@nevergameover: I think part of GAIA's motivations was the natural intelligence and inquisitive nature of Dr. Sobeck, but I think she also planned for her clone to have a personal investment in discovering the truth and saving the world. If she had cloned any of the other team leads, for instance, I don't think they'd have as vested an interest as Aloy did once she discovered her relation.

Having played this game over the last few weeks, I would say that the story is really strong and compelling right until pretty much everyone dies at the proving. From there, the main quest splits into two branches, and the one where you're working out what happened with Zero Dawn and all that backstory was cool as well. Unfortunately, all the other story in the game is about dumb tribal politics or some whiny individual. Buddy, the fate of the world is at stake, I really don't care about finding your brother/girlfriend/shoe. It got to the point where I would skip past all the sidequest dialogue, do the quest a few hours later if I was in the area without having any of the setup, and then fast travel to where I turned it in and then skip that dialogue too. For like three days I was sure I was about to finish the game as the narrative kept ramping up, and Sylens kept giving me "just one more" big location that I needed to get through. When I finally reached the end of that line, the game said, "okay shit's gonna go down any second now, you have to... wait a minute, you need to get through the other main questline and help this dude find his sister and beat this other guy," which was partially on me for ignoring that section of the game completely, but it only added to the ending fatigue. The ending and last mission itself was a pleasant surprise, as it didn't include much of the tribal stuff beyond "hey we're with you now," and the story wrapped up in a nice way.

As for the characters (the three I cared about anyway), I genuinely liked Rost a lot and was sad when he kicked it. I thought Aloy was pretty interesting in the beginning with her separation as an outcast, but after the proving she largely turns into angry Liam Neeson, which is understandable but unfortunate. The part where she talks about the world being worth fighting for really stood out to me, because she seemed like she wanted nothing to do with any of the game's characters, at best mildly tolerating them. Sylens might be one of my favorite of the "voice in your ear" archetypes, because he doesn't take Aloy's shit and tells her to stop whining, but ultimately still cares enough to save her. Sure, it's ultimately self-motivated, but you could say the same for Aloy's quest. The post-credits stinger I don't really know about - it didn't look exactly like Sylens was straight evil, but something tells me any continuation of the story won't paint him that warmly.

Overall, I think the game has about one half of a good story, with the beginning, ending, and history being enjoyable and the tribal stuff in the rest of the game being dull as the intellect of nearly everyone in the game.

Man, once I started reading some of the text and audio files, I was absolutely hooked on the narrative. If it weren't for those, I'd be kind of washy about the first half of the story. It really picks up in the second half regardless of the collectibles though. But they are so so so well written and gut wrenching. As I was going through them, I just kept feeling so many emotions. They did a fantastic job with the narrative and I love it.

As for the side objectives, some were good and some were not so good, but a lot of them felt boring. I loved some of the side quests tied into lore that you only read about in logs with tidbits of world building snuck in there. I still have a lot of main side quests to do but I am actually excited for some of them, with one in particular, after reading about elements of it in logs.

They built an amazing world that, once again, is made only more amazing by the lore behind everything. I feel like the game just keeps adding onto itself at a great pace that only keeps accelerating as you move on. It's a wonderful learning experience the whole way through. I do wish the side quests were more connected towards the main quest, though. That would have helped the pacing, should the players decide to take a break from the main story.

With everything taken into account, this has become one of my favorite games I have played. Sure, some of the story elements were pretty easy to figure out from the get go, but I don't think the story hinges on the big reveals. Actually, I feel like the game makes an effort to let the player know that, "yeah, we kind of expected you to know that by now and if you didn't, well, come on." I get this from Sylens reaction. He's a good character that keeps Aloy, and the player, grounded.

One last thing that I wanted to shout out was the game's way of giving the player some agency in Aloy's attitude. No rewards to coerce the player away from what they would want to choose. No consequences the player has to worry about. Just some decisions as to how the cutscene plays out. I enjoyed that and wouldn't mind seeing more game's use that sort of system.

I mean I guess that gets into the whole discussion of whether we are pre-destined to be intelligent or not despite our surroundings. You can give me an advanced quantic math textbook or whatever and lock me in a room for 5 years with it and I guarantee that I will still not understand it after all that time and nothing else to do - there is just some threshold where math and me don't mix. So I don't really think it's that great of an explanation that a Google Glass that displayed the name of things was able to get her that far ahead in such a backwards tribe.

