Review-bombing has diluted video game user scores and diminished the ability for interested players to accurately assess whether a title is worth purchasing, and the recent incident withHorizon Forbidden Westhas caused Metacritic to take a stab at addressing the issue head-on. TheBurning Shores DLC forHorizon Forbidden Westcame out on April 19, featuring a brand-new area for Aloy to explore accompanied by a story that matches the quality fans have come to expect from theHorizonfranchise.
Over the course of her adventure in Burning Shores, Aloy gets introduced to Seyka, an ambitious marine of the Quen tribe who becomes Aloy’s new companion. Promotional artwork and trailers touted Seyka as Aloy’s equal, with developers stating that Seyka represented the next chapter of Aloy’s overarching story. WhileHorizon Forbidden Westfeatures companions that help Aloyon her journey, Seyka is the next step towards creating a dedicated companion system for theHorizonfranchise, as well as the first character that Aloy can romance. Unfortunately, therein also lies the source of the controversy.
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A non-negligible number of players have protested Guerilla Games and Sony’s decision to pair Aloy up with another woman, sparking a rather heated debate across Twitter and other social media platforms. Moreover, websites that aggregate video game scores such as Metacritic have received a flood of negative user reviews on the DLC ofHorizon Forbidden West, sinking its score all the way down to a low of 2.7. The current Metacritic user score for Burning Shores sits at 3.9 (in stark contrast to its 82 Metascore critic rating), with many fans arguing that it doesn’t accurately reflect the consensus of theHorizoncommunity.
In a statement to Eurogamer, Fandom and Metacritic have confirmed that they’re aware of the abusive, disrespectful, andlow-effort reviews forHorizon Forbidden West’s latest DLC, expressing a desire to improve the website’s moderation in the coming months by evolving their processes and tools. While Fandom has not clarified the nature of these improvements, a process has begun to remove the most obvious offenders among Burning Shores' user reviews.
Whether Aloy romantically involves herself with Seyka at the end of Burning Shores is left entirely up to the players, though many argue that Kylie Liya Page’s performance effortlessly creates an endearing, three-dimensional character that has great chemistry with Ashly Burch’s Aloy. Seyka seamlessly joins the cast ofinterestingHorizoncharacters, and players can decide how to engage with her.
Ultimately, it feels that the negative arguments to one specific aspect of the DLC and the accompanying user reviews are being done in bad faith, prompting Metacritic to explore more proactive measures in limiting the effects of review-bombing in the future. Though it is reassuring that Metacritic has plans to address this increasingly normalized behavior, it’s an extremely delicate subject that may take more than a few months to solve.
Horizon Forbidden Westis available now on PS4 and PS5.
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