Have People Forgotten About Horizon Forbidden West Already?

thegamer.com:

Horizon Forbidden West is one of the biggest games of the year. Acting as a sequel to one of Sony’s most beloved games in recent memory, there was no way it wasn’t going to be a massive hit. But after years of hype, positive reviews, and discussion amidst fans - it seems that conversation around the game has all but dried up.

That’s no slight on Forbidden West itself. TheGamer’s editor-in-chief Stacey Henley scored the game a positive 4/5 in her review, and while she derided it for failing to properly build upon the formula and characters, concluded it remains a compellingly gorgeous open world adventure. Perhaps that’s the problem. As consumers, we’ve become so accustomed to a big blockbuster coming out, consuming them, and moving onto whatever comes next.

Related: Before Elden Ring, There Was Eternal Ring

Unless it’s a live service experience like Apex Legends or an all-consuming behemoth like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, the current gaming climate feels suited to big releases that occupy the discourse for a handful of weeks before fading into obscurity. Yet even compared to other examples in the modern zeitgeist, Forbidden West felt especially fleeting in how it came and went without so much as a whisper. Like seriously, what happened?

Elden Ring likely has something to do with it. Much like how Horizon Zero Dawn launched mere days before The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Forbidden West precluded the gargantuan footsteps of FromSoftware’s latest epic. One is a fairly predictable open world sequel that operates by the tenets we’d come to expect in terms of storytelling and mechanics, while the other is being hailed as a new frontier for open world experiences that offers untold freedom in its combat and