Horizon Forbidden West Addresses The Issues With Tribes, But Not The Appropriation
When Horizon Zero Dawn came out, few reviews noted the cultural appropriation that comes with a white girl running around dressed as a Native American. Games have come a long way in a short time, and so even as recently as 2017 perhaps we did not have the capacity to interrogate such an issue. In the years since, it has been mentioned more often - while marginalised critics have put in the hard yards of keeping it a talking point - but the Forbidden West reviews largely don’t address it either.
Of course, there are a couple of excuses for this. It’s no worse than in the first game, and this time around we all expected it, so perhaps many felt it was not worth drawing attention to. If you view a review as a buyer’s guide (for me, it should be that mixed in equal parts with critical evaluation) then you may feel there was no need to inform your readers of a thing they already know. I myself did not dedicate paragraphs to the idea, but spent a few lines noting that the game fails to interrogate, justify, or learn from criticisms of appropriation and even doubles down in places with Aloy wearing armour akin to a chief’s headdress.
Related: Horizon Forbidden West Review - Sony Has Done It Again, But Should It Do Something New?
Guerrilla Games ducks the issue of such problematic design decisions, but the issues go deeper than Aloy. Indeed, while the headdress is a choice, Aloy is less defined by her relationship with the Nora here and so the appropriation feels less on the nose. The game still could make some attempt to address the issues the first game raised around its aesthetic, but they’re too core to the Horizon formula to be removed completely. It’s not Aloy who offers the most interesting cultural analysis this time
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