Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds

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Building upon the action role-playing mechanics of Horizon Zero Dawn (2017),^[1][2] The Frozen Wilds adds a new region seamlessly integrated into the existing open world.^[3] Tailored for players who have reached at least level 30, the expansion increases the maximum level cap from 50 to 60.^[4] The environment features technical enhancements, including dynamic snow deformation that allows characters and machines to leave persistent trails in deep drifts, as well as improved motion capture technology for more natural cinematic sequences.^[5] Exploration is tied to the culture of the Banuk tribe, allowing Aloy to participate in trials and combat challenges to eventually challenge for the position of chieftain.^[6] The expansion adds a fourth branch to the skill tree, which introduces various quality-of-life abilities focused on inventory management and mount traversal.^[7][8] The region also introduces new iterations of base game side activities, including a new bandit camp, platforming puzzle, and explorable ruin, alongside new lore-based collectibles.^[4][9]

The expansion introduces a specialised economy centred on a rare crystalline resource used to trade for high-tier Banuk gear. This includes new elemental projectile weapons and Banuk-variant bows.^[10] Additionally, the player can obtain new specialised outfits and unlock the ability to upgrade Aloy's melee spear with modification slots.^[11] Daemonic machines intensify combat. These machines are corrupted variants that possess higher health, increased elemental resistances, and immunity to overrides.^[12] The expansion introduces three new machine species: the Scorcher, Frostclaw, and Fireclaw.^[12][13] Control Towers, which are stationary devices that emit pulses to heal hostile machines, frequently guard encounters and disable friendly overridden machines.^[4][12] Overall, The Frozen Wilds features a difficulty spike compared to the base game, with an encounter design that forces the player to adapt their combat strategies and encourages the heavy use of the new Banuk arsenal.^[2][4] The expansion uses the dynamic, hidden dialogue system established in the base game, which continuously adapts to the player's overall progression. Depending on whether a player plays The Frozen Wilds before, during, or after the events of the base game, Aloy's dialogue in both the expansion and the core game is automatically adjusted to reflect her current understanding of the world's lore.^[14]

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Setting

The Frozen Wilds takes place in The Cut, a harsh, snow-covered mountainous region located beyond the northern edges of the game's main map, corresponding to a post-apocalyptic version of Yellowstone National Park. The region is predominantly inhabited by the Banuk, a nomadic tribe of survivalists and shamans who revere the blue light of the machines. The Cut is dominated by an active volcanic mountain known as Thunder's Drum. The narrative takes place concurrently with the events of the main game, following Aloy as she investigates a mysterious entity known as the Daemon. This entity has begun corrupting the region's machines, making them significantly more aggressive and resilient, while constructing stationary Control Towers that emit pulses of healing energy to aid hostile machines.

Plot

Hearing rumours of these dangerous new machines, Aloy travels to The Cut to investigate. She learns from the local Banuk chieftain, Aratak, that his sister Ourea, a prominent shaman, has disappeared after attempting to communicate with a Spirit she believes can stop the Daemon. Aloy tracks Ourea to an ancient, pre-apocalyptic facility facility that had been converted into a Banuk shrine. Ourea explains that the Spirit, which resides within a mountain facility called Thunder's Drum, has been silenced and overtaken by the Daemon. To gain the Banuk's support to assault the mountain, Aloy must first prove herself to the tribe. She challenges Aratak for leadership of his tribe, and after successfully defeating him in a hunting competition to become chieftain, she, Aratak, and Ourea ascend Thunder's Drum together. Throughout the journey, Aloy is periodically contacted by Sylens, a mysterious wanderer who harbours his own secretive interests in the Daemon.

Inside Thunder's Drum, Aloy discovers the facility is Firebreak, an ancient project built to stabilise the Yellowstone Caldera and prevent a catastrophic eruption. The group learns that the Spirit is actually CYAN, an artificial intelligence (AI) designed to manage the facility. The Daemon is revealed to be HEPHAESTUS, a rogue terraforming AI. Viewing humanity as a threat to its machines, HEPHAESTUS hijacked CYAN and Firebreak to construct a manufacturing facility to mass-produce heavily armed hunter-killer machines. The group breaches the core of the Cauldron to free CYAN from HEPHAESTUS's control. During the ensuing battle against the Daemonic machines, Ourea sacrifices herself to manually override the system. Her actions sever HEPHAESTUS's connection, allowing CYAN to transfer its core systems to an auxiliary data centre at the Banuk shrine and initiate the destruction of the Cauldron, though the Firebreak facility remains intact. Aloy and Aratak narrowly escape the collapsing complex. Afterwards, Aloy returns to the shrine and reunites with the freed CYAN, who provides her with further information about the ancient past and HEPHAESTUS's motives, which leads to a final, heated exchange between Aloy and Sylens. Aratak resumes his role as chieftain of the tribe, and Aloy departs The Cut.