That said it's been long enough where I can't really have an honest discussion about the story at this point because I have forgotten so much of it. Generally I just didn't think it was that great and a lot of the character felt awkward, wooden and one note. Alloy is the personification of the white, male, master hero protagonist in female form - she is special and here to save the day and better than everyone around her despite every disadvantage she's been dealt with, which is something that I honestly found a little shallow and boring. The way they emphasized her throughout the game made every other NPC seem like a muppet. Also sacrilege I know.. but I don't like Ashley Burch as a voice actress too much and have not enjoyed any of her previous characters so there is that.. but thats just me I'm sure she's a great person and all that.

Yeah there's a lot of info that gets dumped on the player pretty quickly at certain points in the game and it's hard to keep it all straight. The thing about the focus is that it wasn't just for displaying information but was explicitly designed to be a teaching tool for young people along with the AI thingies because they knew there would be no adults around to teach or pass along information.

It's not just a matter of seeing names of things. On top of being a learning tool for young kids, the focus helped Aloy stay away from a culture of superstition. By doing so, it encouraged her to be a critical thinker of her surroundings. Centering a culture around tribal superstition is not exactly great for the mind. She never displays any sort of superability of the mind; just the ability to critically think and problem solve, without restraint. Any true intelligence she possesses over anybody else in the game is just what she has learned from her adventure, which to be fair is pretty revelatory.

I also have to disagree with you about other characters being awkward, wooden and one note. I thought the facial animations conveyed expressions and feelings very well. I can see how you'd feel that, though, but for me, it's more a matter of them just being.. simple minded. And of course Aloy is special and there to save the day, she a character that takes down Thunderjaw's and Deathbringers. Curious how you would have had designed this game differently, in terms of being able to take out robodinos with ease and being more intelligent. I mean, it's kind of the setup of the whole story. Further, it's kind of odd to say personifaction of something (male) but actually that thing. The disadvantages she's been dealt with are being an outcast because of the nature of her being, which really, was an advantage to everything about her. Being removed from the tribe (which, yes others have been outcast, but they also don't have an unrestricted focus) kept her from their primitive ways of thinking while also growing up with a learning device, dozens of centuries advanced of her time. Typically we get middle aged, white male, dark hair shaved, and here we get young white female, red hair. I also what to shout out to Geurilla for never sexualizing her. There's even a point in the game where the sun king hits on her and the way she reacts (in general, regardless of your specific choice) is pretty stand up. I appreciated that.

This comment kind of turned into replying to each part of your comment individually which may come off as... confrontational (?) which I don't mean to do. Just kind of trying to hit all the points. Definitely see where you're coming from, though, with everything.

@flashflood_29: To your point about her having to be special in order to take down the robot menace specifically: her mentor, who's name escapes me at the moment, was able to take these beasts down as well and in fact taught her all she knew. A game like The Last of Us is a good example of an every day guy that has to make do with a shitty situation. Joe (the protagonist of that game) isn't some superhero, he isn't portrayed as someone special, he is just a dood trying to make do which I appreciate. I mean even Max Payne 3 is a great game showing this washed up, aging drunk that tries to pull his life back together in an act of redemption. And yah Max is for all intents and purposes a superhero considering the bodycount by the end of the game, but I never felt like a superhero when playing him. With Aloy I sort of do but thats also because of how much better she is than all the other people.

I have to staunchly disagree about your comment with NPC's being very expressive though. That is one thing where I think very objectively the facial animation was poor for about 90% of all characters that were not Aloy. Like Mass Effect Andromeda bad, and I firmly do believe they were extremely one note stereotypes all the way through to the end with the exception of the one story-spoiler character. The Sun King and all the Carta stuff was a weird side tangent to what, I assume, most people actually wanted to see which is the whole future motif and how it incorporated into this primitive world. Like they mentioned on the recent Beastcast, when you make it to that first big city it feels really underwhelming in a way.

