PlayStation may have announced release date for LEGO Horizon Adventures

I still don’t understand Horizon as a franchise. On paper, “robot dinosaurs” make perfect sense, but in execution? I don’t know how we got this far; PlayStation NEVER makes spin-offs that stray so far from the core gameplay: Ape Escape and Little Big Planet are the only real exceptions. One reason I’ve learned to live with these PS2 IPs never coming back is because PlayStation IPs are so definitive in their design that they can only be incorporated to a certain extent without having to be remade. To take a more local example, it’s the F-Zero problem (pre-99), or the Mother problem: “We’ve done everything there is to it. Time to move on.” Jak becomes Uncharted, Sly Cooper becomes inFamous, Twisted Metal becomes God of War, Siren becomes Gravity Rush, Little Big Planet becomes Dreams, and Medievil becomes Killzone becomes Horizon. Horizon doesn’t have the brand flexibility Sony claims. Aloy isn’t Link, Mario, or even Agent 3. She’s too bland to be an interesting main character, but too distinct to serve as an audience surrogate. Her enemies are interesting, but her cast is generic, and everything about her world has been done better mechanically elsewhere.

So why does Sony seem so convinced that Aloy has the same brand appeal for kids as Mario or Star Wars to be able to offer a Lego game? Or, perhaps more aptly and in the style of Tom Hanks, are they trying to borrow some of that brand appeal from Lego to prop up Aloy.

But of course that brings us back to the original question: Why does Aloy have to exist?