Creating Religion

I finally did it. After sixty hours of game play, I've earned 100% of the trophies on Horizon; Forbidden West and beaten the game. Admittedly, I probably could have done it sooner but I got distracted by every side quest I came across. I adored it. Like it's predecessor, the gameplay is smooth and fun. The leveling mechanics are simple enough and the skill tree, while a bit more complicated, allows for a lot of player customization. Of course, the one things that really stands out to me is the world building and the characters. Unlike Zero Dawn, Forbidden West puts more emphasis on the characters. Understandably, as they are much more important to the plot this time around. But the one things that's really stood out to me between both games is the creation of religion. Now, this little blog is going to look at religion from a third person, strictly historical standpoint.

Minor spoilers ahead. For those of you that don't know, the Horizon series takes place in a post-apocalyptical world. Meaning the world, or the modern world at least, has already ended. Due to human hubris and the creation of machines meant to aide people and the world (and start wars but we're not focusing on that), civilization was overrun leaving ruins of technology without much knowledge to utilize it. That's where the religion comes in. Religion has always been a way for people to look at things they don't understand and give an explanation - a higher power. Guerrilla Games did an amazing job of looking at the world they created and asking, how the people of that world try to understand where they live. How would they make sense of things that they can't comprehend.

Image Credit: Guerrilla Games

Playing Forbidden West has only strengthened my belief that Guerrilla Games really looked at their world from the characters viewpoints. The game looks at different tribes of humans and how their interactions with the world around them has shaped their beliefs. Specifically the Tenakth people. Their interaction with the old world has been much more positive than what was encountered in Zero Dawn. While the Nora of the original game revered their technology as a sort of god, the Tenakth were given videos and pieces of patriotic clips which shaped their entire society. They had the Ten - an old world military group that fought off the impending apocalypse. The difference between how each of these people looked at what they were given and shaped a society based on them is astounding. The Tenakth took what they had and rather than looking at the Ten like gods, they looked to them as examples of bravery and courage which is how the Tenakth grew to be a tribe that put bravery and battle prowess above all else.

Guerrilla Games does an amazing job of tracking the birth and growth of religion in a way that both has an hasn't been done before. Sure, we've had games that show how different worlds and history may effect how people see the world, but Horizon gives us a very clear view of how what that religion came from. They take things we know like planes and text messages and put them in the context of someone who didn't grow up with it. The way people look at the technology around them in the game is very similar to how ancient civilizations looked at nature and natural disaster and used myths, legends, and gods to explain them. Forbidden West is an amazing game with astounding world building. I, for one, can't wait for the next release in the series.