Greatswords should aim for the tail. Entries like Monster Hunter Rise add special abilities, in this case Silkbind Attacks, that create further utility.
Horizon Could Use Monster Hunter's Elemental Weapon System
The way Aloy is encouraged to aim fire arrows at a machine's blaze canister is comparable to how Monster Hunter players hit a monster like Rathalos with blunt Dragon damage to the head. One key difference is that Monster Hunter opens this spectrum up to every weapon, meanwhile Horizon Zero Dawn limits its elemental prowess to ranged combat. There's nothing inherently wrong with this design, but it leaves Horizon's melee combat feeling lackluster.
Horizon Forbidden West does not appear to be changing much in this regard. Aloy doesn't necessarily need new melee weapons beyond her spear, which is a great tool for a hunter to strike weak points. However, there's room for her melee combat to expand using the same elemental damage applied to her arrows. Monster Hunter weapons are forged using monster parts like Aloy's arrows and different bows are augmented with machine parts, and opening a range of melee weapons based on Horizon's machines would create diversity.
Aloy could meet new tribes in the Forbidden West (or elsewhere) that have different ways of harnessing machine parts; perhaps a new kind of spear uses a flow of blaze to set its tip on fire. Guerrilla Games could encourage more build variety alongside Horizon Forbidden West's branching skill tree with more combat-oriented weapons akin to Monster Hunter's Sword and Shield. For example, the crab-like Shell-Walker in Zero Dawn uses an energy shield and electrified claws, so Aloy could adapt something similar to give her a melee weapon with shock damage that would protect her from power cell explosions.
It's unlikely melee combat with this many layers will appear in Horizon Forbidden West, even if it's overhauling features like settlements and human enemies. The series' focus on stealth helps it stand out compared to a game like Monster Hunter World (where Aloy also previously had a cameo), and it might be better to continue iterating on that ranged combat. Yet the potential is there for Aloy to pick up elemental melee weapons based on her machine opponents, and Guerrilla just needs to look at Capcom for potential examples.
Horizon Forbidden West releases on February 18, 2022 for PS4 and PS5.