Also the game follows the bigger evil fallacy which leads to the main character needing to become a super-hero to "win". I mean Aloy is already at that point, I guess. For example there is a several ton heavy fireclaw that jumps on you at every occasion. I don't see how a person would survive that. Hence it is a bit immersion breaking.
I was talking to a coworker about it and the first thing he asked me is, "What about all that amazing gear you get by the end of the first game?" which I think perfectly illustrates your point. They took Aloy to the top and although they managed to make it work so far it does feel a bit awkward, like they may have jumped the shark. But hey I'm just excited to have a cool game to decompress with. I guess in the end it's not that different than a sequel to a movie. People who loved the first will more or less come back to see the second.
The game developers conference releases a lot of great talks. Some on horizon zero dawn where pretty interesting.
Character development:
But I’m in complete agreement about with the OP about the “overpolished” aspect of Forbidden West.. just check out the Horizon subreddit right now. They just released a patch that nerfed the legendary weapons in the game. There was no real reason to do that. They didn’t feel horribly broken (especially for how much grinding it takes to upgrade them and how expensive their ammo is to craft). And come on: it’s a single player game. No idea what’s going on at that studio right now.. maybe gearing up for DLC.