El DLC Burning Shores of Horizon Forbidden West was released last week, receiving much praise for its visuals and smooth gameplay. However, a plot point has led to the game being bombarded with negative reviews on Metacritic, where the DLC currently has a user rating of 3.2. In a moment, Horizon Forbidden West Burning Shores saw his user rating drop to a low of 2.7.
During the events of Burning Shores, Aloy meets Seyka, an “ambitious sailor from the Quen tribe who has stepped up to help her people survive.” Prior to the DLC’s release, Seyka was heralded as a character that would match up to Aloy, with actress Ashly Burch even saying that “Aloy could have found hers just like hers.”
towards the end of Burning Shores, there is an option to make this encounter more romantic, and players can select a dialogue option that will lead to Aloy and Seyka sharing a kiss. And this is, for some reason, what several users in Metacritic have criticized.
“Aloy lesbian? What are they doing Sony and Guerilla, really? Stop doing this to your characters,” says one review. Another adds: “Stop imposing your damned gay and political agendas on the players. We just want to play the game, not get pushed around with politics or homosexuality.”
In a statement, Fandom’s Metacritic confirmed that he is aware of the “abusive and derogatory criticism of Horizon Forbidden West Burning Shores“, and said that it is “currently evolving its processes and tools to introduce stricter moderation in the coming months.”
Here is the full statement of Metacritic/Fandom regarding the criticism bombardment of Horizon Forbidden West Burning Shores:
“Fandom is a place of belonging for all fans, and we take online trust and safety very seriously on all of our sites, including Metacritic. Metacritic is aware of abusive criticism and disrespect regarding Horizon Forbidden West Burning Shores and we have a moderation system to track violations of our terms of use.
“Our team reviews every report of abuse (including, but not limited to, racism, sexism, homophobia, insulting other users, etc.) and if violations occur, reviews are removed. We are currently evolving our processes and tools to introduce stricter moderation in the coming months.”
While Fandom didn’t detail what these new tools and processes will look like, it’s reassuring to know that they’re taking negative reviews on their site seriously and will work to improve how they’re moderated in the future. Meanwhile, several Burning Shores ‘reviews’ have already been removed from the site for violating their terms of use (something not overlooked by several users).
In other news, Guerrilla, developer of Horizon Zero Dawn y Forbidden Westhas casually confirmed that Aloy’s story is not over.
In a management update yesterday, the company said it has “full confidence in his new leadership” as the team “leads Guerrilla into a bright future, expanding the world of Horizon with Aloy’s next adventure and our exciting online project.”
Via: Eurogamer
