HORIZON FORBIDDEN WEST: LANGUAGE AND REPRESENTATIONS

Introduction

1) Why does Guerrilla Games have 'a serious case of bad timing'? 

- " No sooner had it released its fantastic 2017 open-world role-playing game Horizon Zero Dawn than it was overshadowed by Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which launched a week later and turned out to be an all-time gaming great. Now just as it delivers an excellent sequel, Horizon Forbidden West, another phenomenon arrives on its heels to suck away all the oxygen."

2) What is the narrative for the original game Horizon Zero Dawn? 

- The games take place a thousand years after rampaging machines have wiped out most of humanity. Survivors have clustered into tribal communities who view relics of technology as objects of either suspicion or religious reverence. The dramas of warring clans are narrated alongside the tale of how our world came to ruin. Guerrilla struck gold with flame-haired heroine Aloy, who balances grit and tenderness as one of the most memorable new characters of its console generation. 

3) How is the central character Aloy described? 

- Guerrilla struck gold with flame-haired heroine Aloy.

4) What is the narrative and setting for sequel Horizon Forbidden West?

- Forbidden West beckons players to Nevada and California with a new threat to humanity that, naturally, only you can resolve.

5) What does the review say about animation and graphics?

- "with graphics so beautiful that I have often found myself halting the adventure just to gawp at the landscape."

- "Aloy’s complex hairstyle is a marvel in its own right, and the animation of facial expressions achieves an unprecedented realism"

6) What do we learn about the gameplay and activities in Horizon Forbidden West? 

- Forbidden West’s gameplay offers robust, satisfying combat beneath its good looks.

- Each fight with a robot enemy is tense and exciting, demanding that players think like a hunter by analysing opponents’ behaviours, deploying traps and elemental attacks to gain the upper hand.

Close textual analysis

1) How is narrative, character and setting introduced in the trailer?

- It showcases the game as a futuristic, dystopian world where there are multiple scenarios. Aloy is portrayed as the main protagonist.

2) How is the game's open world / sandbox genre shown in the trailer? 

- There are lots of opportunities for the players to explore within the game with the game providing settings such as jungles, 

3) What representations can you find in the trailer? 

- Feminine lead, variety of characters with different backgrounds.

1) How does the game use media language to communicate ideas about narrative and genre?

- Aloy is introduced to help bring about new equilibrium. She is the main hero whilst the other characters help her.

2) What representations of people, places or groups can you find in the gameplay video?

- People from different tribes have been showcased as well as locations such as vast jungles, ocean and islands.

3) What audience pleasures are suggested by this gameplay trailer?

- Escapism, Satisfaction. 

1) Read the opening to the article. How can we apply Steve Neale's genre theory to Horizon Forbidden West?

- Instances of Repetition: "the one thing they won’t find is a game that feels substantially different from its predecessor or even some other open-world titles released in recent years."

2) How many copies did the Horizon Zero Dawn sell and why did this influence the design of the sequel?

- Over 20 million copies. The series didn't really needed to change all that much to reach a significantly wider audience.

3) How does the article criticise the story in Horizon Forbidden West? 

-  The problem is that Forbidden West spends a bit too much time letting a small army of side characters spout what sometimes feels like an endless amount of exposition. There are fantastic side characters and side quests in this game, but Forbidden West’s reliance on extended dialog sequences starts to wear you down relatively early into this massive adventure. There are times when you’ll find yourself wishing that Guerrilla Games had simply recognized how impressive the world they created was and found ways to let that world and the characters in it do the heavy living rather than those extended dialog sequences that seem determined to tell you absolutely everything.

4) What do we learn about the gameplay? 

- The game had a compelling “hunting” combat system which often tasked you with taking down massive robotic creatures while scavenging for invaluable supplies used to make traps, medicine, and other vital resources.

5) What is the article's overall summary of the game?

- "In fact, whenever I found myself feeling a bit complacent in Forbidden West’s world, the game usually found a way to surprise me with some revelation or sequence that I either simply did not see coming or couldn’t wait to experience. That isn’t to say that the developers somehow manufactured those moments of complacency to heighten the excitement, but rather that Guerrilla Games excels at recognizing what parts of these kinds of open-world games fundamentally work and how those design elements allow them to do some fascinating things that both betray that sense of familiarity while embracing it in such a way that makes returning to this world feel oddly comforting despite the fact that it’s throwing so much at you."

Race representations in Horizon Forbidden West

1) How does Horizon Forbidden West use narrative to create a fully diverse cast of characters?

- After human civilization was fully wiped out by a plague of self-replicating machines, a terraforming AI named GAIA rebuilt life on Earth, with the genetic diversity of humanity.

2) What is orientalism? 

- Orientalism is a type of racism in which “the West” projects savagery and beauty onto “the East,” or the Orient.

3) How does the article suggest orientalism applies to Horizon Forbidden West? 

- Orientalism is embedded at the core of Forbidden West’s narrative of exploring exotic lands. Protagonist Aloy’s Orient is the “Forbidden West” itself: the present-day south western U.S. and California, filled as they are with foreign tribes, religions, and customs. In this morass, Aloy is both an explorer and a (white) savior. Only she understands what is at stake in the world, and she has to spend time in the petty politics of a bunch of tribes in order to convince them that the problems she’s facing are more severe than theirs.

4) Who is the player encouraged to identify with in the game and how does this influence how representations are constructed?  

- Aloy

5) Finally, what did the writer of the article (an Asian American) feel when playing the game?

- "The game asked me to identify with Aloy and support her mission to save the planet. But to progress in the game, I ended up role-playing different kinds of cultural violence, including Orientalism, which founds and fuels a lot of the racism I experience as an Asian American. Even though Aloy’s world is supposedly post-racial, its developers still repeat Orientalist tropes in their design choices, which paint Asian cultures, and therefore people, as perpetually foreign, mysterious, and threatening."

Gender and videogames

1) What is the debate regarding Aloy in Horizon Forbidden West? 

- Bloomberg published a piece that exalts the arrival of Aloy of Horizon Forbidden West as a positive form of female representation in games, in the midst of an industry grappling with constant, horrific mistreatment of real-life women employees.

2) What examples are provided of other female characters and representations in videogames?

- "A Victoria Secret model"

- "Video game women are too sexy!”

3) What are the issues facing the videogame industry in terms of gender? 

- The idea that women can only look a certain way or must be presented completely covered up in game.