Horizon Forbidden West’s Burning Shores DLC is out this week, and with it comes the revelation that protagonist Aloy is queer. And never solely that, it lastly offers the hero, who famously tends to attempt to tackle an excessive amount of alone, the choice to enter a romantic relationship for the primary time within the sequence.
Spoilers for Horizon Forbidden West and Burning Shores comply with:
The DLC launched April 19 on PlayStation 5, with the PS4 model notably not receiving the growth because of technical limitations. The $20 replace brings new content material and a few quality-of-life adjustments, however it additionally sends Aloy to Horizon’s post-apocalyptic tackle Los Angeles, California. As soon as there, she meets a girl named Seyka, portrayed by actor Kylie Liya Web page. Aloy ropes Seyka into her quest to save lots of the world from the space-faring Nemesis machines which can be on their strategy to destroy the planet as revealed on the finish of Forbidden West. On prime of delving into Seyka’s private story involving her fraught relationship along with her sister and her previous as a marine, the 2 bond over feeling disenfranchised from their properties, the incoming (second) apocalypse, and discovering hope in a seemingly hopeless scenario.
As the 2’s story unfolds all through the growth, it turns into clear there’s romantic pressure between them. Aloy, who’s often fairly stoic and assured, is overcome with awkward nervousness. It’s fairly obvious of their early interactions that she’s combating this, and she or he even says as a lot in a monologue earlier than the climactic romance scene, admitting that she doesn’t perceive why she’s so nervous to see Seyka.
Learn Extra: Horizon Replace Helps Gamers Afraid Of Underwater Sections
When Aloy meets up with Seyka, the latter admits her emotions for our hero, and the participant is given the choice to both confess Aloy’s personal emotions or flip Seyka down. For those who select to pursue the connection, the 2 share a kiss. After this, each of them acknowledge they’ve a number of work forward of them and don’t know after they’ll see one another once more, however Seyka asks Aloy to not neglect about her, to which Aloy guarantees she gained’t. This roughly looks like a manner for the writers to acknowledge that Seyka isn’t a part of the primary recreation, so if you return to Forbidden West’s post-game, you are able to do so with out questioning the place your new girlfriend is. She’s out doing her personal factor, and y’all can meet up later. Almost definitely this shall be in both a future replace or within the eventual third Horizon recreation Guerrilla is little doubt engaged on after Forbidden West’s cliffhanger.
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Earlier than this, Horizon video games often had flirtatious dialogue choices with male characters, however these interactions by no means escalated to a full-blown romantic relationship. Inevitably, there shall be some predictable homophobic detractors who declare that, as a result of the romance with Seyka is optionally available, Aloy could be headcanoned as straight, however even the choices to show down the connection aren’t framed as her saying she isn’t all for girls, however relatively that she’s not in search of a relationship whereas saving the world. So regardless of the way you slice it, Burning Shores does make it clear Aloy is queer.
That stated, I’m somewhat upset that Aloy’s queerness is sequestered right into a post-launch DLC relatively than expressed in the primary recreation. I felt equally again when The Final of Us did the identical for Ellie, revealing her to be a lesbian within the Left Behind DLC. Hopefully Horizon follows The Final of Us’ instance and makes up for this by making Aloy’s relationship with Seyka a central a part of the following recreation like The Final of Us Half II did with Ellie and Dina.
