The raccoons in Horizon Forbidden West got a sequel glow-up

polygon.com:

It’s easy to look at gameplay of the Horizon Zero Dawn games and be gobsmacked by the majestic robotic fauna that inhabit their vast worlds. Robots are kinda the point of these games, so you’d be forgiven to only have eyes for them. But might I suggest that you occasionally cast your gaze elsewhere? Far below the cloud-scraping Tallnecks or the fearsome robo-Stegosaurus, you’re liable to find the best pal you’ll ever need: the raccoon.

Both Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden Westfeature raccoons in their starting areas. They scamper about, doing raccoon things with their cute raccoon tails and little bandit-mask faces. In the context of the gameplay, they exist to be hunted. Specifically: You need a raccoon pelt to craft a quiver so that you can carry more arrows. Later upgrades require all sorts of random fish bones and pelican guts, but the earliest ones basically just require raccoon parts. And this makes me sad.

See, for all the technological advancements that exist in Horizon Forbidden West, the one that stands out to me is that Guerrilla Games somehow made the raccoons cuter.

Behold the progress:

I’m not going to analyze exactly what makes these new raccoons more adorable, but I don’t think anyone could come away from this game not thinking the same thing. Like, just open your eyes.

Many of the nonrobotic creatures in Forbidden West can’t be interacted with for long. Birds jump up and fly away, and lobsters burrow into the sand, never to be seen again. But the raccoons? You can spend some quality time with these fellas.

Their AI encompasses a simple pattern: They saunter away from Aloy at a leisurely pace before getting tired and chilling in one spot for a couple of seconds. If you keep this in mind, they’re