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.
Talking of mounts, we see almost all of the tameable machines from Forbidden West being used in this trailer. It opens with a Bristleback being Overridden and claimed as a mount, and later we see characters riding Sunwings and Chargers. We also see confirmation of a brand new mount: the trailer’s protagonist rides on the back of a Stalker, the stealth camo-equipped, Panther-like machine. Considering Forbidden West expanded the number of mounts available, and MMORPGs are typically known for their range of mounts, it seems likely that even more machines will be available for taming. With any luck, this is the game where we can finally pilot a Thunderjaw.
We don’t actually see Horizon’s iconic, metallic T-Rex in this trailer, but there are over a dozen other machines on display here, from the tiny all the way up to the gigantic. The most impressive fight sees a group take on a Slaughterspine, which uses many of the abilities it did in Forbidden West, including its rain of munitions. Other examples of “Oh god please don’t kill me” machines include the fearsome Fireclaw, a napalm-spewing robo-bear, and a huge snake-like machine that looks like a Slitherfang crossed with a Rockbreaker, which is very likely our first glimpse of a new variety of metal monster.
The biggest creature, though, is the Tallneck, and we can see a group of machine hunters attempting to bring one down in the desert. Once again, these look like they’ll be large climbing puzzles, judged on the way the characters climb its neck.
On the smaller side, we can spot a Watcher, some Grazers, a Plowhorn, a Trampler, a Ravager, and a Shellwalker… whose shell is whisked away into the sky by a Glinthawk. It seems like NCSoft understands the mission when it comes to enemy variety.
As previously mentioned, the world looks suitably like Horizon’s signature vision of the future. Lush green foliage has overtaken the ruins of human skyscrapers, people live in villages that take inspiration from Native American tribes, and below the ground lie giant vaults filled with advanced technology . These “Cauldrons” return from the single-player Horizon games, but can now be explored with a team of allied players. It seems sensible to guess that these Cauldrons may be Steel Frontiers’ equivalent to the classic MMORPG dungeon.
So far, a great deal of what we’ve seen looks very close to what we’d expect of a Horizon game. Steel Frontiers has been developed in collaboration with original developer Guerrilla, and so no doubt many efforts have been made to keep the visual style and many gameplay ideas consistent. However, with the Korean-based NCSoft being the lead developer, you can also see some more Eastern elements finding their place in this universe. All the characters have an anime-like aesthetic, looking more like folks from Final Fantasy or NCSoft’s own Lineage games, rather than the characters from the original Horizon series. There’s even a bit of a cutesy thing going on with a character’s wearing metal cat ears – something we’d never see the serious Aloy wear in a thousand years.
Of course, if you’re a Horizon purist, you may be able to create a character that’s more in-line with the original games’ aesthetic in the character creator. This being an MMORPG, you won’t be playing as Aloy or any other pre-written protagonist, but a character of your own design. The character creator seems reasonably in-depth, and also allows you to choose which tribe you’ll join: the Nora, Tenakth, Utaru, or Oseram – all groups previously established in Horizon lore. The trailer’s narration hints at competitive PvP as well as co-op machine hunting, so it may be that your tribe also acts as your “team” in such scenarios.
While Steel Frontiers looks to contain much of what we’d expect from Horizon, from RPG dialogue sequences to giant metal monster fights, this is certainly set to be a new and different take on the universe we’ve come to love over the last couple of PlayStation generations. Not to mention, it’s a Horizon game we’ll be playing on our phones, not our PS5s. But did you spot anything new and interesting in the trailer that we missed? Let us know your sharp observations in the comments below, as well as what you think of this new MMO direction.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s Executive Editor of Features.
