According to Guerrilla Games, in the Horizon Zero Dawn: Frozen Wilds, a technologically advanced species, with which we share the century, spent its time saving the world instead of praying to various gods, and a thousand years later the protagonist Aloy follows the same path. On the other side, the people our young heroine encounters on her journey still struggle with primitive beliefs which makes them give a form of divinity to anything they do not understand.
Like Horizon Zero Dawn, the Frozen Wilds expansion teaches us that an individual is willing to give his life to please his gods, but also that Mark Twain did not overstate it when he said that man was the only cruel animal. Specifically, the Banuk tribe living in ice wilderness is more likely to condemn their men to cruel death than to investigate whether they are genuinely guilty of the crime for which he is persecuted. Of course, this means that Aloy, a redhead girl who is armed with a bow and arrow and this tiny technological thing from the old world, is ready to reinvent hunting stories we’ve heard earlier, including a story about why we’re riding robotic animals in the 31st century.
We can say that the Frozen Wilds is a true representation of the Horizon Zero Dawn in a reduced form. Aloy is once again saving humanity from extinction, and the Banuk tribe which she meets in a new adventure has the same weird rituals and scary rules as the other primitive communities she met earlier. Certain machines still suffer from a virus which makes them much more resilient and deadlier, but the virus is now called demonic, and the pink color gives away the infected.
It should be emphasized that the “diseased” machines here are much better designed because, above all, it is necessary to eradicate or destroy the source of the demonic virus. Control towers not only spread the infection but release electric impulses that cure the broken robots and disable those that we have “tamed”. Also, do not expect the Shield-Weaver, a very rare and very powerful piece of armor that absorbs most of the damage, to increase the stamina of the main heroine, in this situation. The layer of the shield that makes this suit so special disappears when the electric signal touches you.
Given that the beasts roaming the icy wilderness of the area called The Cut are weaker than all the others we have encountered, it is important to always be well-equipped. Frozen Wilds presents three new machines to us: Scorcher, Fireclaw and Frostclaw. The first one is about as big as Sawtooth, and the other two reach the size of Thunderjaw making them some of the biggest and the most frustrating machines we have met in this post-apocalyptic world.
To make our life easier we get a more or less useful stormslinger, or a gun that fires electricity, and the traders gladly sell weapons and other types of equipment specific to the Banuk tribe. However, we can only shop with a certain kind of currency we get by fulfilling various tasks or exploring the beautiful white world. Additionally, it is important to mention that Aloy has decided to expand her spectrum of skills, so the new branch called Traveler offers features that are more useful than they seem. Let’s say, disassembling some items into parts can be good if we need to free some inventory space or we need metal debris.
What makes Frozen Wilds expansion very different from what we saw in the Horizon Zero Dawn is nature. As the title suggests, the first and the only expansion has led us into areas where there is no room for the heat of the Sun. However, it does not hurt the Banuk community whose members often wear short sleeves.
It is no exaggeration to say that the territory of the Banuk tribe is one of the most beautiful parts of the Horizon Zero Dawn. Mountains covered with a snowy white mantle match the storyline and the challenging gameplay. Poor visibility during the great blizzards and the difficulty of breaking through a half-meter of snow are just the charms significantly deepening the gaming experience. The dialogues and the characters continue to hold on to their imaginations and a more elaborate work on NPC animations is also commended.
All in all, Frozen Wilds is a very good excuse to return to the post-apocalyptic world of the Horizon Zero Dawn, which encourages us to sometimes come out of our own comfort zone to find out what is behind the fence we set so hard.