I dunno I'm more of an outlier on this topic because like Abby I thought it was a good game, but I didn't like fall head over heels in love with it. I certainly wouldn't call it a "great" game. It was a very solid effort from a studio that was known for a very specific type of game and I really applaud them for breaking out of their comfort zone with such an incredibly innovative and fresh idea. That said I can't overlook a lot of narrative issues I had, not to mention gameplay quirks like how stiff the world traversal is compared to what most contemporary open world games play like these days. I said it before somewhere in this thread probably, that in an age where games are all about pushing mobility, like Titanfall, Doom, Dishonored, Zelda, it was a little disheartening to see Horizon play so stiffly outside of the combat. I could go on but I don't wanna bog the thread down with all my issues about the UI and whatnot, I wrote a review for the game for anyone that cares.

I agree that it was good to see them not sexualize her as a female character and that all her outfits, while not always super cool looking, did appear functional for that world and the purpose they served. Maybe with the exception of the Carja outfit that shows her mid-drift like some weird belly dancer, but hey she had some pretty ripped abs so there is that.

@humanity: Rost was able to take down some of the smaller beasts, yes, but only up to, what? Sawtooths? He taught her about being a hunter but her focus, and (probably) her upgringing in being a critical thinker pushes her over the top. I feel like the game definitely has a pace to her development where you see her becoming more and more capable. To me, even by the end, she was still not quite a superhero on her own. Like, yeah, as the player you pull off amazing things, but things can just as easily go sideways, quickly leading to a death. In my eyes, she really is just smarter than everyone else as a result of how she grew up. That's how I personally see it and defend it.

I think there's room for both kinds of games where you're a hero like Aloy, and where you're a hero like Joel. I won't build a straw man but for the sake of diversity in types of games and narratives, it's good to have a spread. And in a narrative like Zero Dawn's, Aloy's type just fits the bill much better. In my opinion, it would feel a bit disjointed if she weren't somehow heavily connected to the old world. It's kind of the crux of the story. So we can't judge Aloy's character in relation to the narrative for what it is, but instead, it would probably be more fair to judge the narrative as a whole, as it is what sets up Aloy to be who she is... y'know. And I feel like even in that case, that is what your doing anyways. To which is just a matter of taste, I guess.

I definitely get that whole sense of being underwhelmed by Meridian. Actually, when I got there, I didn't even know it was the giant city that was talked about earlier in the game. I guess I had just built it up differently in my mind. Biggest critique I can give to the game is that some of the wonder and awe in the world kind of stands on the legs of the lore in the logs. We've seen that be a problem before with Destiny. It's a double edge sword in that they're amazing, but it doesn't help the information and awe from them aren't presented to the player more apparently. What I will say about the logs is that some of them were written very well. A stand out example that I will remember for a while is The Liberation which is more or less a well written short story. Once I started digging through the logs is the exact point I became much more invested in what the game was offering. And that's a totally valid criticism for the game as a whole, to rely on that. It could do a better job of setting the world, history, lore, context, up for the player.

Eh, I don't know what say to the facial animations. They were pretty great for me. A lot of facial minute facial movements and what not. I think the only jarring part to me was the feeling of the head being disjointed from the body. You get a lot of expression in the face while the body loops through the same canned idle animations. At times the faces will express a feeling and the body just doesn't do the same. But I enjoyed the emotion I got out of people in their faces. I do wish interactions involved more moving around like the cutscenes you encounter towards the end with Sylens (which, even that was a cutscene and not a direct interaction; the part I'm talking about being well done with movement and all, anyway).

That was one of my other criticisms about the side quests is that they didn't connect back to the main plot overarching theme the game presents itself to be. What with the old technological world in this new primitive one. It seems that the only way to get that in any narrative sense is through the main quest-line.

Traversal, while one note, was a joy to me. Although she may not be as mobile as future soldiers in games like Advanced Warfare, I never felt the need for it. I actually enjoyed my time using the tools that were given to me to traverse through paths that weren't meant for me to be on. Climbing mountains by jumping on that one little edge I can just barely get onto. Just because most other games are becoming super mobile doesn't mean I need it everywhere. To me, it's all about context, but I can easily see the desire for it.

All in all, I think a lot the draw in Horizon Zero Dawn comes from personal taste. I think Guerilla did a great job in deliberately designing a game with hooks that are there for some people, and aren't for others. It's a game that can be all over the spectrum depending on the type of person and player you are. I happen to be one of those people that everything hit just right.

