Continuing my study of side quests in Horizon: Forbidden West, I think I've discovered a semi-kinda-sorta weakness in a quest's fundamental design. After playing through it, I took the time to watch several other videos posted on YouTube. I've come to the conclusion that it's not exactly a flaw in the quest's presentation. More of a miscommunication. I'll quickly go through the recap and then get into the narrative snag.
Side Quest #6: Signals of the Sun
Summary:
Once again, we need a call to adventure that will pull Aloy from her primary mission. A dead body and a callous soldier fit the bill. Aloy finds a young man who's fallen off a cliff. A local village guard tells Aloy he has no sympathy for the climber for his foolishness, and the same goes for his companion somewhere still up on the cliffs. Given this knowledge, Aloy cannot turn her back on the hapless stranded climber.
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| Horizon: Outdoor Recreation Victims Unit |
Aloy climbs the rocks and spots the climber, who is injured and hemmed in by a group of machines. The player can sneak or fight through them and get to the climber, who introduces herself as Raynah. Raynah is after a lens used to focus sunlight into a signal beam in a nearby tower. There are six of these in the local area. Raynah explains that her father designed the towers and the lenses have sentimental value, adding a little emotional connection to the quest if the player needed more than purely mercenary incentives to engage with the mission. I appreciate the nuances like that because it helps me feel like going on these little errands is still consistent with Aloy's character.
Aloy climbs the nearby tower, gets the lens, and returns it to Raynah. Raynah then gives Aloy a reward of 15 shards and a few other items. She tells Aloy to find her in the village anytime she comes across lenses. Aloy can earn 15 shards for each lens and, upon delivering all lenses, receive a special reward.
Notable Notes:
The quest is pretty straightforward but is unique from the others in two ways. It's the first instance which gives the player a motivation to backtrack. Getting cooking materials for Milduf technically required backtracking, but in this case if the player hasn't explored every nook and cranny of the map, then they'll have to double back nearly to where they entered. In that regard, the geographic path the quest takes goes against the grain of Aloy's primary mission right now. I've played farther ahead and one thing I've been very happy about with other side quests is how well they run parallel to the main storyline.
The Tangled Web of the Game's First Branching Narrative:
The bigger deal about what makes this unique is that it's the first quest in which the player's actions in the game heretofore have an impact on story beats. How Raynah responds to Aloy is dependent on whether the player has already discovered any of the signal towers in the local area and collected their lenses. The overarching story here has versatile potential to either be the beginning of a new "errand-style" quest, the resolution of an ongoing mystery, or a little bit of both.
With all that said, here's the snag. I've created a flowchart to better exhibit the issue I found. Starting from the discovery of the guard lugging the dead climber around, here's the quest's progression:
It's a straight shot until we meet Raynah. Upon encountering her, the designers realized there were some potential player-created variations. What if the player has already scoured the map in search of data logs, artifacts, or other lore tokens? They've probably found some lenses. So, Raynah has to address that possibility in order to maintain consistency. It would be natural for Aloy's possession of lenses to come up in conversation. Therefore, if the player has collected at least one lens, Aloy mentions as much during their conversation. We have a dialogue branch, as diagrammed below:
Raynah pays 15 shards per lens Aloy already has. Raynah then pays Aloy an additional 15 shards and a few other goodies for retrieving the one in the nearby tower. Afterward, she tells Aloy that, should she collect more, to bring them to the town. At that point, a quest prompt appears on the screen explicitly telling the player that the quest is complete. The player receives XP and rewards.
Now come complications. I'll lay it out in writing and then hopefully make it clear in the diagrams below. There are some scenarios to deal with:
SCENARIO 1) If Aloy had ZERO lenses to give Rayna and the player is only now aware that others exist somewhere on the map, then they'll receive notification of a new "errand" quest, which is to retrieve all the lenses and take them to Raynah in town.
SCENARIO 2) If Aloy gave Raynah SOME lenses, then there remain a few to collect. That's still covered in the errand requirements.
But what about players like me, who have crawled all over the map like an archaeologist and created...
SCENARIO 3) Aloy gives Raynah ALL the lenses?
It's clear from some variations in when and how Raynah's dialogue is presented that the development team was aware this was a possibility. But I don't think they caught everything. In my experience, I noticed something odd about Raynah's farewell on the clifftop. I gave her ALL the lenses. But in her parting shot, she still told me to "come see her in town" if I found any more. Why would I do that? I asked myself. I don't have anything more to give you.
I've mapped it out below to highlight the oddity.
I only found out later by accident that Raynah DOES go back to the village. She flagged me down while running around. I might not have spotted her otherwise. Upon engaging with her, she gave me a final reward, which surprised me. It was a totally chance encounter. Based on the messaging that the quest was complete, and having no indication that an errand mission ever existed, I had no reason to seek her out. I could just have easily gone through the entire game without ever collecting the final reward.
And that's why, in my case, it's more of a miscommunication than a design flaw. Raynah DOES technically tell you to come see her, but then the game sort of overwrites that message by saying "congrats, you're done!"
I completed the quest before the first patch was released, though none of the patch notes I read indicate anything has changed with this side quest as of 1.08. I watched several videos of other players completing the quest while already in possession of all the lenses. In their case, Raynah immediately announces on the clifftop that she'll leave the area and go back to her home. If you have to complete the errand, she doesn't speak that dialogue until she's in the village. So far, I'm the only instance I know of getting a "hybrid" message, in which you hand over all the lenses but Raynah still waits for you in the village.
I would love to know if other players who give Raynah all the lenses at the cliff still find her in the village, and if she gives them any additional rewards. Assuming I'm not the only one who's had the experience, I find it interesting that the presentation of cues to the player make it ambiguous as to whether they should seek Raynah out in the village.
At any rate, this was the first instance I came across in which the quest's narrative had to be flexible in response to potential scenarios created by the player. It's a great demonstration of how players can be granted control over outcomes and story beats, and highlights the power of games as interactive fiction. There weren't too many instances like this in Zero Dawn, and seeing one so early in Forbidden West makes me hopeful for many, many more throughout.
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