Update - January 20: A new trailer featuring several members of the Horizon Forbidden West cast has shed new light on several characters, including the mysterious woman Tilda, who's played by Carrie-Anne Moss.
"I really love playing manipulative people," says Moss. "I play this very interesting character named Tilda, who's quite a dynamic character. As an artist, there's a lot of freedom in doing something like this. You get to be in the moment, getting thrown direction by the director, getting to try it over and over again. Creatively, it was really fun. There's a lot of mystery to her; I don't want to say too much but she's an interesting character. I loved playing her."
Lance Reddick and Ashly Burch, the voices and faces of Sylens and Aloy respectively, also fleshed out the "adversarial" but not necessarily antagonistic relationship between these two characters.
"Aloy and Sylens' relationship is so fun because it's so adversarial," Burch says. "They kind of need each other. There's this really fun push and pull, which is like, I hate this guy, but I need this guy."
"Sylens is such an egomaniac when it comes to his intellect," Reddick adds. "He rarely thinks of anyone as being his equal."
Compared to previous teasers and snippets, this suggests that while Sylens can be a bit of an ass, he's not necessarily a villain.
Noshir Dalal, who plays the Tenakth warrior Kotallo, also spoke to the relationships within the game's tribal people.
"The Tenakth as a people have found themselves separated into three major clans," he explains. "Kotallo's chief has come to a vision of a better future where the tribes, instead of constantly fighting against each other, come together in a form of peace so that everyone can live together. Kotallo's primary mission is to champion his chief's cause and see if he can rally the tribes together."
Original story:
Horizon Forbidden West will star Carrie Ann Moss and Angela Bassett in new roles for the sequel.
Earlier today, a brand new story-focused trailer for Horizon Forbidden West debuted, showing Aloy's new friends and foes as she ventures west. Among these characters, as Game Informer revealed in an interview with Forbidden West narrative director Ben McCaw, are The Matrix's Carrie Ann Moss and Black Panther's Angela Bassett.
Bassett is going to be playing a newcomer called Regalla, who's actually one of Aloy's antagonists in Forbidden West, described as "driven by this hatred for the Carja tribe." The new trailer ended on the reveal of an enigmatic character, and McCaw confirms that this person, who's actually known as Tilda, is going to be played by Moss in the new game.
If you played Guerrilla's original 2017 game, you might be familiar with GAIA, the supercomputer AI that had a direct hand in the destruction (and restoration) of civilization. Tilda, Moss's character, is linked in some way to this super-AI, and McCaw describes her as "mysterious and complicated character with a special connection to the ancient past."
Elsewhere in the new trailer, we see The Wire's Lance Reddick returning as Sylens. Reddick's character is a familiar face from the original game, one that even helped out Aloy through her debut journey, but appeared to do something of a heel turn in the final moments of the game. In the Game Informer article, he's described by McCaw as having his "own agenda," which sounds pretty sinister.
There's now less than a month to go until Horizon Forbidden West finally arrives on February 18, launching for both PS4 and PS5.
Head over to our upcoming PS5 games guide for a full look at everything that lies ahead for the new-gen console.
