Samsung demoed Horizon: Forbidden West at 8K and 120fps, but there’s a catch (2025)

Horizon Forbidden West: Best skills to unlock

By the end of her first outing in Horizon Zero Dawn, Aloy was a fearless robot dinosaur hunter. Early on she may have struggled with the smaller predators, but by the end of the game she was equipped to go head to head against the titanic Thunderjaws and live to tell the tale. While her arsenal of weapons certainly played a large part in her ability to strip down these hulking machines until they were piles of scrap, her skills were just as, if not more, important to her success. However, even though Horizon Forbidden West only takes place a few months after the first game, Aloy has come down with a severe case of the Metroids and lost just about every ability she had.

Starting from scratch is almost expected from RPG sequels. Some abilities can carry over, but you would generally be way too powerful in the beginning for there to be much challenge. In Horizon Forbidden West's case, the game's developers also took this opportunity to completely overhaul the skill system. There's now a much more diverse and playstyle-specific skill tree system to let players focus their build to best suit how they want to approach the game. But with six skill trees and dozens of skills within them, knowing which are the best, especially early on, can be daunting. Rather than waste your skill points, here are the best skills to unlock in Horizon Forbidden West.

Horizon Forbidden West collectibles guide

We didn't know what to expect when Guerrilla Games, previously known for its work on the FPS Killzone franchise, announced that its next game would be an open-world, third-person action RPG. The fact that it was set in a post-apocalyptic world where robotic dinosaurs faced off against primitive humans wielding bows and spears was enough to get people interested, though, and the resulting game, Horizon Zero Dawn, was a smash hit. There were a few rough edges, but it had just about everything players wanted in a new open-world experience.

The success of that first game almost made it a certainty that a sequel would come around to improve on all those new ideas. Horizon Forbidden West does just that, expanding on basically every aspect and mechanic of the first game to a massive degree. That includes the amount and types of collectibles hidden in this new, forbidden land. Aloy has plenty of new tools to help scour the Forbidden West, but you will still need our guide to know what types of collectibles you're after, as well as what they do, in Horizon Forbidden West.

Horizon Forbidden West takes big-tech billionaires to task

Compared to most PlayStation exclusives, the Horizon series is politically loaded. Horizon Zero Dawn offers up a firm critique of the United States’ eagerness to militarize technology. It imagines a future where intelligent robots built to aid the U.S. military have brought about the apocalypse. Weave in some environmental themes and you’ve got a pretty pointed take on our modern world.

With Horizon Forbidden West, developer Guerilla Games continues to not pull any punches. But rather than restating its predecessor's points, it puts another target in its sights. The dystopian action game is a searing critique of big tech that takes jabs at billionaires like Jeff Bezos. It takes no prisoners in its future-ready takedown of techno-colonialism.