Just a quick write-up on the expansion for the game. Like many modern DLCs, this one is set in a separate area of the game and chronologically takes place shortly before the final battle. As far as I’m concerned it’s a near perfect DLC: the frozen lands of the new area is different enough to feel fresh, the enemies are harder but still a logical expansion of the original ones, and I loved how you actually do get to talk to an AI at the end.

Aloy travels to the Cut, a region that leads from the lands of other tribe to the frozen lands of Ban-Ur controlled by the Banuk tribe. She has heard that there may be a new form of corruption making the machines there more dangerous and indeed soon encounters one possessed by a Daemon. The Banuk themselves know where the Daemon is located but an assault on the location of Thunder’s Drum was defeated, leading to many casualties. They also discover that strange towers with the ability to corrupt and heal machines are appearing in their lands. Aloy allies with Ourea, a shaman of the Banuk who tells her that she is friends with a spirit, actually another artificial intelligence known as CYAN. She learns that CYAN was originally built to contain the Yellowstone Caldera from erupting but is being corrupted by HEPHAESTUS, another of GAIA’s subsystems. Aloy therefore must challenge the Banuk chieftain for his position in order to win the right to go to Thunder’s Drum and save CYAN.

There are no big surprises in this story and the part where Aloy actually has to challenge Aratak is so contrived. Once again though execution is everything and it’s perfect here. It’s so satisfying to travel through the snow covered environment and realize for yourself that this is actually Yellowstone before being explicitly told. The best part of the main quest chain in the DLC is how satisfying the payoff is at the end. Aloy actually gets to have a one-on-one conversation with CYAN. She was made before GAIA and even before the Faro Plague so she doesn’t know anything about those topics. But she is able to talk to Aloy about how life was before the collapse of civilization and it’s cathartic to watch this play out. Naturally the DLC drops hints about the game’s sequel as well. I’m not sure I’ll ever play it but it’s nice to see how the future direction of the story is so well planned out.

When it comes to combat, this is suitably more challenging than the end of the main game too. One problem with the main game is that it uses large, slow enemies as bosses. They have heavy firepower and small windows of vulnerability but don’t move around much. Fighting them is mostly a matter of staying in cover as much as possible and popping out to shoot when it’s safe. This DLC instead features new enemies who are fast and like to get in your face. They still have ranged attacks of course but whenever possible they like to charge at you and use melee attacks. I found this to be much scarier and more difficult than the fights in the main game. As always you get new weapons to deal with these new threats. The Banuk weapons are kind of boring, being straight up upgrades of your usual gear. More interesting are the specialist lightning, fire and frost weapons you can get. Once upgraded via a quest, they’re really exciting to use but chew up resources at a ferocious rate.

As with the main game, this DLC takes a mostly predictable path, yet this is a good thing because it’s all done so well. The characters, the world, the enemies, the stories are all as they should be, adding up to a superlative and complete gaming experience. I love the small gamer-friendly touches, including letting Aloy talk to CYAN at the end, and even allowing you to take control of the powerful Fireclaw machines at the end of the main quest in the DLC. Sure, by that point, there’s no real need to do so as you’ve already finished the game. But it’s still fun to take control of a Fireclaw and watch it fight other machines. All in all, it’s a great DLC made by a studio that really understands what it is that gamers want,