As Aloy wanders around town she’ll see people going about their work, or storytellers keeping the children entertained, or people sitting down to meals with one another. The world is absolutely massive, but it’s those points on the map, where clusters of houses (and the occasional city) sit, where we see the most convincing personality and character come through. Horizon’s strengths are those moments when you’re in civilisation. No sooner does the narrative start to ask players to think than it pulls back, perhaps concerned that it will lose them, instead pointing them to the next big monster that’s posing an immediate and visceral threat. There are moments when the narrative seems to want to explore the moral implications of what is going on in this world, but other than giving Aloy the ability to respond in one of three ways (using her “heart, head, or fists”), these hobbled attempts to go deeper into the narrative dry up before you get the chance to dive in. Afterwards, she encounters some incredibly flawed people in her journeys but for the most part, aside from the cult that’s she’s chasing after, the existential threat humanity is fighting against is nice and neat: it’s the machines, which are portrayed as little more than savage monsters, and therefore we shouldn’t feel bad about destroying them.Īnd of course, within that scenario, there are twists and turns, though never really anything that will surprise. Aloy is bullied a little as she struggles to gain a position in her tribe. While Aloy chafes at this, the narrative presents it as a noble, honourable, and largely peaceful way to live. The developers have worked with a scenario in which, in response to man-made progress all but destroying the world, the remaining people return to a culture of animism and resistance to knowledge. The theme of Horizon is incredibly compelling, promising to look at the best – and worst – of humanity when pared back to its most primitive of forms, when humans and nature need to co-exist with one another. She gains special permission from the matriarchs of the tribe to leave her people’s sacred lands, and thus Aloy heads out on an epic quest for revenge. Unfortunately the proving is disrupted by a clan of thugs and bandits, and Aloy is one of the few survivors of the ensuing massacre. That is, until she participates in the proving: a ritual that allows her to rejoin the tribe as an equal.
To make matters worse for poor Aloy, she was born as an outcast, ostracised and unable to even speak to the normal tribesmen and women. That same calamity left the world filled with machines that are shaped like animals and/or monsters, and those now plague the world, threatening what is left of humanity.
In Horizon you play as Aloy, a young woman who is growing up at a time many, many years into the future, where some calamity has all but wiped out humanity, and those who have survived have reverted to a primitive, tribal culture. The rush of excitement in witnessing what the game promises in its opening hours is difficult to describe accurately, because it really does seem like it’s on a path to being one of the truly incredible achievements in this little art form we all love but as that excitement settles down, the act of playing it through is like a brutal spear to the heart in its wasted potential. This is a game with real soul, for a start, and it is as socially aware as only a studio from The Netherlands – one of the most progressive European nations – could be.
Horizon is much the same, only, instead of being a FPS, it’s that modern hybrid between Western RPG and action game that the likes of Mass Effect and The Witcher have pioneered.
HORIZON ZERO DAWN UPDATE HAS TO BE INSTALLED SERIES
It’s impossible to fault the intent behind these games, or their technical prowess, but for all that, it’s also impossible to claim that the overly simple and generic way the narrative was structured and the gameplay works in the Killzone series has aligned it with the same tier in its genre as the likes of Battlefield and Halo. It is also a series that has consistently pushed the hardware of the consoles it was developed for, as far as possible. There is a franchise that pushed hard to make a point about militarism and authoritarianism, and indeed the role that corporate interest increasingly has in both. It’s a game that offers a grand vision, compelling ideology, and technical brilliance, but it’s also one that can’t quite shake a certain blandness, as it’s let down by arbitrarily sticking to conventions established by far more creative teams.Īll of that will sound familiar to those who are familiar with Guerrilla’s Killzone series.
Horizon: Zero Dawn reflects all the strengths of Guerrilla Games as a developer, but also its limitations.
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