Horizon Forbidden West Update 1.06 Goes Live & Addresses Many Issues

Guerrilla Games’ Horizon Forbidden West was one of the most anticipated games of the year, and it has been received very well by the audience. However, the game does have its flaws, with several bugs making the experience less than ideal for players. Thankfully, the devs seem to be on the case as a new patch has just dropped.

The game is a sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn which tells the story of Aloy in a post-apocalyptic world now overrun by machines. Forbidden West takes players to a new frontier as Aloy tries to understand the cause of the red blight afflicting the land, machines, and people as well.

Since the game launched, players have been relatively busy on social media, pointing out technical issues as they pop up in the game, namely dealing with the visual glitches in the game. The developer stated that the team intended to address the problems in Horizon Forbidden West, along with many other issues, in a later update. It seems this update has finally been made available for players.

On the r/horizon subreddit, Guerrilla shared the patch notes for update 1.06. The team has also thanked the fans for their input in helping to make the game a better experience. They also shared a list of other fixes that are currently in the works.

The patch notes state that there are multiple fixes to both main quests and side quests in Forbidden West. Some of these bugs would hinder progression, such as characters being stuck in places or not initiating dialogues.

Other include improvements to the way UI behaves in-game, and many visual glitches such as camera jitter, objects popping, details on NPCs and more. All of these combined should make the gameplay experience overall smoother.

Horizon Forbidden West was released with a day one patch, but there were still some technical oversights that needed attention. The developers have been quite prompt with releasing this new patch, and it should hopefully fix the major issues players have been reporting.

You can find the full patch notes below.

PATCH NOTES

I. KNOWN ISSUES

We are currently looking into several issues reported by the community. Please note that these issues are not yet fixed in this patch, but our teams are investigating them with high priority.

• The team continues to investigate several graphical issues reported by players regarding shimmering, sharpening and screen saturation when moving the camera.
• Some players have reported that the Firegleam icons do not get removed from the map after interacting with them.
• Some players have reported an issue in side quest ‘Breaking Even’ where they are not able to talk to Porguf when Talanah is in Camp Nowhere, blocking progression of this quest.
• Some players have reported that the music track “The World on Her Shoulders” keeps repeating during their playthrough. We have a partial fix included in this patch to prevent this issue from happening to players who did not encounter this issue during their playthrough yet. We are still looking into a fix for players who are currently experiencing this issue.
• Some players have reported not being able to reach 100% in the Game Progression menu, our team is investigating.

II. FIXES AND IMPROVEMENTS

i. Main Quests

• Fixed an issue in main quest ‘Reach for the Stars’ where Varl could become stuck swimming, which resulted in a missing prompt to [Examine the Machine Carcass] at the Glinthawk sighting site, thus blocking further progression.
• Fixed an issue in main quest ‘Reach for the Stars’ where Varl would visibly teleport after the Focus scanning tutorial.
• Fixed an issue in main quest ‘Reach for the Stars’ where Aloy could become stuck in a falling animation when she grabbed a collapsing climbing point and used the Pullcaster on a Grapple Point at the same time.
• Fixed an issue in main quest ‘Reach for the Stars’ where there was a sudden change in sunlight when Aloy was traversing a certain spot inside the shuttle tower.
• Fixed an issue in main quest ‘Death’s Door’ where reloading from a certain save would cause the Firegleam explosion to replay.
• Fixed an issue in main quest ‘The Dying Lands’ where Aloy and her companions would get snowed on while inside the cauldron.
• Fixed an issue in main quest ‘The Broken Sky’ where Kotallo could sometimes become distracted and stray from the task at hand, which could block further progression.
• Fixed an issue in main quest ‘The Broken Sky’ where Aloy would be placed in an unintended pose when reloading a certain save.
• Fixed an issue in main quest ‘The Kulrut’ where an objective marker was leading towards a blocked path.
• Fixed an issue in main quest ‘Seeds of the Past’ where Alva could sometimes not reach the console, blocking progression.
• Fixed an issue in main quest ‘Seeds of the Past’ where reloading the save after killing the machines outside of test station Elm would spawn Aloy stuck in the floor.
• Fixed an issue in main quest ‘Singularity’ where reloading a certain save would cause a certain line of dialogue to play again incorrectly.

