Horizon Forbidden West is a gorgeous game. I’ve yet to play it myself, but editor-in-chief Stacey Henley’s review and all the footage emerging online teases an experience that is just as jaw dropping as its predecessor. Characters, creatures, and environments are realistic yet imaginative, expressing a level of visual fidelity that is almost unmatched in the open world genre. It’s pretty and lifelike in a way that means smaller and more subtle details can be rendered without compromise. This means that truly horrifying things - like women - are striving for realism instead of a sexy, magazine cover model fantasy the medium has often resigned itself to. Times are changing, and certain people aren’t happy about it.

Horizon

Last year we touched on Aloy’s appearance and how a few people online took issue with a woman who wasn’t conventionally feminine, providing an alternate look that apparently morphed the heroine into something that straight white men would find more appealing. I know that so much of this discourse is ill-disguised bait waiting for someone like me to waltz in and fall for the trap, but I’ve been around the block long enough to know that the online landscape is filled with people who really think this way. When I interviewed Mel Kishida about Blue Reflection: Second Light he touched on the changing attitude towards young female characters and their continued sexualisation and how a global outlook means that old habits will continue to die hard. The response was for a bunch of right-wing YouTubers to make videos hurling death threats at me, which of course was a very normal reaction.

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The same thing happened when I spoke to key creatives behind Final Fantasy 7 Remake who hailed The Last of Us Part 2 as a benchmark for diversity, and how the JRPG epic wanted to update the old game to reflect modern society positively. I reported what was told based on the questions I asked, but because it happened to go against an outdated thought process I was accused of going woke, or putting words in the mouths of people who had no interest in spreading my woke snowflake politics. The world is changing and these body-pillow wielding, basement-dwelling losers aren’t happy that we’re moving on without them. I’m probably just fuelling the fire by acknowledging them, but they’ve become an aspect of toxic normalcy in online spaces that it’s worth labelling them, so we can slowly but surely phase them out.

So onto Aloy. As I said before, the game is beautiful, so much so that even the smallest of details are rendered with the utmost clarity. This includes facial features like hair and other blemishes, with a clear layer of peach fuzz being visible on Aloy’s face if you’re eager to zoom in and take a gander. Like many women - and in fact, almost all humans - Aloy has faint, wispy facial hair. Waxing probably isn’t high on the agenda of humanity’s saviour when she’s busy killing robot dinosaurs and scaling ancient ruins.

She probably has leg hair too, a fact that will make thousands of gamers recoil in simultaneous terror. Humans are messy creatures of biological circumstance made up of blood, spit, hair, and so much other nasty stuff that we just so happened to be attracted to. Or not, as the case often ends up being, and that’s perfectly okay. Gaming is a medium which was built on the shoulders of straight, white men with an expectant level of privilege. For years, it was a house constructed on the basis of heteronormativity, and thus women were depicted in a way that was sexy and appealing to a very particular demographic.

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Like any and all art forms this perception was bound to change, but games have become such an inescapable aspect of these identities that sharing your toys with others or seeing them change is viewed as an act of aggression. I’m a pansexual trans woman, so many feel I don’t belong in this space, and that my wish to make it a better place for everyone is an unacceptable prerogative that will inevitably make games worse, putting politics and ideology ahead of innovation. The thing is we can have both, and often do, as games like The Last of Us Part 2, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, and several other blockbusters have been more than happy to prove. I haven’t even talked about the indie scene, which is bursting with excellent ideas from creators across every conceivable background.

All the complaints levelled toward Aloy - both genuine and farcical - come from a place where women are viewed as sexual objects first and foremost. They exist to provide an attraction towards straight cis men who believe gender roles play a particular part in society and deviating from that ideology is an attack, or viewed as yet another attempt from the snowflakes to turn this medium into something it was never meant to be. If you look at a woman and your first reaction is, ‘gross, I wouldn’t put my dick in that’ then you are a fucking garbage person. I’m sorry but there is no other way to say it. Trust me, Aloy doesn’t want to have sex with you either. In fact, it’s about time she got a girlfriend.

Horizon Forbidden West Flying Mounts

We exist in a world where ideological battle lines are more pronounced than ever, meaning that hateful attitudes towards LGBTQ+ individuals, people of colour, and anyone who isn’t straight and white can be viewed as an oddity to be phased out or overlooked as demanding things change to fit our needs. The irony is that the exact opposite is happening, and all the losers moaning about Aloy resembling a living, breathing woman are so detached from reality that they think Tifa Lockhart or Lara Croft circa 1996 are walking among us. Please go outside and touch some grass - we will all be so much better for it.

Horizon Forbidden West is gorgeous, and so is Aloy. She is realistic in terms of both attitude and appearance, weeding out those that this medium has an obligation to leave behind if it hopes to grow and become the artform it has always wanted to be.

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