The announcement of Horizon: Zero Dawn’s sequel, Forbidden West, has everyone scrambling for clues. As the sequel’s title and the PlayStation 5 Future of Gaming reveal trailer more than demonstrate, Aloy will be headed west, leaving far-future America’s Midwest for the coast.
The original game takes place in the Colorado region, covering Bryce Canyon to Denver. Forbidden West seems to give Aloy free rein of everything past the Colorado River to the Coast, and the trailer offers plenty of hints as to where Aloy will be exploring once the sequel launches. The ruins of the Golden Gate Bridge are immediately recognizable, as are the sunken Ferry Building and Palace of Fine Arts. There's no doubt about it: welcome to post-apocalyptic San Francisco, Aloy!
However, the trailer hints at another big, recognizable location. The placard Aloy finds and dusts off during the trailer shows a few simplified Chinese characters overlaid on a background of playing cards. As if the cards weren’t enough of a hint, the Chinese characters can be translated to “entertainment venue”, but more accurately refer to a casino resort. This can only mean one thing on the West Coast.
That’s right, Aloy is hitting Las Vegas. The placard she finds points to a Chinese-styled casino—there isn’t actually one in Vegas, so no need to go looking—swallowed up by desert sands. Some may argue that the placard might actually be in the remains of San Francisco's prominent Chinatown that hosts one of the nation’s oldest Chinese communities, but the environment is a big clue that proves otherwise.
In the world of Horizon Zero Dawn, the coastal city of San Fran is apparently several dozen feet underwater (as shown by the submerged Palace of Fine Arts). While much has changed about America in the far, post-robot apocalypse future, it doesn’t seem likely that a flooded city could also host an arid desert and well-worn rock formations - that are coincidentally distinctly Nevadan - in such close proximity.
And since when have open-world game developers passed up a chance to show off not one, but two ruined cityscapes? Especially with the PlayStation 5’s chunky graphics machine, which Forbidden West already seems to happily be making use of.
While the coast of California and the deserts of Nevada seem to be the two most recognizable locales showcased in the trailer, there's a good chance players can expect much more. The distance between San Francisco and Las Vegas is much smaller than the area covered in the original game, and it's hard to imagine that Guerilla, armed with next-gen tech, would be making a map smaller that the one used in a PS4 launch title.
Then again, the distance between Bryce Canyon and Denver was significantly compressed in Horizon: Zero Dawn; it could be that Forbidden West will take advantage of the PS5's capabilities by going in-depth into the geography and mapping out the span of Los Angeles to Las Vegas in much closer detail more proportionate to the actual distance.
Regardless of the new map's size, what players will actually have to contend with in the new geography remains a bit of an unknown. The trailer showed off a few new machine encounters, but dangerous machines aren’t all that lurk beyond Sunfall, if the in-game lore is anything to go by. The Forbidden West isn't called that for nothing: it’s basically the in-universe Bermuda Triangle, with all the danger and mystery that that entails. People who venture there from the Carja Sundom rarely return - and if they do, it’s not in one piece. With Sylens appearing to be back at his cult-creating ways as well, it seems as though Aloy will have a lot to handle in Forbidden West.