ii. Side Quests

• Fixed an issue in side quest ‘The Blood Choke’ where Atekka would not move into position when needed, thus blocking progression.
• Fixed an issue in side quest ‘The Promontory’ where reloading from a save after the ‘Investigate the bridge’ objective would place the player in Plainsong.
• Tempered the vigilance of machines in side quest “The Wound in the Sand”, so that they no longer enter a suspicious state immediately upon reloading from a certain save.
• Fixed an issue in side quest “A Tribe Apart” where reloading a save created after opening the metal flower at Riverwatch would cause the vines to respawn.

iii. World Activities

• Fixed an infinite black screen that would occur after stashing the Champion’s Spear and then starting any Tutorial or Challenge in Chainscrape Melee Pit, or a fixed loadout challenge in the Arena.
• Fixed an issue in Cauldron Mu where a platform at the end of the cauldron could stream in late, trapping the player underneath.
• Fixed an issue in salvage contract The Stillsands: Pristine Bellowback where the incorrect machine corpse was spawned when reloading from save after defeating the machine.
• Fixed an issue in Machine Strike where the player was no longer able to attack after selecting to repeat the instructions regarding unit combat power.
• Fixed an issue in Machine Strike where the compass would appear on screen after the player retried a match they lost.
• Fixed an issue where a wild loading screen could pop up while in the Arena menu, after returning from a challenge.
• Fixed an issue where scavenger machines would not appear after killing other types of machines in certain habitats.
• Fixed an issue with dome views where the icons would not display correctly after reloading a save.
• Fixed an issue in Salvage Contract: The Lost Supplies where the quest could not be turned in under certain circumstances.
• Fixed an issue with the track “The World on Her Shoulders” repeating if the player used fast-travel after climbing a Signal Tower. Please note that this is not fixed for players who already encountered this issue, we are investigating a separate fix for this.

iv. UI/UX

• Removed haptic feedback when standing next to a campfire and when fast-traveling if the Vibration Intensity sliders are set to 0.
• Fixed an issue where a Vista image would appear in front of a Black Box collectible in the menu.

v. Graphics

• Fixed multiple instances of objects in the world visibly popping between different levels of detail.
• Fixed an issue in Photo Mode where parts of Aloy’s outfit and body would become blurry in certain poses.
• Improved visual differentiation of the attack and move indicators in Machine Strike.
• Fixed a cosmetic issue with underwater cubemap.
• Fixed an issue where a blurry artefact was visible around the Heavy Crossbow when using it in combat.
• Fixed several instances of the camera jittering and behaving in an unintentional way.
• Several craftable quest items had the incorrect model in the workbench interface, those have now been replaced with the final assets.
• Fixed an issue with Parallax Mapped Foam by removing variable height scale in favor of a constant value; when original dynamic input value got too high it started separating the parallax layers. To fix the nasty separation of the layers at glancing angles the height scale is set by a bit of fresnel based logic.
• Fixed several instances of NPCs in settlements not displaying the correct level of detail when playing the PS4 version of the game.
• Fixed an issue in the Chainscrape tavern where moving the camera in a certain spot would cause sudden changes in lighting.
• Improved noise reduction on screen space ambient occlusion.
• Reduced the intensity of the vignette screen effect when activating Valor Surges, and when Aloy was at low health.

vi. Performance and Stability

• Multiple crash fixes.
• Fixed multiple assets that would pop in or stream in visibly during cinematics.
• Fixed several unintentional loading screens/black screens that would trigger in specific points.

vii. Other

• Aloy will not mention her stash quite as often as before.
• Multiple localization fixes and text alignment corrections.
• Multiple visual and audio improvements to cinematics.
• Fixed an issue where Aloy would freeze in a specific pose when switching weapons during a charged heavy melee attack.
• Fixed an issue where remapping the controls for Primary Fire to R1 would prevent the player from throwing rocks.
• The spear impact when using ‘Strike From Above’ was missing a sound effect that has now been added.
• Fixed an issue where the player would lose control of Aloy if sprinting and sliding into the water at a specific spot in the ruins north of Landfall.
• Fixed an issue with the camera during the end credits.
• Fixed several instances of the mount behaving erratically in specific locations while riding on roads.

We can expect updates to keep coming for Horizon Forbidden West as minor optimizations will constantly be made. Still, as long as the major bugs which hampered gameplay are taken care of, players should be happy with the fantastic sequel from Guerrilla.

About Horizon Forbidden West

Horizon Forbidden West is the sequel to 2017’s Horizon Zero Dawn by Guerilla Games. An open-world, action adventure game, players control Aloy, a Nora hunter who is on a quest to reverse the effects of a strange crimson blight which is infecting the land. Set in a completely new world, Horizon Forbidden West has many new machines, threats and adventures for Aloy.