Horizon Forbidden West gameplay looks gorgeous as Aloy battles new beasts

Taking everything we loved from Horizon Zero Dawn and somehow making it better.

What you need to know

• A new State of Play debuted gameplay footage from Horizon Forbidden West running on PS5.
• In the gameplay, we saw Aloy save her friend Erend from a band of rival raiders, showcasing new weapons and traversal options.
• Horizon Forbidden West is expected to launch on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.

Just a couple of weeks before E3, Sony's latest State of Play showcased Horizon Forbidden West gameplay on PS5. If you thought Horizon Zero Dawn looked good, you're about to be blown away by what Forbidden West has in-store. Developer Guerrilla Games has been teasing the game all day and revealed some new machines and locations fans can look forward to.

The trailer showcased a band of raiders and several machines that gave chase to Aloy. Eventually she made she way underwater and swam to a seemingly safe area before a gigantic mechanical beast resembling a mammoth, called a Tremortusk, showed up. Aloy then followed a few raiders to their camp before the footage gave us a good look at the game's combat. As she attempts to save Erend, Aloy battles a Tremortusk before destroying it by shooting a weak spot under its stomach.

The list of all machines in Horizon Forbidden West keeps growing, as we've seen in the lead up to this gameplay debut and from its initial announcement trailer. Gameplay will be similar to that of Zero Dawn, and it looks like Aloy will finally be able to traverse underwater. The gigantic open-world is ours to explore, and with the power of the PlayStation 5 it's going to be a whole lot of fun.

Like most first party games, Guerrilla has already revealed that it will support haptic feedback and adaptive triggers on the DualSense. These features worked wonders in Astro's Playroom and Returnal, so I'm excited to see what Horizon Forbidden West can make of them.

Taking place after the events of Horizon Zero Dawn, Forbidden West follows Aloy as she ventures across the ruins of the Western United States, seeking an answer as to why a plague has corrupted the environment. With Sylens also in possession of HADES, he attempts to learn who or what reactivated it in the first place.

Horizon Forbidden West is coming to both PS4 and PS5, so you don't need to worry if you've been able to buy a PS5 yet. You can still enjoy it on Sony's last-gen console, though it remains to be seen how well it will perform. While we didn't learn of a release date, it's expected to release sometime this year. It is not available for preorder yet.

by Jennifer Locke