Multiple outlets got to play the game for 4 hours and wrote extensive previews:

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/how-horizon-zero-dawns-satisfying-combat-fits-in-i/1100-6447389/

http://www.polygon.com/2017/1/30/14435128/horizon-zero-dawn-hands-on-ps4-pre-review-preview

https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/30/horizon-zero-dawn-hands-on-preview-sony-ps4/

I'm looking forward to the game and don't want to look at the coverage/trailers until I experience it for myself. I still have a few questions though. To anyone following the preview coverage, can you tell me how this game opperates structurally? More specifically, are they getting away from Ubisoft open world syndrome and "icon barf"? Is the game interested in exploration? That's a trait sorely missing in most modern open world games. The game world looks big from the few trailers I watched but without a focus on discovery and challenge, the big map just becomes a long mindless checklist. I really hope horizon gets away from that and starts a trend of interesting open world games making a come back (hopefully with mass effect, zelda, red dead and assassin's creed just this year).

EDIT: Austin talks over like 40 minutes of gameplay over here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/118992491

This game may be the most hyped I've ever been for a brand new IP in the last decade. Everything about this game screams "Perfect for me"

Can't wait for Feb 28!!

Edit: From most previews I've read, it seems the open world and side quests actually seem like they have substance and its not just typical filler.

I read a bunch of preview articles and everything seems positive. I'm really hoping this game isnt just pretty graphics and has substance.

@sfw44 said:

Yeah from everything I've read, but mostly everything I've seen, I don't think that will be the case. Everything seems to play smoothly and fluidly. The only thing I think that may be disappointing is the story. It seems interesting, but with their previous stories (Killzone) I found all them them to play well enough, but the story was just so blah. Now to be fair, shooters have never been my go to genre. Everything about this game since the first trailer has been right in my wheelhouse. A 3rd person action adventure game with RPG elements is the perfect game for me. I'm so excited for this game.

I'm really looking forward to this game and I have only seen one trailer for it and I'm going to keep it that way instead of doing what I normally do, which is right before release watch every trailer/gameplay video I can.

Arstechnica also has a good preview: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/01/four-hours-of-horizon-zero-dawn-made-me-crazy-with-anticipation-for-more/

Sounds pretty great. Guerrilla Games and Sony seem pretty confident about this game - hope it comes together well!

I'd agree that Guerrilla has a pretty terrible track record in terms of storytelling and writing in their games. However, they hired John Gonzalez, former writer at Obsidian on Fallout: New Vegas, as lead writer specifically for this game. Clearly they recognized the greater need for solid storytelling in this type of game compared to their past work with shooters and made the necessary personnel upgrade. Due to this, the quality (or lack thereof) of the story in Killzone isn't an overwhelming indication of what to expect with Horizon since its lead writer didn't have anything to do with that series.

Obviously this doesn't guarantee the story elements will be great, but I think there's more hope for that stuff being decent than you'd expect from simply looking at Guerrilla's track record with the Killzone games.

And people (myself included) were calling Mass Effect Andromeda out on facial animation, voice acting and dialogue. This is some of the worst shit I've seen in a long time, so bad that i actually burst out laughing.

I can see this. I just really hope the story is entertaining. I can see it being like Shadows of Mordor in that the gameplay is fantastic but the story is serviceable, not great but the gameplay and the world (Nemesis system) is the reason I played. I basically had to push through to finish the story. I hope that isn't the case for Horizon as I want this game to be great. I hope I don't succumb to my own hype

@pyrodactyl: I can remember from some video's I saw, that the icons on the world map were actually quite barfey.

Sounds good to me! I'm waiting on more information on what the actual gameplay loop and story are like in the final game, but I'm looking forward to it.

Oh, crap.

Ooooohhh nooooo. I was thinking there wouldn't even be much dialogue, that it'd be more Zelda like. I could even live with bad facial animation more but the dialogue and voice acting here is not good.

Well people seem to like it though and I have liked the rest they have showed.

