Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds

Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds is an expansion pack for the 2017 action role-playing game Horizon Zero Dawn, created by Guerrilla Games and released by Sony Interactive Entertainment. It is the only expansion for the base game, arriving on PlayStation 4 on 7 November 2017. A version bundling it with the original game came to Windows in August 2020 as the Complete Edition, and a remaster for PlayStation 5 and Windows followed in October 2024. Critics generally gave the expansion positive reviews, highlighting its visuals, tougher combat, and technical upgrades, though opinions on its main story were more mixed. It ranked as the fourth most-downloaded add-on for PlayStation 4 in 2017.

The expansion's story runs alongside the main campaign. Aloy heads to the Cut, the homeland of the nomadic Banuk tribe, which is a post-apocalyptic version of Yellowstone National Park. There, she investigates the Daemon, a mysterious force that is corrupting the region's animal-like machines and making them more aggressive. The expansion raises the maximum player level and adds a new skill tree, weapons, and a special economy for buying gear from the Banuk. Fighting the new Daemonic machine variants and stationary Control Towers demands aggressive tactics. Development focused on Banuk culture, with geography inspired by Yellowstone. Guerrilla upgraded its Decima engine to include a dynamic snow deformation system that compresses snow and leaves trails, interactive water rendering, and advanced 3D cloud rendering. The studio also improved its motion capture technology for more realistic character animations. New machine species were given erratic attack patterns to challenge players' established strategies.

Gameplay builds on the base game's action role-playing mechanics. The Frozen Wilds is a single-player experience that adds a new region to the open world, letting Aloy travel between it and the original area. Guerrilla designed the expansion for players at level 30 or higher, and it increases the maximum level from 50 to 60. Exploration centers on Banuk culture, a tribe of survivalists; Aloy takes part in their trials and combat challenges to eventually compete for the position of chieftain. A fourth branch added to the skill tree introduces quality-of-life abilities for inventory management and mounted machine traversal.