There’s a reason Guerilla Games always opens its Horizon videos with the Tallneck walking past the camera, absolutely unconcerned with anything happening around it. It’s big – it’s MASSIVE – and it sets the scene instantly. This is even more impressive in the Call of the Mountain PSVR2 game, where it walks right over you.
When I saw there was a LEGO version, I kinda wanted it. When I heard that it was going to be discontinued, I bought it. And it sat next to my desk for months. Because I had heard that if you wanted to light it up, it would be better to do that before you actually built the thing, and I wasn’t sure which lighting kit to get… There are dozens.
Some of the lighting kits are incredibly elaborate. Some are animated, there’s different focuses for the lighting, different things to emphasize. I intended to make its final home in my office, and I feel that if the lights were animated, it would be way too distracting and I would just end up watching it – from the corner of my eye – all day when I was supposed to be working. I can’t have distractions while I’m working.
I saw a video that showed the lighting kit I picked out – the Lightailing LED Kit for Horizon Forbidden West – being fit to a built model, so I ordered that and got to work actually building the thing.
The kit itself only took a couple hours to build. The lighting kit came all packaged up nicely. It took a fairly long time to tease out all the light strands. I taped them to a piece of cardboard as I finished freeing each one. Lit up, it looked like a still-somehow-living nervous system, flayed and pinned.
Installing the lighting was stressful. The assembled Tallneck is not the most stable thing in the world, but I only messed up a couple of times and didn’t break anything important.
And so, here it is.