I agree that the story with Erend's sister wasn't as strong. I think that the game owuld have benefited from making that a major "quest side" much like the prince's escape and the hunting lodge missions. Fortunately, I basically treated it like a side mission in a game where I really like the world anyway -- which is to say that I was pushing myself to do side content along the way so as to prolonge my experience with the game because I often struggle to find the motivation to finish side content once I'm done with the main quest line. I didn't realize that they made you wrap up Erend's story before proceeding though.

Yeah, I played the game on hard and I definitely didn't feel overpowered at any point at least until I got the Shieldweaver armor after the second to last mission. I just polished off the platinum today, and even with that armor on a level 50 character, I still had some difficulty with the dual rockbreaker corrupted zone.

Right, and to add, a lot of times, it's Aloy helping others help themselves. It's not just her doing everything, which is cool. I got the Shadoweave Armor just before the point of no return and I opted to take it off because it just wasn't fun being that OP for the fight.

@nevergameover: to be clear I didn't mean the game is easy, in fact I think it can be downright unfair at times how the machines pounce at you from across the screen and how unreliable the roll can be at times, I simply thought Aloy was presented as a very typical "savior" character that was just so much smarter and capable than literally everyone around her. To me she didn't feel like this girl thrown into a challenging situation, she was another super capable superhero in terms of story.

I actually agree that she's way smarter and capable than everyone around her but I think that's consistent with the cannon. She's a literal clone of one of the smartest women in history, who led the robotics revolution and saved the entire planet from permanent extinction the Faro plague. If you read her bio, Elisabet graduated from Stanford at the age of 13. She had a doctorate in engineering by the age of 20. We're essentially talking about a smarter Elon Musk. Them is some pretty good genes. And she was created by Gaia for the literal purpose of saving the world (again). So yeah, I would hope she'd be way smarter than everyone else.

I finished Horizon Zero Dawn today, so I wanted to write about my thoughts. Definitely not as sold by it as Jeff was. I thought it was good, but a lot of the time it was also boring, unfortunately.

I think the story is well thought out, but incredibly typical. The best trick it has is the subversion of fantasy and myths. An Earth Goddess turns out to be an AI that's creating all life on Earth, a devil turns out to be an AI hellbent on destroying all life, that sort of stuff. "Corruption" is a clever pun on both the deterioration of data and the concept of perverting something pure with evil. That stuff is fun.

You play Aloy, an orphaned outcast in a small village who wants to know where you came from and who you are. You discover a mystical artifact nobody else understands, and soon you're a capable warrior ready to prove yourself to the tribe. But the mystery of your past comes to the present to hunt you, when your village is burned and your mentor is killed just because an unknown cult wanted to get you. So you set out on a journey to figure out who they were, and in the process who you yourself are. You discover that the cult worships a sleeping devil and wants to summon demons to take over the world. You travel the ruins and temples of an ancient race and discover that you are the reincarnation of one of the gods, born from the Earth Goddess, and that their doors only open to you. But the gods are long since dead or sleeping besides the devil, and you learn that he is actually planning on destroying the world. You do, however, find the Master Sword that can defeat him. With the help of the friends you made along the way you murder the brainwashed cultists and put the devil to rest. Afterwards, you visit the grave of the ancestor you've now discovered and prepare to awaken the Earth Goddess once again now that the devil is killed(actually just chased away).

Horizon's fun twist on basically Zelda is that it takes that premise and adds ".. but SCI-FI". Magic isn't quite so magic when it can all be understood by the audience as either current-day technolofy or scifi. But the story on its face is as stock as it gets, and I do think that's an issue. There isn't a single unexpected twist in the big picture story, it's just a matter of figuring out which metaphor for Disney's Hercules we're working with today.

The approach to the story they used was to have everything make sense. Even if you're very picky, all but the most obscure parts of the lore can be explained throroughly through the dialogue, the environment or the dozens of audio and text logs. But I don't think a story is the same as a court case. You don't need to have a complete explanation for every facet of the setting unless you're trying to impress nitpicky bloggers. You need drama, engaging characters, stories you can love and remember. And in my case, they had me at the start. I was engaged in Aloy's early struggles in the village. I wanted her to beat the shit out of her opponents in that race, get some friends, figure stuff out. Being raised by Rost in the flashback sequences endeared him very much to me. But things take a nosedive once the Eclipse kills all the other kids at Hogwarts, and Rost as well, because suddenly Aloy hasn't a single human relation in the world besides a vaguely flirtatious drunk dumbass from Meridian and a cute old adoptive grandmother. And during the rest of the adventure, she doesn't form another bond, either.

