Horizon Forbidden West PS5 PlayStation 5 1

Horizon Forbidden West has graced the cover of this month’s Game Informer, and details are beginning to emerge online. While we’d strongly encourage you to read the article for yourself, a couple of tidbits shared in a Reddit summary caught our attention. Namely, the skill tree sounds massively upgraded, spanning six different disciplines.

You’ll be able to invest skill points into Warrior (melee), Trapper (traps), Survivor (health), Infiltrator (stealth), Hunter (ranged), and Machine Master (hacking) categories. There are around 20-30 skills per path, and while it’s unclear whether you’ll be able to unlock them all in a single playthrough, you’ll have the option to boost the effectiveness of some skills by putting extra points into them.

Interestingly, your skills will also be multiplied by some armours and weapons, which should really give you the opportunity to create unique builds for Aloy and thus further shape your playstyle. Side-quests will apparently offer better rewards than in Horizon Zero Dawn, encouraging you to play through more of the optional content.

There’s a workbench where you can upgrade your gear, too, so it does sound like there’s a lot more depth to the RPG elements this time around. Also of note is that cinematics have been completely overhauled, making conversations more engaging with better facial animations and motion capture, meanwhile there’s a new acid-themed arrow type.

You can read more of the summary on Reddit, and the full article in the latest issue of Game Informer. It’s all getting rather exciting, isn’t it?

[source gameinformer.com, via reddit.com]