Horizon Forbidden West surely has enough on its plate now that its Burning Shores DLC launches squarely before Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, but it also risks being overshadowed afterward due to the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in May. That is not to say the Burning Shores expansion will fall short of either title, but fans’ anticipation may understandably be higher for their brand-new experiences than a DLC release. It seems the Horizon franchise simply cannot catch a break at this point.
Indeed, the Horizon franchise has a funny coincidence of lining up its releases at inopportune moments. This started with Horizon Zero Dawn’s launch, which was overshadowed by The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s monumental launch. Horizon Forbidden West was then similarly overshadowed by Elden Ring, establishing an ironic coincidence of Horizon games launching around the same time as some of gaming’s most impactful open-world titles to-date. This pattern continued last week with Tears of the Kingdom’s final pre-launch trailer.
Horizon Can’t Keep Meeting Up with The Legend of Zelda
On the same day that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s final pre-launch trailer released, Guerrilla Games also put up a clip detailing a neat new takedown ability that will be introduced in Horizon Forbidden West’s Burning Shores DLC. Given Nintendo announced it would be posting a Zelda trailer prior to its release, Guerrilla should have taken the opportunity to push its video by at least a day - even if that starts cutting close to Burning Shores' launch date.
The takedown ability in question is satisfying-looking too, with players able to grapple to downed machines with the Pullcaster before a prompt appears that lets them perform a plunging stab with Aloy’s spear. That news was quickly overwhelmed by Tears of the Kingdom, whose trailer reveals an awful lot that hints toward what players will be up to and who they will encounter, including Matthew Mercer’s Ganondorf.
Fortunately, Horizon bounced back by airing its own launch trailer for Burning Shores the following day. The two games are not in direct contention given they appear on different console ecosystems, and there is no telling whether Horizon actually has Zelda in mind when it comes to marketing, but the timing will always feel ironic to fans looking in from the outside. Horizon supposedly has a bunch of related games and spin-offs in the works, as well as a Netflix adaptation, and it will not be long before all these titles converge. Of course, players can always return to Horizon Forbidden West after the next ground-breaking Nintendo or Star Wars game releases, and Horizon Forbidden West’s success as an open-world action game is not lost on PlayStation fans.
Given Burning Shores is confirmed to be PS5-exclusive with impressive additions such as mount riding that transitions from air to water, it is unlikely the DLC will lack praise when it releases on April 19. If anything, the comedic timing of Horizon’s releases and marketing can be its own way of marketing the franchise, since it remains in the conversation regardless of whether fans decide to gravitate toward the series or another game releasing soon.
Horizon Forbidden West is available now on PS4 and PS5, and its Burning Shores DLC is scheduled to release on April 19 exclusively for PS5.