After over eight months, the action role-playing game "Horizon Zero Dawn" has released its first post-launch expansion, "The Frozen Wilds." In this expansion, players will get an additional 15 hours of gameplay and expand the base game with a new side story and an ice-covered region on the map.
"The Frozen Wilds" offers the same quality production found in "Horizon Zero Dawn," while adding to the already extensive open world gameplay of the game. Players will no doubt be excited to embark on new adventures on this new location and hunt new prey along the way.
The synopsis of the expansion reads, "Beyond the northern mountains, the borderlands of the Banuk tribe challenge all who dare enter to survive the extremes. But now this frozen wilderness harbors a new threat, and for Aloy, a new mystery – one she's determined to solve."
The new location, called The Cut, is a snowy region located in the Northeast corner of the map. It contains a frozen mountain pass that separates the base game's regions from the tribe of Banuk.
The Banuk is a tribe of snowy mountain hunters that are very elusive and have shamanistic lifestyle. The tribe was featured in the base game, but their rigid adherence to their culture and their elaborate machine worship were largely unexplored and underdeveloped in the title. Now, with an expansion focused on them, there is opportunity to flesh the tribe out some more.
Aside from the new story centering on the Banuk, "The Frozen Wilds" also adds new side quests, collectibles, and challenges. It also introduces new types of robotic prey that players can hunt. These new robots are based on cold weather animals, and include polar bears, wolves, mountain goats, and badgers.
The expansion also features control towers that are able to repair and buff robots while disabling the player's shield and mount. This shifts the priority of players to taking out towers before anything else.