Horizon forbidden west

• Horizon Forbidden West

  • published by Guerrilla Games
  • 2nd game
  • Guerrilla Games is the result of a merger of 3 earlier companies (starting in 1993)- reflects gaming origins in small independent companies in contrast to its current status as a global, billion dollar industry
  • range of platforms the game is available on
• Horizon Forbidden West

  • Guerrilla Games
  • Sony Interactive
  • platforms- PS4/5
  • released February 2022
  • single player
  • Action RPG (role play game)
  • sequel to 2017s Horizon Zero Dawn
  • game set it post-apocalyptic version of western US recovering from aftermath of an extinction event caused by a rogue robot swarm
  • player can explore open world and complete quests using ranged and melee weapons against hostile machine creatures
  • received generally favourable reviews
  • director- Mathijs de Jonge
  • narrative director- Benjamin McCaw
• Sony has companies across media platforms and it’s horizontally and vertically integrated
• Guerrilla Games

  • one of Europes leading game development studios
  • founded in 2000
  • employs over 350 professionals from 50 different nationalities
  • comic series made by Titan who pay Guerrilla Games to make them
• sales- Horizon Forbidden West

  • UK- best digitally selling game during week of release
  • at least 49% of sales was digital copies
• regulation- Horizon Forbidden West

  • PEGI- pan-European games information
  • 3,7,12,16,18
  • HFW is a 16- strong violence and bad language
• psychographics- Horizon Forbidden West

  • explorers
  • mainstreamers
  • performers
• uses and gratifications- Horizon Forbidden West

  • female protagonist
  • social interaction
  • entertainment
  • escapism
• • signifier- robot bird
  • signified- enemy, past and future
  • iconic- Aloy
  • indexical- bridge overgrown with plants- set in dystopian future
  • symbolic- PS5
  • paradigm- weapon, creature, stance
  • syntagm- action, conflict
• mise-en-scene: Horizon Forbidden West

  • a french term meaning “putting on stage”
  • combines elements such as lighting, composition, art direction, costuming, makeup and texture
  • almost everything that happens in front of a camera in a particular scene
  • starts with a screenplay illustrating action, dialogue and the details of particular visual elements such as costumes, properties, period and description of settings
• Todorovs narrative structure- Horizon Forbidden West

  • equilibrium- the world is dying, the Blyt
  • disruption- Regla, the Far Geniths, trying to make a new world
  • recognition- Aloy needs help, she needs her focus, she’s the only one who can do this
  • attempt to repair- Aloy needs to find the Gaia Subordinates
  • new equilibrium- Aloy and Beta reactivate Gaia but they still need to destroy Nemisis
• villain- Nemisi, Regalla
• hero- Aloy
• princess- Gaia
• helper- focus, Varl, Erend
• false hero- Sylens
• tribes represented

  • “afraid“
  • savage- fight others
  • “rebels“
  • stereotypically dressed
  • overall very stereotypical
• tribes

  • Oseram- builders, revellers- clan, productive
  • Carja- guard border, afraid of outsiders
  • Utaru- sing to heal the land, patronising view, powerless
  • Tenakth- 3 clans, chief Hekarro vs Regalla- violent, savage, “generations of bloodshed“, rebels
• indigenous stereotyping in film and tv

  • primitive
  • violent
  • passive
  • afraid of technology
  • bare chested warrior with a war lance
  • princess sympathetic to white male quest
  • noble mystic
  • basic- rarely speaks, no complexity
• “the biggest challenge was that we needed to believably populate the entire world again. this required enough variation and faces of all ages, ethnicities and genders” said the veterian developer from Gurilla Games
• narrative function

  • black and Asian characters historically given negative representations
  • often in the helper role
  • rarely the hero
  • some representations rely on colonial myths or post-war immigration
  • race is often represented as binary oppositions
  • differences are exaggerated
  • similarities are limited
• Paul Gilroy

  • black people represented- racial otherness
  • criminalised representations of black people in the media
  • amplification of multicultural disharmony in the UK and US
  • black people presented as different- humorous, exotic, pitied, dangerous- Alvarados stereotypes
  • fears that immigrant communities would ‘swamp’ white Britain
  • imperialist view of many stories- shown the western view- biased through the eyes of the media
• Paul Gilroy

  • media constructed a binary view- separates ethnic groups
  • nurtures the concept of cultural incompatibility
  • melancholy and double consciousness- sense of two-ness
  • concept of diaspora identity
• Paul Gilroy states that racial difference and racial identities are the product of racial oppression
• • racial identities are caused by historical conflicts that have brought different groups into opposition
• different human groups existed but their differences weren’t defined by ‘race’ lines
• • after the Renaissance, lines of race were established as a useful way to legitimise oppression (the slave trade reflected the European perspective that their ‘race’ was superior to those whom they enslaved and as such it was acceptable for less intelligent, less moral races to be taken as slaves for Europeans)
• race makes the identity of oppressors and the oppressed seem fixed and uniform
• Ethnic Absolutism is the concept that humans are part of different ethnic compartments- Gilroy opposes this way of thinking
• the country a group have been forced to leave will be the place that defines the cultural or ethnic identity for those individuals
• Paul Gilroy considers a transatlantic diasporic identity, where groups across the Atlantic share cultural practices- as a result of a shared history of oppression and slavery
• Gilroy sees black identities as a product of movement
• the Black Atlantic diaspora is irreversible because the experince of slavery
• Gilroy‘s intervention in the diasporic thinking was an attempt to challenge those that wold see black culture
• racial representations- Orientalism- HFW

  • Regalla- African mask, straight hair, spikes on her shoulders, fierce and dangerous
  • Tenakth- masks, cant connect to them
  • Aloy- earthy tones, can see her face- can connect to her
  • red in Asian building and dragons- stereotypical
  • AI named GAIA rebuilt life in earth, with the genetic diversity of humanity, but without history
• racial representations- Orientalism- HFW

  • Aloy is both an explorer and a white saviour, only she understands what is at stake in the world and she has to spend time in the petty politics of a bunch of tribes in order to convince them her problems are worse than theirs
  • Aloy discovers the final resting place of Ted Faro below San Franciscos Transamerica Pyramid, hes the ruler of the “pyramid“ a survival bunker that he names Thebes and his name is Faro, its a bit on the nose
• racial representations- Orientalism- HFW

  • HFW world is filled with thoughtful details about what a rebuilt society could look like. the microcosms of culture in each tribes unique temperament, rituals and obsessions are all carefully chosen and developed
  • developers repeat orientalism in design choices as perpetually foreign, mysterious and threatening
• critical views- HFW

  • knight and other indigenous games, as well as indigenous game developers have expressed disappointment over the stereotypes of the tribes
  • “every element of every culture in our world is fictional“- Jan-Bart Van Beek, Guerillas studio head and art director
• positive view- HFW

  • one of the most visually stunning game on PS5
  • praise on how authentic their black characters appear in the game
  • noticeable amount of black NPCs in the game
  • black characters not represented and gangsters, athletes or promiscuous
• positive- HFW

  • black NPCs
  • female protagonist- isn't sexualised
  • black charters aren’t represented as gangsters
  • they’ve had praise about how authentic their black characters appear in the game
  • different ages characters
  • complex female characters