Your mileage may vary on these characters, but I thought every single one of them fell flat besides Sylens, and that's 90% because he got to talk so damn much. It's not like there aren't a ton of them. That black kid warrior and his warrior chief mother, Petra, the Banuk ice hunter lady, Nil, the femme fatale spy and the warrior dude she was extracting, the evil cultist priest, the evil cultist meathead warrior, Sun-King Avad, the prison warden, Olin, Dherval, that dude what makes you your first other outfit, Avad's advisor figure, Erend and of course numerous other side-quest characters. But while some stick out more than others, I think they're all very broad and dull. And they're all so terribly serious. Nobody in this world can take a joke. Nobody are weird in a way that isn't religious or insane. It's a world with robot dinosaurs and computers that are the devil, but there's not an ounce of levity in the entire enterprise. People are named dumb mis-spelled stuff like Rost and Aloy. At one point Helis yells "SILENCE!" and Sylens appears, and that's about the best joke in the game. Even characters that are more lighthearted, like weird murderer Nil, explosion girl Petra or drunk Erend, aren't as much fun as I get the impression that they're supposed to be.

Aloy isn't any better. I don't hate her, but I certainly don't love her, either. She's just largely dry, and doesn't care about much besides revenge and her origin. Hades doesn't become any less of a one-note villain by being an AI instead of just being a straight-up real devil. The Eclipse villains are just bog-standard religious nutters, as dull as cultists always are. Some of this could perhaps be helped of there were more options to spend time with the characters. As it is, you can only interact with them within their quests. There's nothing in here like Persona's social links/confidants or Bioware's romances, or even Deadly premonitions "Eating stuff Emily makes for you". You might say that's not important in an open world, slightly RPGish action game, and maybe you're right. But as a result I just never felt close to any of the characters, and I don't get the sense that Aloy felt close to them either. I'm not saying the game needed a romancing section where I could be seduced by the attractive spy, though it would certainly have helped, but I do think it needed something to give the characters some time to just hang out and not be always ON, always on duty, always out to fight machines or make you do fetch quests for them.

The backstory with the ancient humans is suitably miserable, not helped at all by the way it's entirely told through dry holograms, text logs and audio logs. For the second half of Horizon, there weren't any main missions for me to do that didn't involve getting into a vault and then listening to half an hour of audio log detailing every facet of the end of that civilization. I appreciate the effort, but sometimes less is just more. Maybe if the time was taken to flesh out the actual characters that are still alive, everyone wouldn't be saying that the tribal stuff is the boring part of the game compared to the past.

The story isn't without merit. The beginning in the Nora lands is exceptional. Some of the revelations hit home hard. There are some fun cinematic scenes like the fight and escape from the Sun Ring and the end where all your friends get together. It's a complete story, which is always nice. But for me it's a 6 or 7 instead of anything higher because there's just nothing juicy enough to grab on to for me. I don't particularly care about any of the characters, and Hades/helis are not compelling villains. The hunt for the truth about the past loses something when we already know the important details about the apocalypse but still have to visit six more vaults to get every part of the story.

Forgettable, is the word I might use. Besides the premise and certain designs, and certainly the robot dinosaurs, I don't think Horizon's writing is gonna stick with me. I would be curious to know more about the development process. I get the sense, from how the writing is both incredibly detailed and also pretty standard in the basic concept, that the main writer(whatever his name was again) was handed a framework and told to fill in the blanks with whatever he wanted. I have no idea how else we ended up with such an impressively in-depth explanation for standard detective vision and a voice in your ear. He's obviously very good at building a world. But I don't think, in this case, that he was good a making something that I'm going to think about for a long while.

Even now, five hours after finishing it, I can't remember a single piece of music besides the main "alert" theme. That goes for most of the story bits, too. It's still a game I might recommend for the mysteries of the ancient world, the gameplay, and the beautiful environments. But it could have been much better, in my eyes. If it had been, I could have felt touched and satisfied when Aloy finally finds Elisabet Sobeck. Instead, I only felt a "Good for you, Aloy". Especially when Elisabet describes what she would like her child to be like and describes Aloy perfectly, including a bit about healing the world.

I wish we had gotten to fight a Metal Devil.