One thing I have always found fascinating about Horizon is that it refuses one of the easiest ways of writing a post apocalyptic world. It does not tell us that humanity was corrupted by civilization and that the answer is to return to some simpler, more authentic existence. But it also does not tell us that humanity is doomed, that every society will inevitably become oppressive and that the future can only be a darker version of the present. Its world is not a utopia, but it is not a dystopia either. It is a world made by people who inherited both the achievements and the mistakes of those who came before them.What I appreciate most is that the game applies this idea consistently to both the Old World and the new civilizations that emerge after Zero Day.
The tribes of the new world are not romanticized. Horizon never falls into the "noble savage" trope where people living closer to nature are somehow morally superior. The Nora have strict traditions that can become oppressive. The Carja have a history marked by conquest and religious violence. The Tenakth have built parts of their culture around warfare and strength. The Quen have created a rigid socety where access to knowledge is controlled by a privileged class.
These societies are not presented as perfect alternatives to the world that came before them. They are human societies, which means they carry all the contradictions that come with being human. But what makes Horizon special is that it also refuses to look down on them.
A lot of stories would have used these cultures simply as exemples of ignorance waiting to be corrected by modern knowledge. Horizon is much more compassionate than that. The player often knows that many beliefs come from incomplete interpretations of Old World technology, but the game is interested in something deeper: why do people create these beliefs in the first place? I believe it's the most important theme of HFW for the matter.
The Utaru are probably the best example. Their understanding of the world is scientifically inaccurate, but the game never treats their traditions as something ridiculous. Their rituals around death, renewal and the land exist because people need ways to understand suffering and their place in the universe. Their beliefs are not true in a scientific sense, but they are meaningful. Horizon understands something that many science fiction stories forget: humans do not build civilizations around facts alone. They also build them around stories.
The Quen storyline develops this idea in a direction I personally found to be fascinating. Their civilization is built around fragments of Old World history, especially the remains of a corporate civilization they barely understand. Their interpretation of the past is often distorted, but their mistake is not simply ignorance. What makes the Quen particulary interesting is that they have not only preserved knowledge from the Old World, they have also preserved its values. Their society has absorbed the logic of corporate hierarchy, the worship of exceptional individuals and the idea that progress belongs to great leaders rather than the countless people whose work makes it possible. Their reverence for the Ancestors reflects this distorted memory of a world where CEOs became almost mythical figures while ordinary workers disappeared from history. In that sense, the Quen are a mirror held up to our own values and to the ways in which modern societies still decide whose contributions deserve to be remembered. Such an inventive and fun way to develop a culture!
This is why I think Horizon has such an interesting view of history. The past is never simply recovered. It is constantly rewritten by the people who inherit it. This approach is very akin to what could be found in Fallout New Vegas, minus the cynicism and fatalism of it.
The high level of nuance exists in the way the games portray the Old World. The apocalypse is terrifying precisely because it does not feel like a cartoon dystopia. It does not need every corporation to become an absurdly evil caricature or every institution to openly announce its cruelty. The world collapsed because of recognizable human tendencies pushed to catastrophic extremes.
That is what makes the Old World disturbing. It feels less like a fantasy and more like a warning. I know that Horizon is doing things right when the news constantly remind me of its events and characters.
The most frightening parts are often not the giant machines or the apocalypse itself. They are the ordinary moments where systems fail. The corporate language that turns ethical disasters into management problems (could the Timor-Hartz have been annihilated if FARO had not tried to cover up the situation with an army of lawyers ?). The obsession with innovation without responsibility. The belief that technology can fix problems that are ultimately political and human.
This is also why I think Horizon's approach to dystopia feels different from many other science fiction worlds. A lot of dystopian fiction relies on exaggeration. Corporations become almost mythical forces of evil, governments become completely absurd, and society becomes so extreme that it feels disconnected from our own reality. Horizon is much more unsettling because it does the opposite. It takes things we already recognize and asks what happens when those tendencies continue without limits. Horizon's world is not a dystopia and this makes it actually more terrifying than a dystopia could ever dream to be.
At the same time, Horizon never falls into pure cynicism. This is probably the most important part of its identity. The game shows the consequences of human arrogance, but it never concludes that humanity itself is the problem. The new civilizations are flawed, sometimes deeply flawed, but they are also capable of kindness, cooperation and change.
This is ultimately why Horizon's world works so well for me. It does not offer the comfort of a perfect future or the simplicity of a hopeless one. It understands that every civilization is built by imperfect people trying to make sense of an imperfect world.
The old world was not destroyed because humanity was incapable of creating great things. The new world is not valuable because it escaped humanity's flaws. Both worlds contain beauty and failure.
And that is exactly what makes Horizon feel alive. Forging such a complex and nuanced world is no easy feat, and filling it with rich and touching reflections on our current world is truly impressive. It is a step above something like Cyberpunk 2077, imo. I feel like these games have been mischaracterized by some people as examples of good storytelling that are still somehow below the games that are constantly showered with praise for their stories and writing. That's a shame, not because that opinion is objectively wrong, but because it has prevented some people from really delving into what the developers actually constructed. HFW particular is CRIMINALLY underanalyzed and you'll notice that I tried to include as many examples from that entry as I could.