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The Frozen Wilds was developed by Guerrilla Games as the sole expansion for Horizon Zero Dawn. The development team chose to focus the expansion's narrative on the Banuk tribe, who were among the most mysterious factions in the base game. The developers were heavily inspired by the geography of Yellowstone National Park, using its colourful hydrothermal pools and mountainous terrain to design the harsh, cold environment of The Cut.^[15][16] When designing the Banuk's culture and clothing, the team prioritised functional design, ensuring that the tribe's fur-based attire and nomadic lifestyle felt like a realistic response to their freezing environment.^[17] For the expansion's overarching narrative, lead writer Ben McCaw cited the science fiction film 2010 (1984) as a primary source of inspiration.^[18] When creating new quests for the expansion, Guerrilla focused on tightly integrating narrative with environmental puzzle design. A prominent example is the character of Gildun, an optimistic but clumsy Oseram delver encountered in a ruined ancient dam. Quest designer Tim Stobo explained that Gildun was built specifically to fit the mechanical needs of the quest, rather than the other way around. McCaw likened Gildun's personality to John Candy in the film Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), conceptualising his character traits to justify the absurd chain of mechanical failures the player must fix within the facility. To improve his cinematic appearances, the animation team added 108 additional bones to Gildun's character model to allow for the realistic movement of his thick, fur-lined clothing.^[19] Following the release of the base game, the development team analysed fan feedback to identify which quest structures resonated most with players. Stobo stated that the team deliberately "redoubled" their efforts to focus on meaningful character interactions, populating the expansion with more complex non-player characters that Aloy could build deeper relationships with.^[20]

The expansion introduced several new machines, including the bear-like Frostclaw and Fireclaw. The concept for a bear machine was originally pitched for the base game but was scrapped due to time constraints. When reviving the idea for The Frozen Wilds, animators referenced footage of polar bears and red pandas to create the machines' distinct bipedal and quadrupedal movements, while the sound team mixed synthetic noises with the grunts of walruses and seals for their vocalisations.^[13] Audio lead Bastian Seelbach and the sound design team focused on ensuring the new Daemonic machine variants possessed distinct auditory cues that differentiated them from the machines in the main campaign, matching their aggressive, fast-paced attack patterns.^[21] Guerrilla used the expansion as an opportunity to intentionally subvert player expectations by disrupting the combat rhythms established in the base game. Lead designer Eric Boltjes explained that new enemies, such as the Scorcher, were explicitly designed with fast, erratic attack patterns to defy the "large creature, slow movement" encounters the player had previously learned to exploit. The team also tuned the AI to alter stealth mechanics; while the player was granted more leniency upon initial detection, it was made harder for them to fade back into hidden states, a design choice meant to force the player to commit to the combat encounters they initiate.^[22]

The Frozen Wilds marked the first time Ashly Burch and Lance Reddick, who reprised his role as Sylens, recorded their dialogue together in the same studio. Despite starring in the base game together, the two had previously recorded all of their lines separately. McCaw remarked that bringing them together in the booth for their heated exchanges during the expansion's climax allowed the actors to physically play off each other's performances.^[23] The studio also overhauled their motion capture technology for cinematic dialogue sequences, resulting in more natural facial animations and body movements compared to the base game.^[5] For The Frozen Wilds, Burch took on full-body motion capture duties for Aloy for the first time. To ensure her physical performance matched the established character, Burch extensively studied in-game footage of the base game to accurately replicate Aloy's specific walking and running animations. She recalled that her vocal recording sessions were highly physical, often pantomiming taking different types of elemental damage to produce authentic combat sounds.^[24]

