The red disease, sometimes called the Red Blight, in Horizon: Forbidden West is bad. It looks to be some sort of plant that can set roots down anywhere and grow veraciously. The only issue is that it’s not edible, kills wildlife, and destroys crops. Inadvertently, it’s also pretty lethal to humans in that sense. That’s why it’s so important that Aloy finds out how to get rid of this Red Blight in the game. Some say that it’s a result of the collapsing biosphere in the world, which is also part of why there are massive storms all over the place. However, I think there’s another possibility for it. Check out the trailer below and see if you can spot what I mean.
That’s the original announcement trailer for the game. In the middle, you can see some red meteors falling from space, or at least through the atmosphere. In this world, they’re probably seen as some sort of god, or a herald of a god. I think that they might be what’s spreading the Red Blight though. Think about it. Over the course of the game’s history, humans may have sent samples of certain things up into space. One of those may be a biosphere destroying blight, just in case one country needed to use it against another. Cut to 1,000 years later when humanity is basically all gone, and that blight starts to fall back to Earth.
I don’t think this is terribly likely, but I do think that it makes sense within the context of the world. I could see this being a part of this world because there’s no safer place to store something this lethal than space. The biosphere on Earth wouldn’t be equipped to deal with this threat, and so it spins out of control. I reckon that Aloy is grabbing chips to fix up the biosphere and give it the power it needs to adapt and defend against the Red Blight. This would mean that everyone is safe from it, and the world can get back to being the way it was. It will take time, but without Aloy, the world really is doomed this time around.
