Quick Look: Horizon: Zero Dawn (PC)

Hey, I forgot a couple of things: I could not get the game to work in a window at anything other than my full monitor resolution. So if I wanted to play this at 1080p it wasn't working in a window, I could only do that fullscreen and stretched. Maybe they'll fix that, though!

Also the 21:9 looks a little better on the YouTube player!

Also I think I neglected to mention that there's a benchmarking utility in the main menu which takes a solid five minutes to run.

@rorie Was surprised to see this at 21:9 when I viewed the video on YouTube, however here on the GB player, it has them ugly black borders. No biggie though, just excited to see a video fill my entire screen!

vs.

#pour4ror

thanks for taking a look at this gang- prob. my favorite open world game of all time!

I love Rorie's QL's.

Abby: "question".

Rorie: "well, you see...OHNONONO GETTEM GETTEM OH YESYEYSEYES"

Minimal HUD options are great, although I wish they had figured out some in-world/diegetic way to present some of the information to the players without plastering all the gorgeous visuals with tacky UI elements. It could be too much sometimes when the combat ramps up.

Hey guys, thanks for the quick look! It was suprised that it's available in 4k, whoa!

Hey Rory, interesting choice to run in 4k at around 45 fps.

Have you tried any upscaling options to make it maybe closer to 60?

This is one of those games I really wanted to like but I thought everything outside of pure combat was very lackluster. The traversal was especially stiff and not even compared to Breath of the Wild but linear games like Rise of the Tomb Raider were already doing the climbing and jumping stuff a lot better. Fighting the robos was pretty fun though.

I really enjoy that Rorie takes the time to put the settings on low during quick looks so people can see what these games look like if you just meet the minimum specs.

@humanity: I agree. The design choices all felt like they were copied straight out of a game design book from 2012. And the save system where it only saves at bonfires lost me hours of progress multiple times. Never understood the love it got.

@ghosthouse: I mean I will always give Guerilla props for this being their first "new" games after YEARS of doing Killzone. To transition from linear, heavily scripted, first person shooters that favored a grey/brown motif to suddenly this incredibly colorful and imaginative open world game is truly astonishing.

For not being into PCs, Abby had some good questions for Rorie. Just wished he answred them instead of being super excited from playing the game :D

Haha holy crap, is this the first 4K/60 video on Giant Bomb? :D

It's dark and my monitor is big - The Matt Rorie Story

I stan the hell out of HZD and am legit looking forward to playing it again on PC.

*snooty dog voice*
I didn't notice this was "ultra wide" since I use super ultra wide.

@rorie: Did you try playing with mouse and keyboard? I played the game on PS4 and liked it but I prefer M&K in games where I have to aim a reticle. So I would probably play it again if it works well with M&K.

I'm pumped for this. I played HZD at the time and adored it, kept meaning to go for a second playthrough but never got around to it, and PC version is a great excuse to jump in again.

The game looked gorgeous on PS4, but playing at a higher frame rate sounds glorious. And there were some slow load times, so a PC version makes a ton of sense.

Yes, the RDR2 port was more feature-dense in terms of graphics options. It was also massively broken. It's the worst experience I've ever had with a game from a technical standpoint, and I've played every Elder Scrolls/Fallout game at launch since Oblivion. RDR2 crashed constantly, wouldn't hide the cursor, could never get the lighting settings right, had frame rate dips, sometimes the FOV slider did nothing - just the worst.

@wallrick: Lol, I dont think he actually answered a single one of her questions. Got plenty of info out all the same though.

Never finished this back in 2017. I guess I wasnt bored with it but...just stopped.

I finished it back when it came out and liked it a lot, but never got the dlc.

Since I am not in the mood for another open world game right now (still finishing tsushima), I'll get this in the next best sale.

@rorie: I didn't see any DLSS options. Does it lack DLSS?

@thomascro:

Haha, yeah, it's like 5 minutes in before Rorie finishes a sentence.

@ravelle: Only on the youtube version. Giantbomb cdn version maxes out at 1080p.

I've been wanting to know how this release plays with keyboard/mouse, as I'll pick it up if the mouse makes it easier to hit those targets (like mouth in video) because I'm lousy at precise aiming with a controller and even though I did finish this game, it felt like I was wrangling with the controller far more than I wanted.

I'd love to see more ultrawide quicklooks on the site. It looks great on mine.

I only have a 1080ti so I'm not sure if those just don't appear for me!

I didn't fool around with it too much as the kind of quick maneuvers and dodges during combat have always felt in third-person games to be easier with a controller than an MKB! But maybe I'll give it a whirl sometime.

