Horizon Forbidden West purports to be post-racial — but it’s not
The 31st-century world of Horizon Forbidden West is supposed to be post-racial. After human civilization was fully wiped out by a plague of self-replicating machines, a terraforming AI named GAIA rebuilt life on Earth, with the genetic diversity of humanity, but without the history and societal structures that underpinned racism in the 21st century. It’s a clever narrative move to let the developers pack the game with people of all skin colors, a fact that has been routinely lauded as progressive by some critics and gamers.
[Ed. note: Spoilers follow for Horizon Forbidden West.]
This is all well and good, and makes sense within the context of the story. That is, until a plethora of racist tropes begin to emerge within Forbidden West’s world. There’s a stereotypical angry Black woman named Regalla, for example, who leads a rebel army and would rather die than seek peace. There’s also constant belittling between tribes, who call each other “savage” or “uncivilized” — terms loaded with racial undertones. There’s also plenty of Orientalism.
In a much-too-short summary, Orientalism is a type of racism in which “the West” — generally understood as Europe and North America — projects savagery and beauty onto “the East,” or the Orient. This allows Western imagination to see “Eastern” cultures and people as both alluring and a threat to Western civilization. The Orient is flexible and moves depending on European and American obsessions and war efforts; its definition really depends on who’s asking, and when they’re asking. The vague notion of “the East” can be North Africa during the colonial occupation of Algeria; it can be China before and after the Opium Wars; it can be Vietnam, Japan, Korea, or many other places, depending on
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