Another week and another patch has been released for Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition. Nixxes and Guerilla are not sleeping on the game and continue to improve both gameplay and performance. Let’s take a closer look!
Update: On Thursday, April 25th, a tiny hotfix was released. It is labeled 1.3.57.
1.3.55 Changes Highlights
The 1.3.55 download is about 241 MB on Steam. It’s another regular weekly patch and nothing major is happening, but we continue to see improvements in the keybinding segment where more and more previously locked keys and functions are now customizable.
“Patch 1.3 is out now for Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition on PC. This update includes new features, visual improvements and a range of optimizations, bugfixes and stability improvements, based on player feedback.“
As usual, I will start with the key changes that I think will have the biggest impact on the widest chunk of the game’s playerbase, especially those of us who prefer to play with a keyboard and mouse (but not only). At the bottom of this article, you will also find the official release notes from Nixxes and Guerilla.
Interface Text Size Options
Every player has unique preferences when it comes to text size. Some prefer it small and unobtrusive, while others like to see it easily with just a half-glance.
As of 1.3.55, we can now choose from Normal Text size and Large Text size. This option is available in the General menu.
The new Large Size HUD text is actually not too large, but at the same time if you were having trouble reading some numbers or letters, now with the Large Text option, you should have no issues at all.
Not sure if the text is also slightly bolder or maybe that’s an illusion of the cool font type combined with the larger symbols.
Here are a few more zoomed-in examples:
It applies to both the menu of the game as well as all text during gameplay. In-game the large font size makes sense, but in my opinion, it is excessive in the menus.
While the Text Size option is strictly a personal choice, I recommend you stopping by our guide to what settings you should change in Horizon Forbidden West. It details changes that will actually improve your gameplay and experience with the game. And we also have an in-depth guide to all controls for the PC players.
Quick Slot Weapons now remember the last used ammo
Every Aloy needs a full loadout of bows, casters, boltblasters and whatnot. Now when you use a quick slot hotkey to swap between your weapons (like numbers 1 to 6 on the keyboard), the last used ammo will be remembered. This has to be my favorite change from patch 1.3.55.
If I use Frost Arrows on The Sun Scorge bow, and swap to my Boltblaster to tie down a tremmortusk, I can press the shortcut to take out The Sun Scorge, freeze the machine and annihilate it with Bolts. All of this can be done with just three button presses after today’s patch. Beautiful! And… about time!
Removed hardcoded mouse and keyboard bindings
Nixxes didn’t stop with just allowing us to customize the functionality of the TAB button on our keyboard. With this patch more features are now free to be customized, namely Navigation Assist in Focus Mode.
If you choose to remap this to another shortcut, the game will now actually use the custom binding. I don’t use that feature, so I can’t say I was ever bothered by this specific limitation.
Performance Improvements
The very first bullet point in the notes states: “improved the visual quality of dust”. I am not sure which dust exactly is targeted here, but while nearly everything in the game looks gorgeous, there are a few things that stand out sometimes, if you are bothered to notice them.
I am still chasing a dust storm in the desert and will update the article if I spot any major differences, but whether it’s the placebo effect or not, the dust that the wind blows in the desert, does seem to be kind of smoother. It never stood out to me as bad-looking or “needing an improvement”.
Update on the dust bug:
Thanks to kilyan’s comment, I found out what the issue was: a bug with the dust. I never had it myself, which means it may be related to visual settings or PC hardware. Since I never had it before this patch, sadly, I can’t check if it’s really fixed in 1.3.55.
Nixxes did a good job with the PC port of Horizon Forbidden West in general. I personally play on everything maxed out as my machine can support it and I’ve never had performance issues. So, naturally, I am not a benchmark for the game.
While hunting a machine things can get heated up, but nothing is too demanding and even if you have to sacrifice a few frames to be able to enjoy more of the insanely beautiful world around Aloy, you are not handicapping your character at all.
If your GPU is “green” and supports the “Reflex” feature, you may notice that the game no longer experiences performance regression when enabling NVIDA Reflex On+Boost.
Nixxes also updated Intel XeSS super sampling tech to version 1.3 with improved image quality and new XeSS Native AA option. This new feature improves anti-aliasing quality without applying upscaling. To use this feature, set Upscaling to Off and choose XeSS Native AA as your anti-aliasing method.
As usual with pretty much any AAA game these days, the last couple of bullet points in the patch notes are reserved for things like “Various optimizations and stability improvements” and “Various UI bugfixes”. And Nixxes’ 1.3.55 for Horizon Forbidden West does not stray from this formula.
Patch 1.3.57 Changes
On Thursday, April 25th, Nixxes released a tiny hotfix (~250KB in size) adding the following fixes:
“This hotfix addresses a crash that could occur for some players in the Burning Shores expansion after installing the update we released earlier this week. We’ve also fixed a bug that prevented users of AMD Radeon GPUs and older NVIDIA GeForce GPUs from enabling Intel XeSS Native AA. Thanks again for sharing your feedback!“
- Stability improvements.
- Intel XeSS Native AA is now also available on AMD Radeon GPUs and older NVIDIA GeForce GPUs.
Patch 1.3.55 Release Notes
Below you can check out the list of release notes officially published by Nixxes and Guerilla.
Hey everyone,
Patch 1.3 is out now for Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition on PC. This update includes new features, visual improvements and a range of optimizations, bugfixes and stability improvements, based on player feedback.
We’ve improved the visual quality of dust effects and made improvements to texture streaming to reduce memory usage and improve texture quality. This update also resolves performance regression that could occur when using the NVIDIA Reflex On+Boost setting.
In the General Settings menu, you’ll find a new Interface Text Size option. Choose Large to improve legibility of the interface and in-game text on smaller screens. On Steam Deck, this option is set to Large by default.
This patch also updates Intel XeSS to version 1.3. This version introduces improvements in image quality, more quality options and a new anti-aliasing option: Intel XeSS Native AA. This mode improves anti-aliasing quality, without applying upscaling. To use XeSS Native AA, set upscaling to Off and select XeSS Native AA from the anti-aliasing settings.
From the teams at Nixxes and Guerilla: Thank you to everyone for playing and sharing feedback. We appreciate your insights that help us continue to improve the game.
- Improved the visual quality of dust.
- Added Interface Text Size option in the General Settings menu.
- Improvements to texture streaming to reduce memory usage and improve quality.
- Updated Intel XeSS to version 1.3 with improved image quality and new XeSS Native AA option.
- Resolved performance regression when enabling NVIDA Reflex On+Boost.
- When using Quick Slot hotkeys to select weapons, the last used ammo type used will now be remembered.
- Improved smoothness of camera movement in Photo Mode when using the mouse.
- Removed hardcoded Mouse and Keyboard bindings for actions such as Navigation Assist in Focus Mode. They now listen to their respective remappable key bindings.
- Various optimizations and stability improvements.
- Various UI bugfixes.
Release Notes Source: Steam.
