Horizon Forbidden West is only a few weeks away, and in the run-up to the game’s launch, it is important to remember how Aloy got to this point. The Shield-Weaver armor is one of the first game’s best unlocks, and as such, Guerrilla Games is nerfing it for Horizon Forbidden West.
In Horizon Zero Dawn’s early game, players will stumble upon a long-abandoned lab containing the Shield-Weaver armor locked behind multiple doors. After finding five power cells spread far and wide across the game world, players can return to the lab, solve some simple puzzles, and obtain the absolutely broken piece of equipment. Wearing the armor cloaks Aloy in a rechargeable force field, blocking incoming damage at the cost of being unable to modify it. Players may have noticed the Shield-Weaver Armor already in Horizon Forbidden West’s promotional material, appearing in a variety of trailers so far.
As spotted by PushSquare, Aloy’s Shield-Weaver armor has seen quite a nerf in Horizon Forbidden West. In an extended preview of Horizon Forbidden West by IGN discussing the game’s systems, particularly those pertaining to Aloy’s new equipment and outfits, fans catch a glimpse at the menu screen for what was formerly the Shield-Weaver armor. Now simply known as the Nora Anointed outfit, the description states it is a “well-worn armor made with repurposed technology from an ancient lab.” Rather than abandoning the armor after losing its power source, Aloy went on to salvage it and augment her ranged combat.
Horizon Forbidden West is taking a new approach with outfits as compared to Horizon Zero Dawn. In the first game, outfits simply altered Aloy’s defenses against certain damage types, with some offering other boosts like increased stealthiness or passive healing.
This time around, outfits are combined with Horizon Forbidden West’s skill system, with each outfit providing specific improvements to Aloy’s abilities rather than just general resistance enhancements. Players will notice in this image that upgrading the Nora Anointed outfit to the first tier will increase Aloy’s resistances generally, which makes sense, this likely being the most basic, all-around armor in the game.
It may be disappointing to some that in the six months between Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West the Shield-Weaver armor has lost its power. At the same time, it is also pretty neat to see Guerrilla Games directly contextualize what happened to the armor within the sequel’s narrative.
A problem with sequels generally is the often forced loss of power that results from one game to the next; if Aloy still has the broken Shield-Weaver armor from the first game, then she should be wearing it in the sequel. Guerrilla Games completely dismisses that problem here, making it so Aloy canonically got the armor in the first game, but in the sequel, it is simply no longer as effective.
Horizon: Forbidden West launches on February 18, 2022, on PS4 and PS5.
Source: PushSquare