In Horizon Forbidden West, Aloy traverses dangerous and hostile environments in search of Gaia’s subfunctions, hoping to restore the planet’s terraforming system, rebalance the biosphere, and save life on Earth. Although our story takes place 1,000 years in the future, players will discover and recognize many iconic locations from our current real world.
DISCLAIMER: Please note that this behind-the-scenes feature contains major story spoilers and many gameplay elements from Horizon Forbidden West. To get the most out of this in-depth article, we highly recommend completing The Sea of Sand quest before reading.
During The Sea of Sands mission, Aloy ventures into the arid Stillsands desert in her search for Poseidon, one of Gaia’s secondary roles. At first the desert seems desolate, however, hidden beneath the sand are the flooded ruins known as Dunehollow, formerly Las Vegas.
It’s up to Aloy to piece together the data shards left behind a millennium earlier by a businessman named Stanley Chen and reactivate the city’s long-forgotten water systems so she can access Poseidon.
Creating the ruins of Las Vegas
Guerrilla Quest designer Samantha Schoonen led the development of this quest, The Sea of Sands, from start to finish. To bring this vision to life, she did a lot of research on the iconic Las Vegas Strip.
“We looked for casinos and came up with crazy ideas for Las Vegas buildings in the far future,” says Schoonen. “I was also very inspired by our concept art, and we thought of things like a broken down roller coaster area, the remains of a pirate ship, and a rooftop pool. We worked a lot with our art departments to figure out what would work,