Horizon Forbidden West Dev Dishes On The Game’s Biggest Twist
Halfway through Forbidden Horizon West, you meet a monster. It’s not an animal shaped robot like most of the enemies you fight. It’s a bona fide creature from the shadows and a rare moment of horror in a series that largely eschews screamers and nightmares. According to the game’s narrative director, this moment was a seamless creative choice during development.
More spoilers Forbidden Horizon West.
Forbidden Horizon WestGuerrilla’s second game in a series of open-world games that comes out a week before the immediately declared The open-world game of all time is full of twists and turns, whether it’s the death of beloved characters or the true motivation for the ones you hate. But the most shocking moment is the revelation of Ted Faro, the ghostly antagonist of the 2017 film. Zero dawn horizonwas alive all this time.
Scratch-recording: who is Ted Faro?
Ted Faro was a 21st century tech evangelist whose ominous presence hung over Zero dawn horizon using holograms and audio recordings. Horizonte’s post-apocalypse is mostly his fault, a series of arrogant decisions you can freshen up here. FROM Horizon set in the 31st century, everyone (correctly) thought he was long dead.
If you played Forbidden West, you know the moment.
During the mission “Tomb of Faro”, Aloy visits the ruined ruins of San Francisco to find Thebes, Ted Faro’s personal apocalypse-proof bunker, in search of a lock code that will help her capture an integral piece of the AI’s terraforming program. (Yes, Forbidden Horizon Westhistory of all kinds of insanity.) She is accompanied by a tribe called Quen, led by a guy named, in one of Horizonbest jokes, CEO. At the end of the quest, Aloy reaches the bottom of the bunker, where he finds a panic room (interception). Inside is Faro, who has been actively experimenting with gene therapy to extend his life indefinitely.
Now, Forbidden Horizon West doesn’t really show what Faro looks like.
Tseo, in his only act of courage, enters the room. You hear an inhuman roar. He immediately runs out. That’s the extent to which you encounter the monstrous, somehow still alive form of Faro in Forbidden Horizon West. Moments later, Ceoh foolishly orders his minions to burn him off-screen. Forbidden Horizon West replete with exposition and explanation, so Faro’s Tomb stands out not for what it shows you, but for what it doesn’t show.
“I felt very strongly, and the game director felt very strongly,
That there are two reasons for not [show Faro]” Forbidden Horizon West screenwriter Ben McCaw. Kotaku in a recent interview. “Firstly, this is not horror… This is not our felling. Another thing, in the end, is not what you imagine is behind this door more terrible than what we can actually show? McCaw compared the scene to the cinematic techniques of French director Jacques Tourneur, best known for horror films such as leopard man as well as Night of the Demon. (Turner also directed 1964 episode from Twilight Zone.) Before the era of inflated budgets and spectacular computer renderings, Turno had to rely on other tricks to convey chilling moments.
“That thing that lurks in the shadows is much, much scarier — the image your mind conjures up than the crappy Hollywood rubber suit you show,” McCaw said. “We didn’t want to do it. We wanted it to be in the player’s mind.”
At that moment –
Since it takes place at the end of the mission and in a place that looks suspiciously like a boss fight – I forced myself to fight some unholy monster. But as soon as nothing flew out behind me, I reasoned that Faro 2.0 couldn’t move, so I came to the conclusion that it looked like, let’s say the notorious Rat King from The Last of Us Part 2except that he has all of his limbs cut off.
McCaw, however, has a more literal picture: behind Faro’s door, he imagines, “human cancer, a massive cancerous tumor. In a way, this is Ted Faro. He’s kind of a cancerous tumor for humanity.”
