The musician behind Horizon Forbidden West’s Burning Shores DLC is being sent hateful messages due to a key moment at the end of its story campaign. Julie Elven has lent her vocals to several video game soundtracks over the years, including the ones League of Legends, Hearthstone, and 2016’s World of Warcraft: Legion expansion. She has also worked on both Horizon games alongside composer Joris de Man, and even performed the trailer song for last year’s Horizon Forbidden West during The Game Awards 2021.Naturally, Julie Elven returned for Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores, which saw main protagonist Aloy journey to the post-apocalyptic remains of Los Angeles to track down a rogue member of Far Zenith. Along the way, she meets Seyka, a young warrior of the Quen tribe who is searching for her missing sister. While the two have their disagreements at first, Aloy and Seyka form a bond throughout their journey that eventually turns romantic. At the very end of the main Burning Shores campaign, Seyka will confess her feelings to Aloy, and players can choose to have Aloy reciprocate with a kiss.While many Horizon Forbidden West players have praised Aloy and Seyka’s kiss as a positive moment of LGBTQ+ representation in gaming, others have reacted with hostility - to the point of review bombing Burning Shores on sites like Metacritic. Sadly, Julie Elven isn’t immune to this hateful backlash, noting on Twitter that she’s been receiving angry messages ever since the DLC launched in April. Nonetheless, Elven stands by her work and says that she is proud to have worked on the music that played during Aloy and Seyka’s kiss with the simple message that “love is love.”
Julie Elven also noted that the positive report she has received in the wake of Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores outweighs the negativity, and sure enough the recent review-bombing has done very little to hinder Horizon Forbidden West’s success. About a week ago, Guerrilla Games reported that the Horizon franchise has sold 32.7 million copies since the first game was released in 2017, and a third game was announced not too long after Burning Shores launched on the PS5.
Unfortunately, many of the talented people behind the Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores DLC have had to face a wave of hate and hostility in the wake of Aloy and Seyka’s optional gay romance - including vocalist Julie Elven. While much progress has been made when it comes to LGBTQ+ representation in gaming, the angry reaction some have had to Horizon Forbidden West’s DLC campaign is a sad reminder that there is still a long way to go.
Horizon Forbidden West is out now for both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.