The Banuk consists of wandering clans made up of hunters and shamans who live in snowy mountains and worship the machines and their "songs".

Three categories occur in the skill tree: "Prowler" concerns stealth, "Brave" improves combat, and "Forager" increases healing and gathering capabilities.

Upgrades in each category result in more adept use of the skills learned, with "Prowler" leading to silent takedowns, "Brave" to aiming a bow in slow motion, and "Forager" to an enlarged medicine pouch.

Aloy (Ashly Burch) is cast out from the Nora tribe at birth and raised by a fellow outcast named Rost (JB Blanc).

As a child (Ava Potter), Aloy obtains a Focus, an augmented reality device that gives her special perceptive abilities.

Aloy becomes curious about her origins and is told by Rost that if she wins the Proving, a competition to earn the right to become a member of the Nora, the tribe's Matriarchs might concede this information.

Aloy and her friend Varl search a facility once belonging to Far Zenith, a company specializing in space colonization; they find a GAIA backup, but it has been sabotaged.

Sylens contacts Aloy, having stolen GAIA's subsystem HADES, and asks to meet her in the Forbidden West region.

The third installment of the Horizon series of games was released on 22 February 2023 as a launch title for the PlayStation VR2 virtual reality headset.

In Horizon Call of the Mountain, players step into the shoes of the new protagonist Ryas, an ex-Shadow Carja Warrior on a quest for redemption as he investigates a dire new menace facing the Sundom.

Presented from a first-person viewpoint, the game's core gameplay centers around the skills of climbing and archery, enabling players to traverse a post-apocalyptic landscape overrun by renegade robots.

[4] The game will support online or local cooperative multiplayer and the ability to customize the Mother's Heart village with Lego buildings and ornaments.

[19][20] In January 2025, Sony announced that a film adaptation of Horizon Zero Dawn was in the works at PlayStation Productions and Columbia Pictures.