Horizon Zero Dawn - Good story, even greater fights
Photo courtesy of Guerrilla Games
So there’s a game with a strong-willed female protagonist, who fights gigantic robotic creatures based on familiar fauna of our present world and this game is also set after civilization has diverted back to the Stone Age due to some unknown and ancient disaster that has rendered skyscrapers into vine covered husks? That’s the fastest I’ve ever pulled money out of my pocket.
Aloy (Ashly Burch) is an outcast from a tribe that worships a deity they call “All Mother.” Her tribe is primitive which is odd when you find the year is 3040 and the world has regressed back to primitive living due to some unforeseen cause that changed the entire landscape of the earth and has populated our earth with robotic animals resembling deer, horses, crocodiles, and even T-Rex. Aloy takes part in a series of trails so her tribe will remove her outcast status and declare her a seeker, someone given the power to explore their world beyond the boundaries of her tribe’s land. As she explores she realizes she’s surprisingly important to her world and thus is being hunted down by someone simply called HADES.
Horizon Zero Dawn is not a sleeper hit but it’s a game you wouldn’t imagine packing the punch that it does. It’s the kind of game that dazzles you with gameplay footage of your character fighting a giant robotic crocodile but a tickle in the back of your mind is absolutely certain the story will be painfully bland. Only when you dive into the incredibly well-crafted world of Horizon Zero Dawn do you get a sense of what exactly has happened in its post-apocalyptic setting. Everything you once deemed generic buds with life and you realize everything you thought you knew was wrong. Horizon Zero Dawn is a game that lacks the polish to be called a seminal masterpiece but still is enjoyable enough to call it a worthy and incredibly fun addition to the open-world genre.
The world itself is vibrant and colorful. Located somewhere in the upper west of the United States makes the environments of the game world varied and interesting. Deserts bleed into vibrant jungles and forests before running into massive mountains. It isn’t your standard open world that keeps things simple with one generic environment type covering the map, it’s incredibly varied and colorful. The things inhabiting the game world are the real dazzling points though. Each metallic enemy is an absolute riot to fight. Taking down the game’s larger enemies like Thunderjaws and the absolutely massive Behemoths feels like a victory and taking down enemies quickly and efficiently requires a varied amount of knowledge, tactics, and expertise. Precise aiming is always required and Aloy’s bow feels incredibly fun to shoot as do the other unique weapons in the game. Working with a bow means building arrows, which never feels like a hassle despite how often you’re going to be crafting them.
Fighting humans is a bit more of a drag than fighting the large mechanical beasts, especially since the game really wants you to fight human enemies, but every segment involving this gameplay loop feels sluggish. It’s also worth mentioning that the bow’s accuracy when fighting human enemies seemed less useful compared to fighting the machines, possibly due to the smaller human character models. There were more than enough times where my arrow was pointed to go directly into a human enemy’s head and somehow pierced him through the shoulder when I loosed it.
The game’s stealth mechanics are okay, utilizing patches of tall grass to fully hide yourself seems like the new go to mechanic due to its use in “Uncharted 4” as well. Personally I don’t care for it, I’d rather have a character crouched simply be regarded as more hidden than if they were standing. Luckily the abundance of tall grass throughout the game means stealth is always a viable option in fights.
Skill progression is okay. The game sets up three distinct trees but provides you with more than enough skill points to maximize, or at least get close to acquiring, every single skill in the game. If they minimized the points you could acquire then focusing on certain skill trees would make Aloy absolutely useless. More variation would be nice though. If the game utilized a progression system that significantly changed the way you control Aloy it would feel much more enjoyable. There isn’t a specific progression system that fundamentally changes Aloy’s playstyle meaning progression just feels a bit stale because it does not change Aloy to fit your preferred playstyle. It just makes her stronger in every single aspect.
The most surprising virtue of Horizon Zero Dawn is its plot though. Aloy’s story is rife with strong emotional moments. As you begin to learn more about her life and purpose you begin to feel more drawn to her as a person. She’s vulnerable and affable but also sarcastic and strong willed. She despises her tribe’s misguided religious fervor that shuns good people, and she has an infectious desire to explore. She also feels like the perfect gamer surrogate. Occasionally she responds to acquiring side quests and recognizes them as a foolish hassle just as the gamer would. This is a unique addition to her personality that really helps you empathize with her. Side characters like Rost, Ted Faro, Elisabet Sobeck, Sylens, Teersa, Erend and Helis make for very interesting side characters. They feel unique with fully developed personalities. They won’t end up on greatest video game character lists but they feel as though they’ve lived in this world. Occasionally though minor characters have absolutely horrible voice acting. The only true weakness of the game is that small minor characters like shopkeepers and characters involved in side quests have incredibly distracting facial animations and voice acting. Luckily none of the major characters involved in this story ever have this problem, and Aloy’s facial animations is one of the most animated player-character models in the open world industry, and none of the facial animations are as bad as some of the animations in “Mass Effect: Andromeda.”
The story really digs in deep as to where Aloy came from and how the world descended into its primitive state. Even when you think you’ve predicted the story you get completely blindsided as the story twists and turns telling you exactly how the world came to be. Uncovering the mystery is so incredibly compelling that you won’t want to stop once the story starts to move. The side plot of a civil war between two factions also adds a lot of interesting danger to the game world as you are left constantly wondering when tension is going to burst and the fight is going to start.
Overall Horizon Zero Dawn is a welcome surprise. The game works flawlessly and fighting gigantic robot monsters feels just as fun as it sounds, but its extra polish the game developers added to the game’s story, characters, and environment design really shows off the quality of the game. For fans of open-world adventures this game is an incredibly fun must buy.