Horizon Forbidden West's Sequel Needs a New Approach to Immersive NPCs

From Horizon Zero Dawn to Horizon Forbidden West, Guerrilla Games expanded upon Horizon’s narrative and gameplay exponentially while remaining true to the series’ core elements. At a quick glance, Zero Dawn and Forbidden West may look fairly similar, but thanks to the power of the PlayStation 5, Forbidden West was able to introduce incredibly detailed graphics, more robust fighting mechanics, and improved maneuverability. However, there’s one element that wasn’t refined much during the transition from Horizon Zero Dawn to Horizon Forbidden West that needs bolstering in Horizon 3: the common NPCs that inhabit the 31st Century United States.

Horizons Post-Apocalyptic NPCs

As an action role-playing game, it was critical for Guerrilla to make the world of Horizon Zero Dawn immersive and believable with its intriguing lore and interactive NPCs. From the isolationist Nora to the powerful Carja, these groups made Horizon stand out among its contemporaries and helped envelope players in the game for hours. However, this was primarily thanks to interactions with a select few characters on quests such as Blameless Marad and Erend, rather than conversations with the common people. These NPCs would commonly repeat a set of about three lines that often made remarks on Aloy or made comments that had no connection to Aloy at all.

In Horizon Forbidden West, Guerrilla designed the coastal tribes to be more battle-hardened and technologically competent than their eastern counterparts. The number of interactive NPCs with names on quests and in shops were additionally increased to ensure that most interactions were memorable and informative. Despite these improvements and the intriguing natures of the Tenakth, Utaru, and Quen, most common NPCs still only repeated a select few lines that barely added to Horizon’s world building. While some would comment on Aloy’s actions in Zero Dawn and Forbidden West, most would simply comment on their jobs or nearby machines.

Horizon 3s NPC Potential

Details about Horizon 3’s setting and tribes are still unknown, but in the Burning Shores DLC, it’s suggested Aloy and Sylens may venture east through the inland United States to look for 21st century weapons that could help take down the Nemesis AI. Erend further hints at prior tribes making a return as he plans on returning to the Carja and the Oseram and training them with Focuses in preparation for Nemesis’ attack. If both new and old tribes make an appearance in Horizon 3, Guerrilla should expand common NPCs’ dialogue and abilities to increase immersion and make the threat of Nemesis more omnipresent among all tribes.

In terms of dialogue, Guerrilla could give most NPCs a brief dialogue tree to at least learn about nearby villages and small bits of local lore. This could work similarly to dialogue options in Fallout 3 or The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, since even minor NPCs in those games often had some unique dialogue options, even if they didn’t create or help complete quests. Oftentimes, villages and towns in Horizon games are filled with NPCs that don’t have diverse dialogue, but these new dialogue options could help players learn about new locations beyond scrolls and datapoints and more from the people themselves.

Potential New Horizon NPC Abilities

Unlike NPCs in the aforementioned Bethesda RPGs, Horizon tribesmen don’t often venture beyond their village limits save for the occasional main quest battle, such as Horizon Zero Dawn’s The Looming Shadow or Horizon Forbidden West’s The Kulrut. Both wild and tamed machines are often blocked from entering villages beyond main quests as well, possibly to prevent collision issues. With Nemesis and the rogue AI HEPHAESTUS expected to create an all-out war between humans and machines once more, machines could routinely raid villages, forcing tribesmen to defend their homes and move away from their stagnant positions. This could make visiting tribes more dynamic and help illustrate just how intense the conflict with Nemesis has become compared to past games.