Horizon Forbidden West update

[owlmoose]

Spoilers through The Wings of the Ten.

One thing I learned from HZD, and have carried over to HFW, is that it's worthwhile to complete all the tallneck quests as soon as possible, because it's so useful to map the terrain all around (and I also enjoy the puzzle aspect of figuring out how to climb up them). (I also like doing cauldrons as soon as I can, both for the machine overrides and because cauldron quests are fun. You might therefore expect that Cauldron Iota has been one of my favorite quests in this game so far, and you would be right, especially its highly satisfying resolution.)

So you can imagine that the tallneck walking around south of Scalding Spear has been a tempting target for quite awhile now, to the extent that T and I kept going back there, looking around, trying to figure out what might trigger the option to get up there, to the point that I asked kherrykhat if we were missing something, and she assured me that the tallneck would become relevant as part of a main game quest. When Aloy hitched her first ride on a sunbird, and Tilda let her know her next steps, I realized what was coming next, and it was a great moment -- even if I did miss getting to climb up the back of the tallneck and then rappel down as the world changed around me. We've speculated for awhile that flight was going to become part of the game, even before we opened up the sidequests that explicitly require it, and giving Aloy a flying mount is a great way to go about it.

A few other thoughts. Varl's death was sad and awful and very affecting. I was a fan of the relationship with Zo, even if the pregnancy feels a little cliche. Do I want a scene where Aloy goes back to the Nora and tells his mother what happened? Kind of. There must be some good fic out there, too. The whole bit with Tilda is interesting. Like Aloy I don't trust her motives at all; between her, Sylens, and Regalla (who we decided to let live), that's going to be an interesting team of rivals to manage, not to mention that I'm sure Erend and Kotallo aren't going to be happy about working with these folks for their own reasons. When Tilda was describing her backstory, both T and I compared her to the Shadow Broker from Mass Effect. Later in that conversation, when it becomes clear that Aloy is going to accept Tilda's help but not her way of going about it, I actually said "Your plan sucks." (If anyone here remembers that reference, please let me know I'm not alone.)

I think we're going to wrap up the rest of the sidequests (except for things we're skipping like the hunting grounds and some of the collectables) and then move on to endgame. I don't know if we'll keep doing open world stuff after that or not. Maybe, but more likely we'll wait until the inevitable DLC. Which I'm looking forward to, if it's half as good as the one for HZD.