History VideoGame / HorizonForbiddenWest

** This approach meets with disaster in Cauldron Gemini. [[spoiler. Aloy and the Base team form a complicated plan in order to capture [=HEPHAESTUS=]. Part of this plan involves a distraction to reduce the risk of discovery by the Zeniths, but at no point do they form a contingency for what happens if the Zeniths do find them. So when that inevitably happens, the capture team is immediately overwhelmed and would all die if not for Tilda's intervention.]]

** This approach meets with disaster in Cauldron Gemini. [[spoiler. Aloy and the Base team form a complicated plan in order to capture HEPHAESTUS. Part of this plan involves a distraction to reduce the risk of discovery by the Zeniths, but at no point do they form a contingency for what happens if the Zeniths do find them. So when that inevitably happens, the capture team is immediately overwhelmed and would all die if not for Tilda's intervention.]]

* UnspokenPlanGuarantee: Aloy's whispered plan to [[spoiler:have Beta upload [=HEPHAESTUS=] to Far Zenith's machine printers to create a helpful army for their fight goes better than it likely would have if she let Tilda in on it.]]

* BatmanGambit: A lot of Aloy's plans boil down to her assessing a situation (with lots of information provided by her focus), determining a reasonable course of action, and then going into it full-tilt without considering any alternatives. We see this in the opening segment of the game, when she knocks down a derelict space shuttle to crush a group of Slitherfangs; this results in her causing its scaffolding to collapse with her on it, having no alternative but to ride it to the ground and hope for a soft landing.
** Her approach to getting the Sky Clan out from behind the bulwark is an extreme case. After ascertaining that there's an old world tank embedded in their defensive wall and that it still has an active power cell, she goes haring off to find a weapon that can detonate it. Her plan depends on there a) being rebels in the area, who have b) overridden a large machine with c) a heavy weapon of the right damage type to detonate a power cell, and that the explosion d) will do enough damage to collapse the defensive wall without destroying the settlement or harming its inhabitants, and e) the Tenakth won't be so mad about her attaking their fortification that they just try to kill her in spite of the prestige instilled by her meeting with Hekarro.

* BatmanGambit: [[spoiler:Sylens's whole plan relies on stirring up a Tenakth rebellion by giving them override technology by proxy in exchange for them assaulting the Zenith's Specter army and the two of them wiping each other out. He also planned for the Zeniths to capture Aloy and use her to rebuild GAIA since she has Elisabet Sobeck's DNA and also to sideline her out of his way since he predicted she'd find his plan morally objectionable. His plan starts falling apart when he finds out the Zeniths ''already'' have a clone, [[WhyDontYouJustShootHim so they just try to kill Aloy instead since she's interfering with their own plans]]]].

* PairTheSpares: Inverted, in that the secondary relationships come before the primary. Several side characters who were clearly attracted to Aloy in ''Zero Dawn'' are given relationships in this game: Talanah met a man named Amadis during an interquel comic series and fell for him so hard that she follows him across the Forbidden West; Varl meets Zo while treating Aloy for an injury and they hook up almost immediately; and Vanasha clearly has some sort of thing going on with Uthid. Aloy herself later [[spoiler: gets an option for a love interest in the ''Burning Shores'' DLC]].

** At Barren Light, Aloy learns that a group of Eclipse managed to escape the Sundom thanks to a corrupt guard. We learn they're led by Vezreh, a guy who clearly presents himself as Helis 2.0 and seems like a big deal. This potentially creates the impression that the Eclipse remnant will remain a major threat throughout the game; instead, [[spoiler: Aloy finds only a handful of them left, holed up in a fort with only a handful of Utaru slaves as assets, and their plan for vengeance is in its beginning stages if it ever had any hope at all. Vezreh clearly has a highly inflated sense of his own capabilities, and the whole group are brought down with relative ease, ending the Eclipse threat once and for all.]]

** After discovering the [[spoiler: Far Zenith mole]] within the Zero Dawn team, Travis Tate [[spoiler: interrogated the culprit by subjecting him to 150 decibels of heavy metal, which is loud enough to instantly cause permanent hearing loss and potentially organ failure with extended exposure, in order to learn the code the mole was planning to use so that Travis can send Far Zenith a fake GAIA copy.]]

* CoolAndUnusualPunishment: What kind of torture does Sylens subject an AI bent on world destruction like HADES to? Forcing it to watch holographic imagery of plants and animals thriving; the more vivid, the better. According to his notes, a loop depicting rabbits hopping through a field of flowers "produced paroxysms of agony." It's enough to corrupt the AI's internal data structures and render it an almost mindless husk.

* AchievementMockery: Although no achievement outright mocks the player directly, the fact that one can unlock the "All Achievements Obtained" achievement without having attained the "Completed Ultra Hard" achievement first can still feel like an example of this trope.

* SavageSpinosaurs: ''Forbidden West'' introduces the Slaughterspine, a heavyweight-class combat machine resembling a spinosaurid with deadly plasma attacks. Notably, they're clearly based on [[TheOughties early 2000s]] portrayals of ''Spinosaurus'' [[ArtisticLicensePaleontology as a terrestrial predator rather than the semi-aquatic potential piscivore it is now theorized to be]]. For added awesome, it's also a pretty blatant Franchise/{{Godzilla}} expy that can shoot purple energy beams from its mouth, as well as the spines on its back.

* SpinosaurusVersusTRex: Initially averted in the base game where Thunderjaws (the TRexpy) and Slaughterspines (the [[SavageSpinosaurs robot Spinosaurus]]) aren't anywhere near each other on the map, so you can't, say, override one and make them fight. In fact, in the final battle, [[spoiler:they fight alongside one another]]. Then ''Burning Shores'' came along and with it a Thunderjaw and Slaughterspine site right next to each other. Enjoy the show!