Horizon Zero Dawn

Of all the past decade's many PlayStation exclusives, Horizon Zero Dawn, a vibrant third person action-adventure game, was the one I wanted to play the most -- well, until replaced by the slightly more recent God of War (2018). Unfortunately Zero Dawn failed to meet my expectations spectacularly. By now, the game's first release was over 7 years ago, so the game is pretty old, but I didn't expect it to feel so much worse than Tomb Raider (2013), which I had just been replaying for its multiplayer achievements. General movement is considerably slower, mantling less universal.

Post-interesting post-apocalypse story

I didn't exactly like Zero Dawn's story either. If the gameplay offered more enjoyment, I wouldn't have minded unsurprising narrative that much. But as it was, there was nothing I wanted to engage more with. The game is set a good ways into the future, so far past an apocalypse that the currently living humans have no connection to the world that once was. Their culture is tribal and technology is on the level of stick and stones, although weapon technology has some exceptions thanks to the various animal-shaped robots roaming the wilds, carrying all manner of weaponry.

Our red-headed protagonist is Aloy. She was for some reason cast out of her Nora tribe at birth and a man named Rost took as his duty to raise the orphan. As a child Aloy happens to acquire a Focus, a reality-augmenting smart device that enables her to grow up with far expanded understanding of the Old World and its machines compared to pretty much everyone else.

Being cast out of society is a tough cookie, a precarious position for one's survival. But with how common punishment exile seems to be among the game's tribes, you'd think all the exiled people could easily form their own tribe. And suppose bandits have done exactly that. By casting out their misbehaving and problematic individuals, the tribes create a bigger threat outside their settlements.

Aloy's desire is to be accepted into the tribe and find out who's her mother. That is possible by winning an event called the Proving and thus Aloy trains all her adolescence to be the best hunter there is. Being the main character, Aloy naturally wins the Proving yet her victory isn't quite what she imagined. Aloy instantly goes from an outcast to a very privileged position, a special agent for the tribe's Matriarchs, to find out why the Nora were attacked.

I found the game's quests to be standard fare; all the ugabuga tribal stuff: just not very interesting. To provide you an illusion of choice, you can at times choose between three kinds of dialogue options, as if that somehow made a difference to Aloy's character. As a small side note: I have an irrational dislike for the Carja tribe's name: how it's so close to the Finnish word 'karja' (livestock) with the j pronounced differently.

The coolest story bits of Zero Dawn are in what happened during the apocalypse: a proper science fiction story there. The background is exposed to you in the most boring way, though: as heavily concentrated audio and holo record servings in ruined facilities. There is a thread connecting Aloy to the historical events but they're still past events, something you're not involved in yourself as an active player.

All of the apocalypse-survival Project Zero Dawn's AI functions were named after Greek mythology -- except for Minerva. According to the game's lead writer, the team apparently liked 'Minerva' better than 'Athena'. And surely in this day and age, with this kind of knowledge being one google search away, one wouldn't ignorantly mix up Greek and Roman gods. Yet still, my first assumption was that they did, just like the developers of the very first Tomb Raider with its Neptune-Poseidon. I didn't find a presentation of Minerva like the other subordinate AI-gods had in-game so I think it's possible that there was in fact an error and that evidence was simply scrubbed.

Far Cry in third person

Horizon Zero Dawn is curiously reminiscent of the Far Cry games from 3 to Primal. Menu colors and fonts used are so similar. And then there is the gameplay: getting hit and knocked to the ground in melee is the most awkward thing with camera going where it wants. Meanwhile stealth strikes are on the contrary very satisfying. There is a strike-from-above attack that can be used even against an aware target when you're standing above them. Thus, like in FC Primal, the best way to fight the smallest robots and non-boss humans, is to find a rock or something and keep jumping on your enemies for instant kills. The attack is a bit picky on when you should hit the button, and often times you end up instead doing a far less powerful normal melee attack that doesn't even necessarily connect. That always felt so janky.

