Horizon Forbidden West's outfits make this radical gameplay change

It looks like Horizon Forbidden West will borrow from games like Far Cry 6 by adding skills and other bonuses to outfits.

Aloy's outfits in Horizon Forbidden West have been overhauled to provide more freedom and power to players to min-max specific build types. The armor pieces will now have skills as well as perks attached to them, Guerrilla Games confirms.

"Horizon Forbidden West will have a range of outfits for Aloy to benefit from; similar to and perhaps familiar from the first game, outfits allow for protection against a variety of dangers that Aloy encounters and can be purchased from Merchants or found in the world. A new addition to the system is that outfits in Horizon Forbidden West have skills attached to them, so players can boost their abilities in different ways."

Outfits in the previous Horizon Zero Dawn game only gave buffs and perk bonuses (e.g. freeze or melee resistance) and didn't enable specific skills or abilities. Guerrilla was vague on how this new system will work--maybe it's a bit like runewords like Enigma in Diablo 2--but they did confirm a skill tree is still in Forbidden West.

"Maximizing these skills happens through a new and improved Skill Tree, something we will tell you more about some other time."

Horizon Forbidden West releases February 18, 2022 on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.