As the review embargo lifts for new Playstation title ‘Horizon Forbidden West’, liberal gaming outlets have taken issue with it for featuring characters that look like “modern-day white people” engaging in “Native American cosplay,” accusing the developers of “cultural appropriation.”
The sequel to 2017’s ‘Horizon Zero Dawn’ takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where humans exist in nomadic tribes, as the world’s knowledge has been lost and its population decimated by killer robots.
However, the hunter-gatherer aesthetic of the tribes depicted in the game and the whiteness of Aloy – the game’s main character – has prompted several liberal game journalists to call it out for ‘cultural appropriation’, as they feel the inspiration was unjustly drawn from Native American culture.
While explaining the premise of the world in ‘Horizon Forbidden West’, one reviewer for Gadgets 360 wrote: “They are now divided into a series of clans and tribes, whose attire borrows from Native Americans among others. Aloy can don these too. But most of the people wearing them, including Aloy, look and – more importantly – sound like modern-day white people.”
The reviewer concluded that not only was this “not a good look” but that it also represented the fact “the natives were literally erased by white people – and now their clothing is being adopted by them,” which is apparently “a few steps beyond cultural appropriation.”
The Gamer accused the sequel of once again engaging in “Native American Cosplay” without any “attempt to interrogate or explain the Native American appropriation,” while Polygon wrote that “While the racial diversity of the Horizon games feels like progress in the context of AAA games more broadly, it’s at odds with how race, ethnicity, and culture are borrowed here without being discussed, or even acknowledged.”
Kotaku concluded that ‘Horizon Forbidden West’ fails to “wash itself of the sins of its past” by not explaining why traditional Native American clothing is present in the game and daring to feature a white protagonist. “All that ‘savior’ stuff? Given that Aloy is white, and that so many characters in Horizon – in roles both crucial and secondary – are people of color, yeah, it’s weird!” they wrote, before saying the game “smacks of colonialist overtones, all in service of little more than sci-fi grandeur.”
Nevertheless, despite the backlash from the progressive game journalists, ‘Horizon Forbidden West’ remains one of Sony’s most anticipated games, given the success of its predecessor ‘Horizon Zero Dawn’. Other reviews that have come out for the game ahead of its February 18th release have praised it for its immersive world and stunning visuals. The title will be released on Sony’s PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 consoles.