It makes sense that fighting machines that are far stronger and weigh a lot more than you in melee is incredibly dangerous. But Guerrilla Games could've easily added a dodge QTE attack like the latest Tomb Raider games have to make melee combat feel less so goddamn awful. Once you have become comfortable with the base game's robot types, the originally-DLC Frozen Wilds will throw even more aggressive robots at you.

The proper way to dispatch bigger robots is to use all your tools. However, constantly laying a dozen traps and firing half a dozen kinds of ammunition in every encounter in the open world of Zero Dawn gets tedious. It's nice that some robots can be separated from their mounted guns for your own use. Getting to the dropped weapon and using it without first bothering to freeze or tie up melee threats isn't always simple, though. But once you get to actually fire the gun, it usually makes a big difference.

Bows have initially very long draw times but you need to do that only for accuracy (though hitting a moving machine component is pain even at max draw). But then the best weapons from Frozen Wilds will do actually less damage if they're not charged up. Those bows you really have to modify with Handling stat increases to not have terrible 5-second full draws.

Unpolished features

With a perk, you can ride some of the smallest robots after overriding them. But man if they are the jankiest mounts in all video games. The controls are bad in every possible way and the mount tends to consider even the smallest rocks to be impassable obstacles. It's amazing that a 2017 game has something so terrible.

Like in FC Primal, I often wished that there was some safe and free way to jump down from high places. I believe the sequel, Horizon Forbidden West, allows you to summon a flying robot to carry you but who knows how janky that is.

I was initially confused why there were so many different ranged weapons until I realized it was Guerrilla's interface solution for the large number of different kinds of ammunition. I guess they figured that having all arrow types to be launchable from one bow, for instance, would have been too much: too much to scroll through to select. But I feel like there could have been a more elegant solution. As it is, you can't have all your tools accessible all at once but have to keep opening your inventory to switch weapons around, even with 4 slots.

Like too many games, Zero Dawn has a problem with inventory size. I tired of it quickly and found a mod to increase the stack size of resources so that I wouldn't need to worry about selling them ever. The mod left armor and weapon modifications untouched but them alone being a problem wasn't too much to handle: it was easy to see which needed to be scrapped.

Another unnecessary NG+

Zero Dawn isn't a big challenge to 100% difficulty-wise. There is nothing hugely annoying either but like Days Gone, you do have to beat the game on New Game+ on the hardest difficulty. Enemy damage output is quite high but the biggest challenge was me simply having to play the game more: the first run had already overstayed its welcome. Luckily you can pretty much rush through the main story without care. NG+ has new versions of the purple gear pieces (meaning +1 mod slot) but I don't think they're necessary. I did, however, do a detour into the Frozen Wilds myself to get two of the bows purchasable with bluegleam.

Where is that tower reflection coming from?

As I recall, the initial PC release of Zero Dawn had all manner of technical issues. Guerrilla commissioned Virtuos for the porting job and then later had to keep trying to fix it themselves. Their original PS optimizations were a big talking point -- I guess they didn't work on PC that well. After numerous patches, Zero Dawn does no longer seem to have huge problems though for my ancient machine the game did feel CPU heavy.

Coincidentally, Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition was just pulled from stores because a Remastered version is about to come out at the end of the month. (For the price of 10€ for owners of the original.) This time they had Sony's 2021-acquisition Nixxes Interactive on the PC version -- I'd expect it to be a higher quality release. I have no desire to ever revisit the game so I think I will pass. I do wonder though if they improved how clouds look. Some games, like the Assassin's Creed games onward from Unity, have these same kind of volumetric clouds and they never seem to look quite right -- the ugliest thing in this game.

I didn't like the looks of Zero Dawn's environments that much initially. The starting region looks very video gamey, not like a real place. The color palette is so other-worldly and asset placement clearly done by a human. The later regions are much better, especially the rocky northwest. Way too late into my playthroughs I set HUD to be hidden until relevant. The game is noticeably prettier without the HUD elements in the way and with FOV turned up just below fisheye (like 90). The ugly vignette is more visible then too, though -- and it can't be turned off.

My expectations for the sequel were tempered a lot by this experience but I will keep it on my wishlist. Surely it can't be any worse than Zero Dawn.