Horizon Forbidden West’s Burning Shores expansion arrives tomorrow. It’ll bring a greatly expanded world that reaches into the skies and into the very depths of the ocean. That’s why Burning Shoresis only available on the PS5–the PS4 just couldn’t handle all those clouds.
To prepare for Burning Shores' arrival, Forbidden West just received a 13GB update. Besides some behind-the-scenes technical stuff that gets everything ready for the expansion’s arrival, today’s update alsoadds several new accessibility features, one of which is labeled “Thalassophobia mode.”
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Thalassophobia, for those wondering, is the fear of the ocean. It’s the sense of overwhelming dread that occurs when you look at unfathomably deep water, the mind immediately conjuring enormous sea beasts that could eat you in a single gulp. It’s the fear that makes Subnautica such an amazing horror game (despite being marketed as a survival game), and it’s the fear that can keep some people from even stepping foot on a beach let alone swimming in the ocean.
While it would be funny if Thalassophobia mode made Forbidden West’s waters deeper, darker, and full of monsters, it actually does the complete opposite. “This feature aims to ease thalassophobia symptoms by improving underwater ambient visibility and allowing you to breathe indefinitely, regardless of story progression,” Guerilla writes in theBurning Shores FAQ.
Normally, players would have to unlock the diving mask to swim without fear of drowning, but Thalassophobia mode will let you swim as deep as you like without ever needing to worry about running out of breath. Or decompression sickness, but as far as I know, that’s never been a mechanic anyone has had to worry about in video games. Yet.
Besides Thalassophobia mode, today’s update also adds color blindness settings, automatic camera settings, bigger subtitles, and a quality-of-life change that fans have been asking for: auto-pickup! You can access these new features in the Accessibility menu. Note that patch 1.21 is exclusive to PS5 owners, so you’ll need to have a current-gen console to gain access to these new accessibility features.
Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores arrives on April 19. Remember,you’ll need to have completed Forbidden West’s storyin order to access Burning Shores as it picks up right where the original game leaves off. You won’t need to have 100-percented Forbidden West, but you will need to have completed all the main story quests up to “Singularity.”
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