Post Script
The trouble with Aloy
When we reviewed Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart in E360, we expressed some concern about Aloy’s apparently relentless narration in the advance footage for Forbidden West – which did at least have the upshot of saving her creators the job of supplying voiceover. We afforded Guerrilla the benefit of the doubt back then, but unfortunately it turns out to be as bad as we expected, if not worse. Forbidden West includes an Explorer mode promising to let you ‘explore the world with minimal guidance’, which means following a compass at the top of the screen, as opposed to a dynamic marker that leaps about like an excitable tour guide, pointing the way ahead at all times. But whichever option you choose, there is no way to escape Ashly Burch’s voice, as a constant exterior monologue has Aloy vocalising seemingly every single thought that crosses her mind.
In some circumstances, such as the sporadic CliffsNotes summaries of her current mission objective she occasionally offers, these interjections are welcome – particularly if you’ve been tuning out during all the chat about subordinate functions and heuristic matrix initialisations and the like (or, perhaps, skipping the cinematics entirely). Yet while she occasionally proves effective as a bullshit filter, her constant observations diminish the feeling of discovery. It’s hard to feel the same sense of wonder or awe at stumbling across something new and exciting when Aloy has evidently spotted it first – although that’s arguably less of an issue than Guerrilla’s determination to herald a new arrival (human or machine) via cutscene. Even on the occasions we clamber up to a clifftop and gaze out into the distance, it’s rare we get the opportunity for a bit of silent contemplation – not when Aloy has something to say about it, or has otherwise been distracted by something else close by.
A constant interior monologue has Aloy vocalising seemingly every single thought that crosses her mind
As we suggested in our review of Rift Apart, when there is so much visual noise at any given time, it can be useful to have a way to cut through it. To have your attention drawn towards points of interest while exploring, lest you miss something of genuine significance, is sometimes worthwhile. Yet Aloy feels the need to guide us so often that we double-check the settings menu several times to ensure that there’s no way these aides-mémoire can be turned off. Alas, it’s not possible. “What’s in here?” she wonders aloud, the split-second we open a door. “There’s something up there,” we hear, having just nudged the analogue stick to turn our eyes to the ceiling. There is no time for you to figure things out, to venture into a new space and plot your way around it to your eventual destination. Even on the occasions when we get there first, she refuses to be quiet. “I should be able to glide to that ledge,” she says, moments after we’ve deployed her Shieldwing. And yet, perversely, on those rare occasions when you might really benefit from a little direction (usually while wandering aimlessly around a labyrinthine cave or finding yourself lost in a bland facility), the silence can be deafening.
This is, we happily admit, a bugbear that not everyone shares. But this isn’t the only problem with Aloy’s characterisation in Forbidden West. Frankly, it appears as though Guerrilla isn’t quite sure what to do with her – the archetypical hero’s journey was told in the first game, after all. Here, the studio seems mostly content to try to repeat the trick – except the monomyth traditionally involves the protagonist being changed in some way by their quest. By the end, Aloy has learned something about the world as it is and was, but nothing more about herself. It’s no exaggeration to say that most of the other members of the cast are afforded more meaningful character development than she is. (As such, you may find yourself considering who would have made a better choice of lead for this game: affable companion Varl, nerdy diviner Alva and rebel leader Regalla are our picks.)
It’s a real pity, since there is potential here in subverting that setup: imagine a story where this anointed saviour is humbled, or perhaps discovers that she’s not quite the all-conquering hero she’s believed to be. But Guerrilla’s writers simply aren’t interested in showing any kind of fallibility. On the few occasions Aloy’s temporarily incapacitated, she simply gets up and carries on as if nothing has happened. Her singleminded determination to complete her quest rarely involves her taking advice from others, but rather forging ahead with her own plan. And whenever she’s told it’s not going to work, she’s miraculously able to come up with an alternative solution within moments. There is not just one scene in Horizon Forbidden West where Aloy is shown to out-think supposedly hyperintelligent AIs, but several.
The result is that at best Aloy comes across as bland, at worst insufferably arrogant – which is hardly helped by the constant breathless praise heaped upon her by other characters. (While there’s a pleasing diversity among the supporting cast, you might – at the very least – question the optics of having multiple scenes of Black and brown-skinned characters offering grovelling gratitude to the white woman who was uniquely able to solve their problems.) The concept of an infallible hero is by no means exclusive to Horizon, but it’s another reminder that videogame protagonists would be far more interesting if, every now and again, they piped down and took some time to listen.