Horizon: Zero Dawn - The Frozen Wilds

Available as standalone DLC digitally, or included on the blu-ray disc in Horizon: Zero Dawn - Complete Edition release, The Frozen Wilds is an story that takes place in the north-east part of the map with harsh climate and constant snowstorms. While the entire area can be investigated upon completing the base game, the story is chronologically placed before the end of the Horizon: Zero Dawn.

New area includes not only different frozen terrain with constant snow, but also new tribe, the Banuk tribe, which wasn't accessible fully in the base game although some of the characters in the base game were Banuk. The village high in the mountains have their own tradition and plethora of new outfits to survive in the hard climate surrounding it. While the mechanical enemies roam those lands as well, there is a new type of corruption that turns them into a more deadly machine known as daemonic machines, identified by purple flow through their hardware. The corrupted machines can be released from the corruption influence by destroying nearby towers controlling them.

Beside the main story that gives a fair deal of background for the base game, there are also many side quest of similar nature as those in the base game. Side quests range from helping Banuk warriors, destroying daemonic tower, rescuing people, dealing with the bandits, and other such tasks which require action over words. New audio and text datapoints are scattered around the Frozen Lands which provide additional information on the past events which took place before the apocalypse. Introduced new weapon which fires rope arrows which tether machines in place giving Aloy more time to strike them without fear of retaliation. By the end of the story, Aloy meets yet another AI, although this time a friendly one, called CYAN, which gives her plenty of pieces to fill in the blanks in the overall story.

This side story isn't intended to be tackled too early in the game, although accessible, and recommends character level 30 or higher before starting the first quest in the Frozen Lands.