EDIT: So, from the Arstechnica preview:

All dialogue scenes, including in-game chats about missions and lore, include tight zooms on immaculately rendered faces and heads. Quite simply, Guerrilla has mastered the PS4 here.

Everything looks incredible on the primary characters: swaying strands of hair; tightly pulled dreadlocks, full of texture and detail; bushy beards; telling eyebrow ridges; glimmering, shifting eyes; expressive mouths; pock-marked skin; texture-rich clothing with material-based lighting. As they speak, real flashes of emotion shine across their faces, too. Surprisingly, pretty much every lower-tier NPC I ran into in my earliest stretch held up to the same level of visual scrutiny, as well. The uncanny valley crept up more for lesser characters, but Guerrilla still employs a solid facial-animation system to bring life to even its most throwaway side-quest chatters.

@artisanbreads: This seems like a side quest, and based on your average quality of side quest production in open world games...yeah :(

Still very excited though! If the world is good and the gameplay is good, I can overlook some silly jank. I've played Bethesda games before so I should damn well be immunized against jank.

@takayamasama: I really can too. Even if this is a game where I basically skip or don't pay attention through the story it still has looked really good to me otherwise. I've had games like Far Cry 3 and Just Cause 2 that I really liked where that is how I played.

I only play PC games but if I look to get a PS4 sometime this is one I will check out I'm sure.

Between this and God of War I'm thinking of finally picking up a PS4. I hope this ends up being a bit more than standard open world gameplay as I do like what I've seen so far.

I'll be waiting on reviews and I'm curious how to hear how it runs on the pro also

I'm playing through the witcher 3 right now and boy that scene does not hold up well in comparison. Real flashes of emotions!

I'm very wary of this one. I love a good open world game and the talent behind it seems good (John Gonzalez did a fine job with New Vegas), but I can't shake the feeling it's going to wind up being far, far more Ubisoft than CDProjekt as far as open world action/RPG games go. That bit they showed at the PS4 Pro press conference literally had the main character climbing a (dinosaur) tower to find quests. I have enjoyed plenty of Ubi open world games, but that formula has grown wearisome and is not worth cloning.

I would settle for something in between the 2. You can't expect games to have the same ressources placed on side missions and the breath of content of the witcher 3.

Anyway, the real problem with open world games in my mind is that they don't focus on discovery and exploration nearly enough. Games with towers and damn icon barf on a map just turn into a boring checklist. You're not immersed in a world, you're staring at a minimap and running towards icons. The Witcher 3 is a rare exemple of a game with strenghts that outweight those issues even if they were still present. The game was better when you turned off the minimap for those very reasons.

The thing modern open world games need is a new gameplay loop that gets away from the Ubisoft formula. Just adding fog of war to the map so you don't know what's out there when you just start the damn game would go a long way. So would doing away with minimaps or at least supporting the removal of the minimap with smart design decisions. Mechanics that replace the need for objective icons. Why are you even building this giant detailed world if you're just going to tunnel me to where I need to go at all times? And no, collectibles are not a good way to encourage exploration. They're stupid and boring 90% of the time.

I want them to stop leading us by the hand everywhere basically. The huge success of survival games and minecraft has proven that players like to discover the world on their own. I hope red dead, mass effect, horizon, zelda, ghost recon and all the other open world games coming out this year have taken those lessons.

I agree, but its about accessibility for the masses. For everyone 1 person who doesn't need their hand held, 2 people do. Sony (or any other company for that matter) wants as many people as possible to play/buy their game.

@atastyslurpee: minecraft is one of the least handheldy open world game out there. It's also insanely successful. It can be done. Designers just need new ideas and mechanics that don't just copy the template of Assassin's creed 1. A game that came out like 10 years ago. If they don't change things up the genre is just going to start boring everyone while most of its appeal and potential remains untaped.

