During Horizon Zero Dawn, Aloy’s reluctance to fully open up to her friends and companions was a central part of her personality. For its sequel, Guerrilla Games has decided to expand this idea by making it a key aspect of the hero’s character arc in Horizon Forbidden West. The studio has partly achieved this through the creation of the Base. Within this old-world location, Aloy can interact with an eclectic cast of people, in a manner similar to the companion system seen in the Mass Effect series. Each of the nine companions that can be found within the location at various points in the game, subsequently play a large role in the trajectory of the adventure.
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Varl
In Horizon Forbidden West, Aloy slowly opens up to the idea that her crusade to save the world isn’t a mission that she has to undertake all by herself. From the opening chapters of the game, Varl arguably plays the biggest role in helping her realize this. Returning from Horizon Zero Dawn, Varl is a compassionate member of the Nora tribe who’s inquisitive nature prompts him to follow Aloy across the post-apocalyptic United States. While there’s a clear reluctance from the latter to endorse his companionship, it’s Varl’s insistence that prompts Aloy to open up the Base to people who wish to help her save the biosphere.
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Zo
Thanks to the existence of the Base, Aloy often finds herself accompanied during her quests by helpful companions. Like Varl, Zo is one of the characters who is actually there when Aloy accesses the location for the very first time. While she initially joins the pair in an attempt to fix the fading Land Gods, the Utaru gravesinger ultimately decides to stay with them once she realizes the larger apocalyptic scope of their mission. Forming a close romantic relationship with Varl in the process, Zo’s knowledge of the Forbidden West and its tribes proves to be an integral part of the group’s endeavors.
Erend
Since the release of Horizon Zero Dawn, Erend the Oseram captain has become one of the more recognizable characters of Guerrilla Games’ universe. Alongside Talanah, who briefly passes through the Base off-screen when Aloy isn’t there, Erend is often cited as a fan-favorite amongst players. For this reason, it’s little surprise that he becomes a key member of the Base early on in Forbidden West that Aloy can interact with.
While Erend plays a significant role as a teammate on several of her main quest missions, his love for alcohol often results in him occupying the role of comedic relief amongst the companions. It should be noted that during the events of the main storyline, Erend can also be challenged to a game of Machine Strike.
GAIA
Thanks to her artificial intelligence origins, GAIA’s status as one of Aloy’s companions will likely be a topic of debate amongst Horizon Forbidden West’s fan base. Based on the role that she plays within the Base after it’s initially powered up, there’s plenty of evidence to justify her being considered as such. In her quest to restore the sentient AI’s terraforming Zero Dawn capabilities, Aloy spends a considerable amount of time conversing with GAIA. While the topic of how the apocalypse can be averted often dominates proceedings, conversations about the old world and GAIA’s role in Aloy’s creation, end up playing a large part in the latter’s character development.
Beta
In what’s arguably one of Horizon Forbidden West’s biggest twists, during Aloy’s quest to secure a backup of GAIA, it’s revealed that she isn’t the only active genetic clone of Elisabet Sobeck. Unsurprisingly, considering the fact that she was created by the remaining members of Far Zenith before being placed into servitude, Beta’s upbringing was dramatically different from Aloy’s. As a result of this, Beta appears to have little in-common with her twin from a personality perspective when she switches sides and takes up residency at the Base. After some time and a few challenging conversations, it becomes clear that this isn’t strictly the case.
Kotallo
Due to his position within the Tenakth tribe as a Marshal, players might be suspicious of how Aloy’s relationship with Kotallo will develop when he joins her during the quest to retrieve AETHER. Over the course of their mission together at the Bulwark though, it becomes clear that there’s more to the warrior than what first meets the eye. Under his frosty stoic exterior, Kotallo is a loyal person who ultimately wants to do right by his people and friends.
It’s little surprise as a result of this that once the mission ends, he pledges his support for Aloy’s cause before becoming an inhabitant of the Base. Beyond offering occasional combat support and dry one-liners after this point, Kotallo has the distinction of being one of only a handful of companions that players can undertake a side-quest with, provided they talk to him enough. During his comparatively short side mission, Aloy gets even more insight into his tragic warrior past as she attempts to build him a replacement robotic arm.
Alva
Introduced late on in Horizon Forbidden West during Aloy’s quest to capture DEMETER, Alva ends up having a profound impact on the game in a relatively short amount of time. As a Diviner amongst the Quen tribe, a technologically advanced group of people from the other side of the Pacific Ocean, Alva quickly bonds with Aloy thanks to their mutual fascination with the ancient world. Following a mission into Ted Faro’s Thebes hideout, Alva decides to assist her new friend by joining her at the Base. Thanks to her experience using a Focus, she ultimately proves to be a valuable ally in Aloy’s efforts to stop the Far Zenith from destroying the world.
Sylens
Out of all the characters who join Aloy as companions at the Base, Sylens is arguably the one whose relationship with the protagonist is the most complicated to understand. That’s because at points throughout Horizon Zero Dawn, and its sequel Forbidden West, the pair have frequently switched between being allies, rivals, and enemies. Despite his manipulative personality and history empowering Aloy’s enemies, the pair are eventually able to forge an uneasy alliance at the Base in an attempt to face a bigger threat.
Tilda van der Meer
Like Sylens, Tilda joins Aloy at the Base during the closing hours of Horizon Forbidden West’s main story. The fact that she starts off as a member of Far Zenith, and is therefore an ancient human who lived through the Faro Plague, makes her truly unique amongst the other companions though. Before boarding the Odyssey spaceship and leaving Earth in 2065, Tilda had a lucrative career as a counterintelligence data broker.
It was due to this job that she was able to eventually meet and start a brief relationship with Elisabet Sobeck. Thanks to a millennium’s worth of regret for leaving her lover behind, she ultimately betrays her fellow colonists once she becomes aware of Aloy’s existence and potential.
Horizon Forbidden West is available now on PS4 and PS5.
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