Horizon Forbidden West has been out for a few weeks now, and some players have noticed that a moment from the game’s pre-launch trailers was ultimately missing from the finished product. In Horizon Forbidden West, former outcast Aloy is tasked with traveling the dangerous landscape of the titular Forbidden West to reconstruct Horizon’s terraforming AI known as GAIA and save the world from a dangerous plague known as the Blight. Along the way, she meets up with old friends, makes new enemies, and masters new tools like Horizon Forbidden West’s hard-light glider and grappling hook-like Pullcaster.

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Horizon Forbidden West adds many new features to the open-world, robot-hunting gameplay that made the original Horizon: Zero Dawn a surprise hit on the PlayStation 4 back in 2017. Aside from the updated graphics and enhanced emersion provided by the PS5 DualSense controller’s haptic feedback, Aloy can now swim underwater and ride flying machines like Horizon Forbidden West’s new Sunwing. Some of these new gameplay features were showcased in a visually stunning Horizon Forbidden West trailer during last May’s PlayStation State Of Play livestream event. During this brief snippet of story and gameplay footage, Aloy has to help her recurring ally Erend survive an encounter with a hulking Tremortusk.               

As reported by Comicbook.com, some Reddit users have realized that while the Horizon Forbidden West State Of Play trailer was an impressive showcase of the then-unreleased PlayStation exclusive, the actual mission shown in it is completely absent from the finished game. Jmcc84 pointed this out in a recent post, stating that they would have rather met back up with Erend during this encounter with the Tremortusk instead of the way he appears in the released version of Horizon Forbidden West. Other users noted that this mission was likely a “vertical slice” that was never intended to be released in Horizon Forbidden West, instead of allowing Guerilla Games to show off the game’s graphics and new features without worrying about spoiling the plot. More still have pointed out that Horizon: Zero Dawn did something similar with an encounter between Aloy and a Thunderjaw that ultimately never happened in the 2017 original.

Despite this missing trailer moment, Horizon Forbidden West has enjoyed mostly positive reviews from fans and critics due to its many improvements over the original Horizon: Zero Dawn. Not every player has been satisfied with Aloy’s latest adventure, as some players have noted that melee combat still feels somewhat awkward and that Horizon Forbidden West feels like it has too much side content at times. Still, many who have played through Horizon Forbidden West have praised the game for its brilliantly visualized post-apocalyptic open-world – even if some are disappointed in how Horizon Forbidden West only has one ending despite Aloy coming across many narrative choices on her journey.

Some players might have been looking forward to playing through Aloy’s rescue of Erend as shown in Horizon Forbidden West’s May 2021 PlayStation State Of Play trailer, but this event ultimately plays out differently in the finished game. Nonetheless, fans are currently enjoying Horizon Forbidden West as one of Sony’s first blockbuster releases of 2022.

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Source: jmcc84/Reddit (via Comicbook.com)

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J. Brodie Shirey
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J. Brodie Shirey is just a simple man trying to make his way in the universe, but aren’t we all? He currently lives in York, Pennsylvania. He is a big comic book, video game, and science fiction fan, and likes writing articles for ScreenRant or scripts for some of his crazy TV show ideas.

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