Fair point, but Minecraft is sortve an anomaly. Yeah its super successful, but it also didn't cost millions of dollars to create(and is on every device/platform available, this widening its net), or at least its nowhere near the budget for these big AAA titles. I honestly feel devs are constricted on taking huge risks and are given a 'limited' blank page when doing new games. The higher ups look at x game and say "since x game is successful, do this." Maybe I'm wrong

It seems I've come across more and more people complaining that a certain game was good and did all these things well, but it didn't innovate, this making it a 'bad' or 'ok' game. While I agree that more games need to push the boundaries more, not every game can. Game development takes a long time and what may have been fresh or innovative in 2014, may no longer be fresh and innovative in 2017, to your point. Because games are so expensive though, its not as though they can't just scrap everything they've already done (unless your Scalebound) and start over.

At the end of the day, If Horizon doesn't push the boundaries or have a ton of innovation, but plays great and has a decent story, I can chalk that up as a win. I see this as being like Uncharted 1 was for the Uncharted franchise. Laying the foundation and doing things well enough with the 2nd really pushing the boundaries and really take that next step forward.

P.S. I hope this runs smoothly on a non-Pro PS4....

Austin talks over like 40 minutes of gameplay over here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/118992491

Less excited now. Just look at this clusterfuck UI and all these icons and waypoints everywhere. Come on guys. I want to be immersed in your cool world. All of this makes it feel extremely standard and game-y. Hopefully you can disable some of that stuff.

@ivdamke: Oh my goodness. What the hell was that?!?!?!

I'm actually beginning to get a little worried from what I've seen. I thought this would be a lot tighter and scripted which sometimes is preferable to an open world. Hopefully they're leaving big surprises for later on because the areas being showcased seemed really mundane for such an exciting premise. Jurassic World with robot dinos sounds way cool but a forest is a forest is a forest. I think of a game like Hyper Light Drifter that managed to completely enrapture me with it's awesomely alien design and Horizons just looks kinda boring.

But like I said, I hope this is just a tutorial beginning and later on you start seeing awesome tech and hidden cities and such. I just hope it's sooner than later.

I had no idea this game had low-rent Dragon Age aspects to it. I just wanted to hunt robot animals to survive. :(

still excited to play because im a sucker for open world games but holy shit that voice acting and facial animations. gross.

God dammit. I just bought a PS4 Pro (my first foray into this generation of consoles) and was super looking forward to Horizon. That video is downright awful. If they let something that bad be in the game, what else have they let through?

On one hand I'm glad to have seen that to reign my expectations in somewhat, on the other hand, I'm bummed out to see the game clearly isn't going to be as uniformly amazing as I imagined.

That was your first mistake.

Far more than Mass Effect Andromeda = Dragon Age: Inquisition, I've long felt that Horizon: Zero Dawn = Far Cry.

Take Far Cry: Primal, add a 3rd person perspective, turn the animals intro robots, throw in a female protagonist, and finish up with the unanswered question of "what the heck is going on, here?"

I've seen preview after preview of Horizon asking myself why I should be anywhere near hyped. I just don't understand the excitement surrounding this game. And now, add to this the awful facial animation and arguably terrible dialogue seen in the video above? I mean, it still could turn out to be a good game, but I'd suggest keeping your expectations low.

I'd love to be wrong, though.

Is there like a library of extremely cheap (or just straight up free) conversation "animations" that developers use or something? Because I feel like most games with this style of conversation are almost indistinguishable in that one aspect.

Note that that's not me giving anyone a pass...because they all look terrible.

I fear you are going to end up being right.

Speaking just for myself, what I saw out of the initial E3 videos was that a western company might be making a Dragon's Dogma/Monster Hunter type game. I was little concerned that it was Guerrilla doing it given their track record, but I absolutely love the core gameplay of Dragon's Dogma and feel it's an untapped vein for Western games (that's what Double Fine's Brazen was going to try to be is my understanding). That's why I was way hyped.

This latest stuff has definitely been a buzzkill though. Far Cry gameplay/exploration with Dragon Age: Inquisition socila stuff is exactly what I don't want out of this game.

maybe Dauntless will end up being the game I want Horizon: ZD to be, I kinda doubt it though.