The big Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores expansion launches today, but perhaps you want to get a taste of the DLC before you buy? Well, you can get just that via a new IGN First video, which shows off approximately the first 20-minutes of Burning Shores. It seems this DLC doesn’t drag its feet, as we actually see quite a lot set up in these first few minutes. You can check out the gameplay for yourself, below.
Warning: The following video may contain some spoilers for Horizon Forbidden West and the earliest parts of the Burning Shores DLC.
The clip starts with a perhaps one of the last scenes with the sadly-departed Lance Reddick’s character Sylens. For there, we see Aloy take wing on a robo pteranodon, and meet up with Seyka, who should be her companion for the DLC. Seyka leads her back to Fleet’s End, home of a stranded band of Quen, who lost much of their tribe at sea. One of those lost people happens to be Seyka’s sister, and finding her, and achieving Aloy’s goals, require them to take out a large watch tower. And thus this side story gets underway.
Need to know more about the Quen tribe featured in the footage above? Here’s a bit more detail, courtesy of the PlayStation Blog.
“Knowledge from the ancient past has allowed the Quen to build an impressive empire. But unlike, say, the Oseram tribe, whose technological prowess is due to their creative inventions, the Quen rely solely on the knowledge they’ve unearthed to drive their advancements. As a result, an important part of their culture revolves around protecting the few Focuses the tribe possesses, as well as strictly controlling who can access the valuable information these devices reveal. To that end, Diviners play a special role in the tribe. As a highly esteemed class of Quen, only Diviners are allowed to use a Focus to read data. Their job is to find and record ancient knowledge that may benefit the empire, ensuring that it doesn’t fall into the hands of outsiders.”
Getting back to Lance Reddick’s character, according to those who have wrapped up the Burning Shores, Guerrilla Games hints he will continue to have a big role in the future (although, obviously, that will likely have to change). If you’re not afraid of spoilers, you can get more details here.
Horizon Forbidden West can be played on PS4 and PS5. The Burning Shores expansion is available now and can only be played on PS5.