Horizon Zero Dawn (Second Opinion)
By: ZelyhonHorizon Zero Dawn is a game that I have been eagerly looking forward to since we first got a look at it back at E3 2015. Even at that early stage, the aesthetic and tone of the game very much intrigued me. I will admit to a bit of dampening of my expectations the next year at E3 with the revelation (to me, at least) that the game would be more open-world than I was anticipating initially. Open world games tend not to be as much my cup of tea, but I was still definitely interested enough to get the game on launch day. My playthrough is still a work in progress. I’m now at the point in the main story where the world has opened up somewhat and I’ve had a chance to go and do at least one of most major types of sidequests/diversions/explorations. However, I haven’t yet hit any of the later additions or fatigue that may come with an open world game.
POST-POST-POST APOCALYPSE
In Horizon, Humanity mostly destroyed itself a long, long time ago. Humans have since essentially reverted back to tribalism, banding together in small groups often devoted to the worship of natural features, like a particular mountain or the sun. Advanced technology is almost entirely gone, with the most visible surviving technology being animal-ish robots that continue to roam the world and whatever pieces people can scavenge from them. You play as Aloy, a young woman of the Nora tribe who was outcast at birth. She was given to fellow outcast Rost to raise. Early in life, she stumbles into a Metal World ruin and finds a hairpiece that lets her scan her surroundings and gather information she might not otherwise have. Using this as well as years of training, Aloy plans to enter the Proving to learn more information about her past and why she was outcast so early in her life. The initial setup is rather straightforward and simple. Aloy’s goal to learn more about her family is something we have seen before, but the world it takes place in lends it some interesting dimensions. Among the Nora, those who are outcast are completely forbidden from entering the actual Nora settlements. Furthermore, non-outcasts are completely forbidden from even speaking with Outcasts. We learn that the tribe can also cast people out for a more limited time period, but Aloy and Rost are both out for life. As such, it gives a good reason early in the game why only a few sidequest-givers are willing to talk to Aloy. It also adds some interesting dimensions to why Aloy is so willing to bend Nora rules later in the game, since she didn’t grow up within them. I can’t go too much further into the story without starting to get into spoilers, but things happen at the Proving which open up the world to further exploration. I enjoyed the additional worldbuilding that comes from that as well as the growth of Aloy’s character.
EXPLORING A LONG-DEAD WORLD
I’ve been playing this game on a standard PS4 instead of a Pro and even with that, the graphics are incredibly impressive. The vibrant colors and designs of the landscape make almost any vista a beautiful scene to behold. One of my big gripes with a lot of open world games is that the world isn’t interesting enough to make me want to explore it. The world itself in Horizon hasn’t had this problem at all yet. Between the long-dead cities and the more untouched plains and the primitive current towns that the people live in, there’s so much variety in scenery to enjoy. I will say that the Nora villages do start to look the same as each other after a while, but I expect that once I begin interacting with other tribes more, there will be a completely new design to how they have structured their civilization. The designs of the robots are also very well presented. Each one looks at least vaguely like some actual animal, but with certain key additions or modifications. Scanning them with your Focus lets you see vulnerable parts that can either be ripped or shot off as well as weak points to exploit with elemental attacks. It can be hard to appreciate in the chaotic battles, but the way that the pieces of armor and robotic parts are removed can also vary the strategy quite a bit. They can also lead to some interesting strategies with the larger robots. Where I am at, the larger beasts are also still significantly challenging, requiring you to use a variety of tactics and approaches to take them down. Combat against them feels weighty and challenging without being too frustrating. The lesser robots, though, are significantly easier. Two early unlockable abilities allow for most packs of small robots to be dealt with quite easily. The map in Horizon is absolutely massive, and I haven’t even come close to unlocking the whole thing. There are fast travel locations you can warp to once you discover them, but you actually have to craft items to allow you to fast travel. The materials are fairly common, but I haven’t decided if I think this is clever (since it means you may have to think before zipping from place to place) or tedious (since it’s just a time-killer to gather or buy what you need). Either way, as much as I currently enjoy exploring the world, I imagine I will use this more in the future as some of the novelty of running or riding from place to place fades. Already I sometimes fall into the Skyrim tactic of just repeatedly jumping up obstacles you probably weren’t supposed to to take a more direct route. My other complaint about the world map is that sidequest markers don’t show up on it until you’re almost on top of them already. It makes it very difficult to know if you’re missing something because you didn’t backtrack to every area to look again. Also, the map doesn’t have a legend to let you know what the various things are, nor is the text on the map particularly easy to read.
SEEKING ANSWERS
All in all, I am really enjoying Horizon Zero Dawn and I don’t anticipate that changing as I continue to progress through the game. This is one of the exceptions to my general dislike of open world games. I am quite happy that, at this point, the game has definitely met the high hopes I had for it.