If you jumped from Horizon Zero Dawn to Horizon Forbidden West, you probably noticed some jarring changes. Some of these are good things, like how climbable rock faces are now compared to the first game. However, one of the toughest changes to get used to is that there are two different “modes” for your Focus.
In Horizon Zero Dawn, you’d press R3 to toggle your Focus on and off. In Forbidden West, however, pressing R3 does a pulse (sort of like the scan pulse in No Man’s Sky). In order to toggle your sustained Focus mode on and off, you need to hold R3 instead of just quickly pressing it.
In sustained Focus mode, you will be able to scan machines to see their weaknesses, tag them, and display their movement paths. You can also scan old archives, like text files and audio logs.
In case you’re wondering, R3 is your right-hand thumbstick. Instead of moving it diagonally, you press the stick straight down — like, press the entire stick downward into the controller, as shown in the image below.
If you’ve been playing PlayStation for any reasonable amount of time, you probably already know this, but if you just picked up a shiny new PS5 and are still learning the ropes, I hope this does help you out.
Anyway, it’s kind of a difficult change to get used to (I completed Zero Dawn about two hours before Forbidden West launched), but I’m warming up to it. I like the idea of being able to send a pulse instead of having, say, the plant icons or glowing yellow cliff-face lines visible 100% of the time. It also kind of makes sense in the context of the game’s lore, because instead of just using the same Focus she found as a kid, Aloy seems to be in the business of repairing and modding the things now (inspired by Sylens, no doubt).
But that’s pretty much everything you need to know about toggling your Focus on and off in Horizon Forbidden West. Now go explore this massive, beautiful world (just don’t get yourself stuck!)
