Vanity Fair Italy dropped its first-ever digital cover last Friday, and to inaugurate its new digital initiative, the magazine tapped the digital icon Aloy to be its cover star.
Aloy is the protagonist of the successful video game franchise Horizon, which returned to PlayStation 4 and 5 last Friday with the release of its second installment, Horizon Forbidden West.
In an Instagram post unveiling its inaugural digital cover, Vanity Fair Italy described Aloy as “a heroine who, in the world of video games, is making a revolution in terms of representation by shifting the focus from gender difference to the value of diversity.” The magazine also called her a “strong and courageous woman” and a “true leader” with the ambitious purpose of saving future humanity from disaster.
Vanity Fair Italy talked more about Aloy in the feature article titled Aloy e la rivoluzione or Aloy and the revolution, which explained the character’s wide appeal with audiences, including cosplayers who have started to don their ginger wigs again in honor of this year’s release of Horizon Forbidden West. The piece, which you can read here, isn’t officially available in English just yet. But Google translate helps fans understand the gist of the story.
“With her freckled cheeks and her austere appearance, Aloy has managed to redeem an industry,” wrote the author of the article, Ofmario Manca. “Aloy is neither mother nor spouse, nor supporting actor or helper, but a strong and courageous woman who, in a world where gender differences no longer exist.”
The story also includes interviews with the Horizon Forbidden West team, who are proud of Aloy’s mass appeal.
“It is a deep mistake to think that the players are simply and only men. If we look at the most recent PlayStation stats, it can be seen that around 42% of gamers are female,” said Angie Smets, director and executive producer at Guerrilla Games, which developed Horizon Forbidden West and its 2017 prequel Horizon Zero Dawn. “I firmly believe that we have managed to create a character that everyone likes, regardless of whether they are men or women. We are much more interested in what happens to the character under the surface than what he looks like on the outside.”
Don’t have Horizon Forbidden West yet? You can buy it here on Amazon starting at $59.