Horizon Forbidden West saw a fairly successful launch in February, being the most downloaded game in the UK on the week of its release. While critics are split over some aspects of the game, Horizon Forbidden West nevertheless enjoys positive reviews and an impressive 90% on Metacritic. However, the game’s launch was not bug-free, with the release version suffering from problems ranging from minor annoyances to outright crashes.
Developers are still ironing out kinks more than a month post-release. The latest update, patch 1.09, launched today. While the patch does not solve every known problem with Horizon Forbidden West, it addresses several issues related to quests, balance, graphics, performance, UI, and more.
Developer Guerrilla Games announced Horizon Forbidden West’s most recent update on Twitter and posted the full patch notes in the Horizon subreddit. Patch 1.09’s primary focus appears to be fixing quest-related bugs, with the patch notes listing 14 resolved issues with both main and side quests. These include glitches like characters or essential items not spawning, spawning in the wrong places, and getting stuck on or falling through the level geometry. It also fixes a few issues that let players break quests by completing objectives out of order.
Update 1.09 also solves various problems with Horizon Forbidden West’s open world. For example, players no longer need to worry about respawning out of bounds or beneath the terrain in certain parts of the map. In addition, the patch fixes a bug where players could get stuck in an animation loop during one of the Salvage Contracts and removes some physics glitches with two of the Relic Run quests. 1.09 also fixes a pair of bugs that stopped players from interacting with Horizon Forbidden West’s Black Box collectibles.
The patch notes list a handful of miscellaneous issues fixed by Horizon Forbidden West’s 1.09 update. The patch includes fixes to increase screen sharpness, reduce loading times, and prevent crashes. Other fixes include problems with music, button mapping, and items disappearing from the player’s inventory. As of today’s update, players also can’t use mounts to escape boss fights.
Finally, the patch includes an assortment of balance improvements. Developers didn’t go into detail in the main post but clarified the changes in a comment. These include fixing bugs with some human enemies and assorted stat and ability tweaks of robots. Developers also reduced some of Horizon Forbidden West’s Legendary Weapon and Armor stats to match their earliest acquirement tier.
Notably, today’s notes also list some issues developers are still working on. Despite the above graphical improvements, Guerrilla still hasn’t solved Horizon Forbidden West’s shimmering problems. The ‘Upgraded Every Pouch Type’ Trophy is also still bugged, as are certain Firegleam and Metal Flower Icons, which remain even after being collected. Finally, developers are still working on a bug with one of the NPCs in the “Blood Choke” side quest. Hopefully, the developers will resolve these problems in Horizon Forbidden West’s next patch.
Horizon Forbidden West is available now on PS4 and PS5.
