It is unknown how immenseHorizon Forbidden West’s Burning Shores DLC expansion will be. There are several expectations that fans can take away from information shared thus far, such as having an entirely new region in Los Angeles to explore. One could take a look back atHorizon Zero Dawn’s own DLC expansion, The Frozen Wilds, and use its runtime to estimate how long Burning Shores could be. Either way, Burning Shores is classified as an expansion, which suggests it will have a ton of new content.
This gives Guerrilla Games an opportunity to truly accentuateHorizon Forbidden West’s Sunwing mount in gameplay, as trailers already have. Today,Horizon Forbidden West’s Burning Shores expansion revealed its price tag and pre-order bonuses, which could help narrow down how much content it will have. In the meantime, there are a couple of troublesome stipulations in purchasing this expansion. One is that the DLC will not be available on PS4, while the other is that players must have completedForbidden West’s main game story.
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Horizon Forbidden West’s Expansion is Not Conducive to New Players
The fact that players need to have hit credits inHorizon Forbidden West’s narrative might be a bit more gatekeeping than fans would have assumed. Of course, it makes sense that fans interested in Burning Shores will likely have finished the main game, especially considering how much time has passed sinceForbidden West’s launch.
There may be fans who were previously unable to play the game for whatever reason who now feel pressured torush throughForbidden Westin order to prepare for Burning Shores. Moreover, a lot of fans who played and finishedForbidden Westmight have only done so on last-gen hardware. Since the Burning Shores DLC is only available on PS5, even if fans played through the entirety ofHorizon Forbidden West’s main questline on PS4, the expansion will still be inaccessible to them.
More fans have likely been able to procure a PS5 in the past year, but having to replay a 30-hour or so narrative-driven game in time for Burning Shores next month may not be conducive to a lot of players. This is more of a niche concern, but is still a restriction that the expansion enforces on fans, rewarding those who happened to be able to find and own a PS5 when they played and completedForbidden West.
Burning Shores Makes Sense as a Proper Continuation to Forbidden West
That being said, Burning Shores is an actual continuation ofForbidden West,and therefore only makes sense narratively when embarking upon it after the base game’s story events. This means that there will be obvious spoilers about what had happened at the end of the main game, and players could potentially see closure for a couple characters or have them tag along asNPC companions in Los Angeles.
The looming threat ofForbidden West’s Nemesisneeds to be addressed again if it is indeed a horrible threat, but it will be exciting to see howForbidden West’s landscape expands with a new region and content. The aforementioned Sunwing mount flight will only be available as part of a continuation taking place after the main story as well, since it is only unlocked near the end ofForbidden West. The alternative could have been that players access this expansion in the middle of the main game. However, that would have reduced any sense of urgency that the narrative had as Aloy explores the ruins of San Francisco.
Horizon Forbidden Westis available on PS4 and PS5, and the Burning ShoresDLC is scheduled to release on April 19 exclusively for PS5.
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