by Almost a year after its release Forbidden Horizon West, Guerilla continues to expand the world of Aloy with the Burning Shores expansion. Judging by the past and the excellent expansion frozen savages that the studio had released for Horizon Zero Dawn, we’d say we went into Guerilla’s latest installment with high expectations.
The new DLC takes place in Los Angeles, after the title ends, so you’ll need to complete the main story first. So, after the end credits of Horizon Forbidden West, Silens contacts Aloy to inform her of a new threat, based in Burning Shores. On this occasion, Aloy goes to the now destroyed Los Angeles, where she meets new allies, but also enemies. Unfortunately, we can’t give more details to avoid spoilers for those who haven’t seen the original title yet.
The most significant script addition is Seyka, who strongly resembles Aloy in demeanor and personality. In this way, the creators give Aloy an ally, with whom she can interact on an equal footing, helping each other. We’d say the story of Burning Shores focuses more on Aloy’s development as a character, shifting the central theme of the show’s storyline to the background, if only for a moment. The only downside to the story is the central villain, who would simply be described as indifferent.
Kylie Liya Page’s performance as Seyka pairs well with Ashly Burch’s as Aloy, while Lance Reddick as Sylens remains excellent, in one of his final performances. The level of the dialogues and the scenario remain in the style known from the series, without particular improvements, giving us some small clues for the next Horizon.
As it did with the Frozen Wilds DLC for the original Horizon Zero Dawn, in Burning Shores the studio has retained the good gameplay elements of Horizon Forbidden West, fleshing it out with small additions and new ways for Aloy to deal with enemy machines.
In addition to the new skills Aloy gains, Seyka takes an active role in battles, helping out a bit more substantially and not just throwing ammo at the player as was done in the past with other allies. In addition, we can use elements of the environment in encounters, creating explosions or using jets to quickly fly through the air for attacks from above.
New machines also appear, such as Bilegut, a highly dangerous frog-inspired machine that spits acid and quickly covers distances with its leaps. The design of the new enemies shifts to the series’ familiar high levels, with the difficulty being a natural continuation of the last area of Horizon Forbidden West. For this reason, we recommend that you are at a high level and well equipped before deciding to start the new expansion.
Burning Shores is about a third of the original map and visually follows San Francisco as featured in Horizon Forbidden West. Los Angeles, destroyed by earthquakes, is now a complex of islands, with spectacular beaches, crumbling buildings, lush green landscapes, lava-flowing hills, as well as the region’s well-known landmarks such as than the Hollywood sign.
The technical and visual domain is superior to Horizon Forbidden West. Guerilla has improved the lighting, clouds, and underwater environments, delivering one of the most beautiful worlds we’ve seen this generation. The encounters with the machines remain impressive, especially the final battle which we will not discuss further for obvious reasons, when we did not notice any drop in fps in any visual mode. The only thorn we noticed is some pop in long distance textures. Sound production also remains excellent, with environmental effects and engine noises stealing the show.
At this point we have to mention that Burning Shores was only released on PlayStation 5. And here is the question why Guerilla made this decision since Horizon Forbidden West was also available on PlayStation 4. From what we have seen in the title, and without knowing exactly the technical details, in addition to the obvious improvements in the visualization of the world that we have already mentioned, there are some encounters, as well as a new addition that requires the immediate change of environment in environment, which we consider the PlayStation 4 hardware could not cope with.
At around 10 hours in length and with improvements in key areas, we’d say Burning Shores lives up to our expectations, is a definite buy for fans of the series, and we can’t wait to see what the next Horizon has to offer. Guerilla will now bring it unhooked from the limitations of the previous generation.
The expansion pack Horizon: Forbidden West – Burning Shores released 4/19/23 for PS5. Our review was based on a review code we received from PlayStation Greece.
