Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores has been out for a couple of days now, and it is a complete and utter delight. The expansion sees Aloy travel to the ruins of Los Angeles, now known as the Burning Shores, where she must team-up with Sekya - a member of a displaced portion of the Quen tribe - to take down a rogue member of the Far Zeniths.
Back when Burning Shores was announced, it caused somewhat of a stir after it was revealed that the DLC would be a PlayStation 5 exclusive, despite the fact that Forbidden West is not. If you’ve played Burning Shores though, it’s clear to see why that decision was made. In our review, we wrote, “Burning Shores is a soaring new high for the franchise. Serving as the perfect set-up for an assumedly soon-to-be-announced Horizon 3, Burning Shores is yet another step up for the series, telling what is undeniably the most cohesive and personal story to date.” It’s that personal aspect of the story though that’s led to a disappointing wave of review-bombing.
Take a look at the launch trailer for Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores below.
Warning: minor story spoilers lie ahead. Burning Shores confirms what some fans have suspected for quite some time - that Aloy is in fact gay. By the end of the story, Aloy and Sekya confess their feelings for one another and honestly, it is a joy to see Aloy do just one thing for herself instead of saving the world all of the time. Unfortunately though, this development has led to a wave of review-bombing from homophobes over on Metacritic.
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Before we proceed, please be warned that the following ‘reviews’ contain harmful sentiments and a complete and utter lack of human decency. One user commented, “I have no idea why everything has to be with a damn political agenda. We already have Ellie who is a lesbian.” Oh yes, I forgot that earth is only permitted to have one lesbian at a time. Another wrote, “Aloy is lesbian? Ok then, I won’t buy the DLC.” Your loss.
“This DLC STINKS!!! In all seriousness, the woke culture hits hard,” said another while one player added, “This dlc makes it clear that Sony turned PlayStation into a leftist platform to manifest narcissistic ideologies and influence homosexuality through lesbian pornography just to please a specific audience, ignoring 99% of the people responsible for the company's profit!!! There is no diversity, equality, democracy and freedom of expression if only one side has a voice to speak.” Because gaming clearly has no straight protagonists … oh wait, yes. There are hundreds.
One review read, “Look, I don’t have anything against lesbians. This was forced. Almost like Guerrilla saw Mr Druckmann games and said, ‘We can do it too.’” Ah yes, circling back to that ‘Ellie is the only lesbian permitted on earth’ idea. I’ll finish with, “Very stupid dialogues. This add-on is awful and cringe. Persons are really not interesting,” which is also how I would describe my experience of reading these reviews.
Topics: Horizon Forbidden West, Guerrilla Games, PlayStation, PlayStation 5