There are also 4 new sets of armor that have been added to the game, the most interesting being the Chieftain set which has health recovery over time. But frankly I found that my Shielded Armor remained my most useful set of armor other than stealth armor (there is a new set of stealth as well that is the new best stealth armor in the game). But perhaps surprisingly, unlike with the weapons, I was actually glad that my Shielded Armor remained the best armor. After all, that set of armor has it’s own extremely difficult quest to obtain, and I would feel a bit cheated if it became suddenly useless. Much more interesting than the armor is that you find someone early on in the expansion that can upgrade your spear for you even beyond that wonderful final spear that you obtain in the main story. They are able to add two modification slots to your spear and you can find some damage mods to make your spear do some very serious damage. All around, I was glad that I waited until this DLC before doing my New Game+ run. These upgrades are going to be invaluable when I go back through the game on Ultra Hard in order to unlock all the new face paints and Focus elements. They also added new trophies for both New Game+ and for The Frozen Wilds, so even though I already had the Platinum, there are even more achievements to chase. But even with all these really nice additions, much like with the main game, the real highlight is the story.
While there are a lot of connections between what is happening in the Banuk lands to what is happening in the world at large, including a very strong connection to someone you are personally associated with, they have their own set of problems. One of the more fascinating parts of this expansion is that their problems are very believable, especially for someone who actually lives in this part of the world. Even with civilization ostensibly being here, this is a very hard environment to live in, and so to imagine civilization crumbling would represent a very real problem in and of itself. But there is also an environmental catastrophe just waiting to happen here that we are all very aware of, particularly with the very frequent seismic events that have been a continual reminder every year. If the cap on Yellowstone Park were to blow, it’s quite possible that it would irrevocably alter the entire earth’s environment, possibly even making human life unsustainable. As such, it makes sense that with the advances of the future, they would attempt to quell that very real threat, while at the same time using that extreme source of geothermal power. And so, even without playing the expansion and seeing that plume of smoke coming from this area of the world, I had a very good idea of what was going on. Even though that part of the game was unsurprising for a local, how they pulled it off was still wonderful to play through. Like in other parts of the game, you had to wade through local superstition and politics and even family dynamics before you could even get to the problem and address it.
It is good that there is that barrier of entry to even get into this part of the world, because much of what happens in this part of the world would be lost on you if you weren’t near the end of the main game. If you pay attention to the main story, it will come at no surprise when Hephaestus starts getting involved. But if you didn’t get to that part of the main game, or didn’t pay attention, you may be confused as to what all is going on. Of course, being an expansion that still takes place before the end of the last story mission, you are not able to permanently solve much of anything regarding more than the local problem. But there was still enough resolution to not feel that your time was wasted. And there was also enough new information about Hephaestus and the events of the past that it adds to the set up for the sequel. I’ve never disliked the Killzone games, but it still remains shocking to me that there was this much story talent at Guerrilla Games that was untapped previously to this game.
The largest criticism about the original game was that the absurdly beautiful graphics did not always look quite as good when characters were talking to each other. It was not a huge thing, just a little distracting, and it was more because the rest of the game looked so amazing that it was even noticeable. But that was mostly addressed in this DLC, or at least it was noticeable that they worked on it. To a certain extent they can only do so much, because it’s still the same game engine. But there was an improvement there, and the developers should be proud for doing so much with it even within a year after release. Where that improvement is the most noticeable is with the interaction with all the different main and side characters. One of the strengths of this game has been that even the side quests are much more interesting than your standard open world game because you get to know the characters and they all have good reasons for asking for your help. This is even more true for this DLC as some of the best side characters in the entire game are all located in this region. They have very vivid personalities and some of the best dialogue writing in the whole game makes its appearance here.
My one complaint about this expansion is a very nit picky one that really only locals would understand. When you are in Yellowstone Park, some of the areas state that they are in Montana, when in fact that region of the park (like Old Faithful) is actually in Wyoming. Really only about 10% of the park reaches Montana. But given how compressed they had to make everything, and given that the developer is actually located in Europe, it is still remarkably accurate. Everything else about the game, including the new voice acting and the couple new pieces of music, is all equally good, if not better, than the main game. What this expansion does was just show that Guerrilla Games isn’t done totally reforming their image and changing games as a medium. Does it cause it to overtake Persona 5 as my game of the year? No, not really, but that was not ever really in the cards due to being a totally different type of game. But it does put some distance between itself and everything else this year, including the aforementioned Breath of the Wild. At first glance $19.99 might seem steep for a single bit of DLC content, but you are getting more than your dollar worth for the 15+ hours of content here. And for those wondering, yes Western Wyoming is literally this cold during winter. Bring on Horizon 2, I can’t wait to see where the journey of Aloy will take her next, hopefully to a sunny beach after this adventure.
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Review Copy was self purchased.
