I think the main problem with the world of Horizon is that the most interesting event in their world has already happened.

The story of Zero Dawn worked so well because it is the interwoven tale of a young woman who sets out to discover why she was cast out of her village at birth, and the almost archaeological unraveling of why the world is the way it is. When you finally piece together both the plot is almost already at it's climax, and you are left with both the understanding of why it must be Aloy who stops the new threat to the world, and the motivation to do so.

But that doesn't work for a sequel. The format of Zero Dawn relies on exposition about the very nature of the world, that's why the main quest has a bunch of missions that more or less boil down to walking around an old facility and listening to recordings.

How are you going to translate that into a new sequel? Either you've got sequels planned already, which I find unlikely given what Forbidden West amounted to, or you need to try to invent more world building and plot. It seemed quite clear to me that Guerillas writers for Forbidden West didn't know their own world as well as I had assumed they did. The "how did we get here" plot in Zero Dawn revolved around a small cast characters, who, with the exception of one, were all both very neuanced and strongly invested in their own plot. The Zeniths of Forbidden West come across almost as inverse Deus Ex Machina, characters who fly in from the moon with what seems like no other reason to mess up the plot than "We had to find something".

Eh, it depends more on what you’re used to. I personally hate using a mouse and keyboard and greatly prefer a controller, and it’s not that different from other RPG games that use a controller interface. I’m used to a wheel interface from games like Mass Effect, so it’s more intuitive for me than a mouse and keyboard.

Running around the world is better with a controller, but interacting with it is better with M + K.

I mildly disagree.

First, I think its the first game of this type to have any successful control scheme for a controller at all, so I think it deserves accolades for making it happen at all.

Second, while I still mostly play in traditional mouse and keyboard, I am an old man now, having played the original BG as a teen when it came out. Having the controller as an option is huge for me when I am in pain.

Anecdotally, my partner never played these games growing up and she fucking hates trying to play with mouse and keyboard. She says it feels clunky and slow and confusing.

Is it the best? No. Is it an excellent effort? Yes, because it actually works.

The fact that a game with a ruleset as complex as DnD manages to have a couch co-op option and gamepad controls built-in is an achievement, imho.

Good tho know, thanks. I wonder how that will work in couch-coop.