Fun trivia: this (according to qlcrew.com) is the first Quick Look featuring only Rorie and Abby, and also the second video on the whole site with this particular duo (the first one being the Create-a-Sim session for Rorie).

Really looking forward to watching this! :)

BRB, gotta buy a new, Rorie-approved monitor first.

This looks excellent. I already played it on PS4, but I never played the DLC. I might pick the PC version of this up on sale if it's bundled with DLC, now that I have a better CPU. Thanks for the video!

Rorie back at it with the VistaVision.

I also have a 1080ti but only a 7 year old i7-2600K so... hopefully it runs OK? Too late, already bought it!

Rorie back at it with the VistaVision videos.

I should play this game that I bought at launch on the PS4.

I really appreciate these actual Quick looks. Much easier to sit down and watch a video that's under 30 minutes long. Fits into a lunch break, or most other meal times!

@thomascro: exactly. I miss the giant bomb crew doing quicklooks. They're much more informative and ..coherent.

*Scroll down to the bottom to make a comment*. Where's the Death Stranding PC QL? Oh sorry, I forgot the team has an issue with Hideo Kojima.

Even though my ultrawide monitor was just broken, I still always appreciate all of Rorie's 21:9 content!

I took a very brief look at it on a stream a couple of weeks ago but I picked a bad time to hop into it because it was just as I was at the beginning of some VERY LONG cutscenes. Jeff also played a bit of the PC version, I believe, but I'm not sure where that was archived. I've got no problem with Kojima but I was definitely less enthusiastic about it than I was Horizon.

If you have any information you'd like to know or questions about the game feel free to ask them here and I'll do my best to answer them!

There are some pre-release patch notes for this:

Our team has been working hard to bring Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition to a whole new audience on PC, and we are getting very close to launch day!

We want to give you a heads up that you can now pre-load the game on Steam in available regions ahead of launch on 7 August.

Below are a few recommendations from us about what else you can do to prepare, as well as some Known Issues we are already working on. We will post more information on launch day with where you can go for reporting issues or sharing your screenshots. In the meantime, if you have any questions make sure to check out our FAQ. As always, your feedback and support is very much appreciated!

Thank you to our amazing community, and to all the new players who’ll be meeting Aloy and discover the mysteries of her world for the first time. We can’t wait to hear what you think!

@rorie: It usually won't show up if you don't have an RTX card, most devs will either grey out the settings or in the recent case of Death Stranding they completely don't even show up in non-RTX hardware.

However, Horizon Zero Dawn hasn't implemented DLSS unfortunately, which is a shame considering how great it cleans and sharpens up the TAA that is necessary in deferred renderers.

Apparently the AF doesn't work at least in the pre-release build given to media outlets, which, is probably a bug but I wonder if it will be fixed either in release or more likely in a post-release patch, considering how close to launch this is I assume it will probably have to be a post-release patch, as this is probably the release build.

I barely played the original console version, so I'm not sure that I'm willing to spend $50 just to play it on Rorie's monitor just yet.

@rorie: 21:9 looks great! ultrawidescreen yes!!

Yeah I saw that! I might try and stream some more next week or this weekend if it gets a big patch and new drivers.

Watched in 21:9 was awesome. Thank you.

Loved this game on PS4, pretty sure I did every side mission available. Might have to pick it up for a second playthrough.

Devs posted this on Steam:

Initial Shader Compilation

In order to improve performance during play, we’ve implemented a one-time initial shader compilation before the game starts for the first time. This can take an average of 10-15 minutes for most systems to complete. Once it’s completed, you won’t have to do it again unless you make a significant hardware change or update your video drivers. We’re looking into ways to further optimize this process.

Known Issues

• Anisotropic Filtering settings are not working. This is a high priority issue for us to resolve.
• Some systems may experience a brief stutter during general world traversal, UI updates, quest updates, or camera swaps in cutscenes. This is a high priority issue for us to investigate.
• Some animations are designed to only refresh at 30fps even if the game is running at a much higher frame rate. We are exploring how we can improve this with a future update.

Shader Compilation process does not properly verify remaining storage space on user PC and can result in crashes if the user’s storage drive is low on space (compilation process requires additional ~2GB storage space).

All these small issues aside, this was one of my favourite games on PS4 and i can't wait to play this on maybe 60 FPS if my PC can handle it.

I like chaotic Rorie, but this was a little too much. Maybe a solo quick look would have been better, since Abby seems to have zero interest in PC gaming and didn't know what to ask.