Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores was released over a month ago, but it’s still on my mind. The DLC is a worthwhile chapter in Aloy’s story but it also left me wondering what is next for the Horizon franchise. I think Burning Shores may have given us a few clues for what’s to come in a potential Horizon 3.
This article contains spoilers for the ending of Horizon Forbidden West and Horizon Burning Shores.
Where will the story go in Horizon 3?
It’s pretty safe to say that another mainline Horizon game is on the way. Horizon Forbidden West left things on quite the cliffhanger after all.
Aloy and her friends defeated the Far Zeniths only to learn their off-world planet was destroyed by a failed AI experiment named Nemesis, which had been pursuing them across the galaxy. Now Nemesis is on the way to Earth with a kill order, and Aloy needs to find a way to stop it.
Burning Shores took Aloy to the apocalyptic west coast of America, where one Far Zenith escapee, Walter Londra, was wreaking havoc. After defeating him, Aloy and Sylens decode some of Londra’s data and learn that he was investigating a list of 21st Century companies who were developing experimental weaponry prior to the apocalypse.
“Maybe the answer lies in the unknown, back in the ruins of Earth. The 2050s and 2060s were a golden age for defence conglomerates. Surely, buried among all those testing grounds and RED labs, there must be a weapon or prototype that will throw the enemy for a loop.” Londra writes in one of Burning Shores’ text logs.
It seems like this is a logical direction for the third Horizon Zero Dawn game will go in. Aloy will be tasked with investigating the remnants of these defence companies, which will no doubt take her to new and dangerous places across the post-apocalyptic USA.
But that’s not the only hint Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores drops. In that decoded text log, Londra lists some of his top choices for companies to investigate, which might reveal some of the places we could go in Horizon 3.
Londra’s list includes five potential companies and he details each of them in his note, which reads:
FAS (Faro Automated Solutions)
“I doubt even a fleet of Horus units could halt this foe. But if I know Ted, right before he blundered into ending the world, he was grasping for his next blockbuster.”
Metallurgic
“My erstwhile competitors poured a lot of resources into defence after it became clear they couldn’t beat me in materials acquisition.”
RECorp
“Cheap drones and misfiring railguns for bottom-feeders and petty autocrats. But once upon a time, they had a blue-chip research division.”
CertainT
“If I recall, they employed quite a few semi-reformed black hats with interesting ideas about military decryption.”
Gideon
“An obnoxious family, to be sure, but they developed a number of state-of-the-art systems before FAS ate their lunch.”
So there we have five potential story points or locations for the next Horizon sequel.
It’s hard to draw any more conclusions based on Londra’s intel, but I’m picturing Aloy scouting through the financial district in New York or the ruins of Silicon Valley for any worthwhile tech from these corrupt companies.
Or maybe it will all circle back to Ted Faro’s company to save the world (that he destroyed). Somehow it always seems to.
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