#DLC burning shores

[juspmt]

Aloy and Seyka

[xamiipholia]

Since it’s been a year since Burning Shores came out, some thoughts on Seyka:

TL;DR: Great character, really happy with her as a love interest for Aloy. They do some really interesting things with her that I never really see addressed so I wanted to talk about them.

She is tangibly shown to be much more of a match for Aloy through gameplay. Compared to other npcs, she solves things faster, does more damage, is a much more formidable melee combatant, faster climber - she even has a fucking Valor Surge using her Focus that does pretty significant tear damage to large machines like Slaughterspines. Environmental storytelling- Seyka’s skiff has at least 2-3 Tiderippers’ worth of parts, meaning she’s been out on her own killing the things to build boat motors, and she has some ambient dialogue that strongly suggests she’s fought and killed Slaugterspines before. Is some of this npc tech advancements in Burning Shores? Maybe, but it feels intentional. 

Seyka has a natural probing curiosity about the old world that for the most part Aloy’s other companions didn’t have without some significant hand-holding from Aloy to get them started, and some of her close friend (but not base team) characters just don’t have at all. I don’t mean this as a moral judgement, everyone is different and has different strengths and priorities , but it’s absolutely critical that a partner for Aloy have that kind of curiosity - it’s such a big part of her character. While she lives in this new world, she’s never going to be entirely a part of it. Like she says, she finds belonging in individuals, and not really the tribes. I don’t really see Aloy settling down in Meridian or Mother’s Heart. She needs to have a life of exploration and discovery and Seyka seems cut from that cloth too, whether she was always that way or being marooned gave her a fresh perspective.

Seyka did risk death using the focus and decided to do it anyway- in Rheng’s notes he calls for capital punishment for her. The threat is never *too* present but honestly I think that’s a broader critique of the series and pretty consistent with the writing of conflicts in Horizon. I agree they could have played up the dramatic tension a bit, but this is a person who weighed the risk of a military execution by a totalitarian state and immediately decided it was worth it to save her sister and others. I think Aloy can intimately relate, given what she went through for Beta.

Even though it’s a DLC, she has a TON of screen time, probably comparable to Kotallo in HFW, and Horizon does SO much storytelling through gameplay and ambient dialogue. I think she’s given a LOT of narrative space to breathe. She’s also has her own musical cues and leitmotifs that do a ton of foreshadowing work through the DLC - in terms of musical cues and framing she’s very associated with the acoustic guitar, and the flute melody in ‘Her Sky, Her Sea’ has for Aloy and Seyka the same function that ‘It Can’t Last’ does for Ellie and Dina in TLOU2 - next time you play Burning Shores, listen for it. That and the guitar cues from ‘The Idea of Home’ and ‘For His Entertainment’ do a lot of emotional work. It’s great stuff.

Okay and lastly- YMMV on this one - I’ve def talked about it with friends before but I don’t think I’ve said it on Tumblr. I’m a firm believer that meta narratives and the way that stories are situated and created in our own world matter and that art deserves to be taken seriously and dissected. I love Horizon, but it, and Aloy as a protagonist, are absolutely drenched in white savior and colonial storytelling tropes. Every time I play Frozen Wilds, all I can think of is Jack Sparrow going “and then they made me their chief”. There’s a lot of iffy stuff in the games, as much as I absolutely love them. We’ll have to see how H3 goes, but Burning Shores is MUCH better about this and honestly Seyka is a huge part of it. The story centers itself on a queer woman of color who is pretty tangibly presented as Aloy’s equal with her own strengths and weaknesses throughout the story and takes the lead just as often if not more than Aloy does, which I find really refreshing. It doesn’t entirely fix Aloy’s white savior issues but I think it’s a really good move for the narrative that continues the themes found in HFW about community and connection.

Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds (2017)

[autisticwriterblog]

Them 🥰

[vindicia]

↳ My favorite video games of 2023

[h0riz0nstuff]

More Pretty Quen Things

[anointedflame]

So I just found this text data point…

and I got to the end and was literally like

[anaugust]

Spending some time together after the battle 😌

[jeirtza]

IVE BEEN HITTING ALOY WITH MY LESBIFICATION BEAM SINCE 2017 AND IT FINALLY WORKED

[gaywatch]

The fact that I never heard even a whisper about canon queerness in the Horizon DLC makes me actually ill like that's the MAIN CHARACTER with impeccable SAPPHIC VIBES kissing an ACTION LESBIAN and I heard NOTHING?!!?!!?? Queer gamers need to wave their hands so I can follow them right the heck now

[aloycosplay]

"Try not to forget about me while you're out there changing the world." – Erend

[pymsanz]

The Waterwing

The Waterwing is a medium-sized flying machine that can dive deep underwater. It is highly maneuverable and, when disturbed, is an unrelenting foe. Get ready to take the plunge with this epic new machine in Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores!

Cr.Guerrilla

[meg-noel-art]

Okay I have to get a single vent off my chest and then I promise I'll be quiet.

I need ya'll to please realize now (before backlash at Guerrilla gets hurled in three years) DLC characters/content do not become mainstay installments in the way you imagine.

DLC characters do not become main characters.

DLC plots can be removed from the main story and recited as exposition in a main entry.

It HAS to be removable, because not every consumer buys DLC. Whether for lack of resources, access, or principal.

I just really don't wanna see people griping that Guerrilla "dropped"... ahem, anything... in three years from now. Or that some kind of endgame was promised and then taken away.

We been knew, or we SHOULD know bc this is how DLCs have worked always forever.

Not to mention BS was even MORE exclusive by proxy of being literally exclusive to a console people STILL don't have easy access to.

Please everyone just be reasonable when the time comes, that's all I'm worried about.

[h0riz0nstuff]

Surprise DLC Cinematics Aloy Picdump ! :D

[critter-of-habit]

The clouds in Horizon Forbidden West / Burning Shores are just ridiculously beautiful. They're not distant animations, they're close enough to fly around and even through! And yet they still react to the sunlight in real time like they're solid objects. Absolutely incredible work.

[nerd-artist]

[finrays]

I’m still laughing over the fact that “Burning Shores” and “Frozen Wilds” are like... almost direct opposites of each other.