Horizon Forbidden West: LEGO Tallneck impressions by a LEGO super fan

The LEGO Company announced a surprise collaboration with Sony and Guerrilla Games, culminating in a LEGO set of the iconic Tallneck from Horizon Zero Dawn and its upcoming sequel, Horizon Forbidden West. It’s one of the coolest video game crossover sets LEGO has ever produced, and it has this long time LEGO builder excited. Here’s what I’m loving about the new LEGO Tallneck.

Horizon Forbidden West: Lego Tallneck Impressions by a LEGO super fan

The set features the Tallneck, of course, but it also comes with a new Minifig of Aloy, a Watcher and a detailed base to display the entire kit on.

LEGO’s had some video game crossovers before. From Overwatch to Super Mario and now Horizon, LEGO’s design team continues to knock it out of the park. This Tallneck set is oriented to older collectors and fans of the game, complete with the black packaging that denotes such.

It’s more oriented towards display, as the joints of the Tallneck are made of Technic angle bricks that are not posable. The Tallneck itself will peg into the base with Technic pins for the display, but it’ll be entirely possible for the LEGO Tallneck to stand by itself.

Of course, as a LEGO set you can customize the Tallneck with your own existing pieces to try and work some posability into it, or change the pose up by swapping out those angle bricks.

LEGO and Horizon feels like a match made in heaven. The machine designs translate so well into LEGO, it’s sometimes easy to forget you’re looking at something made of bricks. There’s not many stickers on this set: almost all of the details are achieved with the plastic.

I’m loving the colors on this set, especially how the bricks themselves make up the color blocking on the disc-shaped head. I’m also a sucker for the sand-blue on the Tallneck’s legs.

As for the smaller builds, Aloy has a unique hairpiece with a stud cutout for her earpiece. We don’t see many pieces like that, and it opens up some custom possibilities. The Watcher will be completely posable, and even has different colored eye pieces for a variety of display options.

The base features a birch tree and a vine-wrapped stoplight. The base is even more detailed, with vegetation and a multitude of rocks represented by various colors and brick textures.

What impresses me most is the sense of scale the entire display has. LEGO sets tend to have wonky proportions (see the LEGO Overwatch Reinhardt or any LEGO Star Wars ship), but this one feels just right. The Aloy minifig looks downright tiny (I thought she was a microfig at first) compared to the Tallneck, and that lends the same sense of majesty the Tallneck has in-game.

The LEGO Tallneck comes in at $80 in the US and releases May 1. Horizon Forbidden West launches later this week on February 18.