A brand new Horizon game has been announced, but it’s not the sequel to Forbidden West that you may have been expecting. It’s not a single-player game, nor is it even a PlayStation game. Horizon Steel Frontiers is a MMORPG developed by NCSoft for mobile and PC. Confused? Don’t worry, we’re here to break down everything revealed in the debut trailer.
If the idea of an online multiplayer Horizon game sounds familiar, then you’ve likely been paying attention to the rumours that began as far back as 2022. At first glance, it’s clear that this is very much a Horizon game you can play with a team of co-op buddies. The world looks very similar to what we’ve explored before, however this time we’ll be headed to the Deadlands, a brand new region inspired by Arizona and New Mexico. Within that location are plenty of recognisable elements, from destroyed remains of humanity’s past, to the real stars of Horizon: its giant mechanical beasts.
But let’s start with something less familiar. It’s clear that Steel Frontiers has a different approach to combat compared to its predecessors. Where the single-player games largely focus on ranged combat, using weapons like bows to shoot enemy weakpoints, this new take on the universe seems to be predominantly focused on melee. The trailer’s focal character uses a huge sword, while other characters can be seen using dual blades to slice and dice their way through machine armour. That’s not to say archery has been eliminated – a bow still features throughout the trailer – but blade combat appears to be front and center.
There seems to not just be a change in distance between you and your foe, but a dramatic re-think of combat fundamentals. The trailer demonstrates a charged blade ability that can be used to deflect an incoming attack, a type of defensive strategy that’s brand new to Horizon. When it comes to the offensive, you can now, after destroying a specific part of a machine, use the Pullcaster grapple hook to climb onto your target and place a status-inflicting trap on the damaged part. NCSoft has said that elements like this are part of a new approach that tailors Horizon’s existing ideas to suit an MMORPG.
It’s clear that lots of Horizon’s combat DNA still remains – we can see machine parts detach in every fight, such as when the main character shoots off a Blaze canister in the trailer’s opening battle. And later, we can see that destroyed machines leave behind resources to pick up. But from what’s shown in this trailer, it seems like Steel Frontiers may feel more like Monster Hunter than traditional Horizon. Executive producer Sung-Gu Lee explains that at the core of the experience is “cooperation and strategy”, and that “players must take on their roles,” ideas that form the basis of Monster Hunter’s multiplayer expeditions. Furthermore, we even see some characters cooking a meal in a cutscene that resembles the chef montages from Monster Hunter’s own meal prep system. Perhaps all this shouldn’t come as a surprise, though: there’s certainly more than a little of Capcom’s series in Horizon already.
Other combat additions we can see in the trailer include some kind of sticky bomb that can be used to deal massive damage to machines – perhaps this is one of those aforementioned traps? You also now have the ability to pack machine weapons on your mount, allowing you to transport heavy artillery from one battle to another.