Guerrilla also introduced significant technical advancements for the expansion. To bring the harsh winter environment of The Cut to life, Guerrilla expanded the capabilities of their proprietary Decima engine. The studio developed a scalable, real-time snow deformation system that allowed thick snowdrifts to dynamically deform around the player, machines, and NPCs. This system was designed to expose underlying grass textures when the powder was displaced, creating a realistic layered effect. The expansion also introduced significant upgrades to the game's water rendering; freezing pools and rivers feature interactive icy layers that dynamically melt away when exposed to fire-based attacks during combat encounters.^[5] The dynamic snow technology introduced in the expansion was so successful that it was eventually retrofitted into Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered (2024)'s environments.^[25] The Frozen Wilds was announced during E3 2017.^[26] The expansion was released worldwide for the PlayStation 4 on 7 November 2017.^[27] A bundled version containing both the base game and The Frozen Wilds, titled Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition, was released for the PlayStation 4 on 5 December.^[28] The Complete Edition was subsequently ported to Windows on 7 August 2020, and Remastered was released for PlayStation 5 and Windows on 31 October 2024.^[29][30]

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Critical response

The Frozen Wilds received "generally favourable" reception according to the review aggregator website Metacritic,^[31] and according to OpenCritic, 85% of critics recommended the expansion.^[32] Critics generally agreed that The Frozen Wilds was a high-quality, worthwhile continuation of the base game, even if it did not introduce radically new mechanics.^[33][34] Reviewers wrote that the expansion closely adhered to the original game's formula, a trait several considered positive given the base game's strong foundations.^[1][34] Conversely, EGM's Josh Harmon felt this lack of innovation made the expansion feel "vestigial" rather than a must-play experience.^[15] The expansion's visual enhancements and world design were highlighted by critics. Reviewers cited the wintry landscape of The Cut as a visually impressive and substantial addition to the open world.^[2][3] Zoe Delahunty-Light of GamesRadar+ appreciated the "breathtaking" environment, while Sammy Barker of Push Square felt the snowy setting offered a refreshing change of pace.^[7][34] Writing for GameSpot, Peter Brown admired the environmental lighting and the colourful hues of the snow.^[2] Tech-focused critiques commended the expansion's technical performance, drawing specific attention to the new dynamic snow deformation systems and the improvements made to character facial animations during dialogue sequences.^[5]

Reviewers found the new combat encounters and machine types effective at revitalising the core gameplay loop through a difficulty spike.^[2][4] Critics singled out the new Daemonic machine variants for successfully restoring the tension of the base game's early hours. IGN's Lucy O'Brien wrote that these variants made the wilderness feel genuinely untamed, while Harmon appreciated that the heightened challenge forced the player to use their entire arsenal of weapons and traps rather than relying on brute force.^[4][15] The addition of the new Traveler skill tree was recognised for introducing upgrades that enhanced exploration and inventory management,^[7][33] though RPGFan categorised these as basic quality-of-life fixes rather than essential new mechanics.^[6] Additionally, reviewers enjoyed the new side quests, stating they were challenging and offered better rewards than those in the base game.^[1][3]

The narrative of The Frozen Wilds received a divided reception. Several reviewers enjoyed the new storyline, highlighting its exploration of themes like faith and religion, as well as the depth it added to the lore of the Banuk tribe.^[4][6] Taking a more critical view of the tribe's depiction, Holly Green of The A.V. Club argued that the expansion uncomfortably appropriated Native American cultures, relied on the "white saviour" trope, and problematically framed the Banuk's beliefs as primitive.^[35] Meanwhile, Chris Plante of Polygon appreciated the continued characterisation of Aloy, noting her consistently unbothered attitude, though he argued that integrating the DLC's story can feel awkward depending on when the player starts the expansion.^[33] Conversely, other critics described the central plot as underwhelming, writing that the condensed mystery did little to meaningfully expand the universe or push the overarching narrative forward.^[1][2][3] Ultimately, Game Informer's Jeff Marchiafava concluded that although the expansion's core narrative doesn't quite match the impact of the original story, it successfully highlights the fundamental strengths of the game as a whole.^[1]

Sales

Sony did not release exact standalone sales figures for The Frozen Wilds; however, it was the second most-downloaded PlayStation 4 add-on during its launch month of November 2017, trailing only the Season Pass for Call of Duty: WWII.^[36] It finished as the fourth most-downloaded PlayStation 4 add-on of 2017 on the PlayStation Store, trailing only Call of Duty: Black Ops III (2015) – Zombies Chronicles, the Destiny 2 Expansion Pass, and the Call of Duty: WWII Season Pass.^[37]