We Talk Over: State of Play: Horizon Forbidden West

I hope this one is good enough to get another 5 stars from Gerstmann like the first one.

Skip 4:40-7:40 if you don't want the first game spoiled. Its been out a while but it just became free to anyone who owns a playstation 4 or 5 about a month ago.

Hopefully they were able to smooth out some of the rough edges of the first game like human combat, the bad crafting and inventory system and some smaller quirks like more varied traversal and just more stuff to do in the world. From this demonstration it already looks like movement has been vastly upgraded giving you more abilities and flexibility of movement with the grapple and glider. The first game had excellent combat against machines but really fell short of the mark literally everywhere else.

Tremendous job, Jan!

J3!

Dang, no Gerstmann for the requisite “they made another one of those.”

Yes, I will whistle and murder my way through post-post-apocalyptic Bay Area.

I hope they strip the totally useless and time-consuming dialog wheel. There were so many NPC interactions that had SIX OR MORE questions you can ask the NPCs about the world. Just write the conversation to divulge all that information in the same conversation, don't make players select every branch themselves.

I can't imagine there are that many players that are like "Well I want to know who the sun worshipper clan is lead by, but when they tell me he took the reigns after a coup, I don't want to ask the follow-up question about why they he lead a coup."

Clean minimal UI was refreshing, though we won't know what it will look like until the game is finally out.

The first game's beautiful graphics were somewhat marred by a bunch of busy distracting GUI overlays. Of course you could disable them in the options, but I hope they'll figure out a way to present them diegetically and not feel like we're missing out on important information.

The story seems inherently less interesting. "There's a big ick and only YOU!!!! can stop it!" isn't nearly as fun as unraveling the story of an anachronistic future.

Two 'We Talk Over' videos today and no Jeff...

Been getting burned out with work lately and turning to MHRise and FFXIV to escape. However, this State of Play and Talk Over has kindled some excitement for hearing about new games for me and E3. Of all PS5 games, I'm most excited for this one even though I'll wait a bit still to get a console. Thanks for the show!

I've seen some people wonder if this demo was faked a bit because of the monologuing and lack of UI - the first game was already weirdly good about Aloy describing what was going on during gameplay or hinting at what the player should have her do so I wouldn't be surprised if they improved on that aspect, while a later patch for the game included an option for a hybrid UI that faded out when its information wasn't necessary and faded back in for combat or using the Focus for certain things. Also pretty intuitive and probably gonna be the game's default presentation this time around.

Mary Kish actually said she's playing Mass Effect entirely this way and is over trying to get an exposition dump from every game she plays. She only asks a question if she's genuinely interested in the answer, and since she's not the biggest Star Trek/space sci-fi gal she's not interested in most of it, or she'll sometimes ask a question, realize she's not interested and drop the rest of the line of questioning.

I also think devs are trying to protect against players missing certain context by seeding multiple characters with similar talking points, and Horizon was an especially dense case of that. I'm a pretty serial dialogue wheel exhauster but I think Horizon did a pretty good job of indicating you were going to hear a variation of something you've heard before based on the wording of the option. It's also just a way to keep people engaged with the conversation/game, which I usually enjoy because it means I can drive the conversation in a way I feel is organic and ask the questions I think the character would ask first, which is sometimes the third or fourth option on the wheel. I'm specifically noticing myself doing that a lot in Disco Elysium right now.

Rorie dropping some hot developer knowledge on this stream. Fun to listen to!

What a transition from West Coast to Aloy, I respect the effort hahahah

Whether the demo was real game play or fake CGI, it looks interesting. I don't think we are going to get played like with the Watchdogs and Anthem E3 demos. At most the graphics will be a little lacking if indeed this was a CGI demo and not real PS5 game play. And keep in mind, we still haven't even touched the surface of what these new consoles can truly do in terms of graphic power because of the pandemic and delays. To me, the game looks promising just like the original Horizon that lived up to the hype. My question is: Is Sylens going to be the main villain of the sequel or still Aloy's ally...

And thanks for the Thursday content for what its worth. The Beastcast is missed.

Jan is doing great in the drivers seat!

For whatever reason Horizon just does nothing for me but I'm glad folks are excited for shiny new next-gen games.

This did nothing for me. Looks like more of the same.

I sure hope that this game has more to it than just being an Assassin's Creed - like. I'm a little bit AC'd out after Valhalla and this kinda looks like one of those. That said, enjoyed the first one quit a bit so here's hoping.

I know this is just me being grumpy, but I lose so much interest every time a new game announces it take place in San Fransisco, Los Angeles or California.

Even if it does take place way in the future, it just seems like the laziest choice :-/

Props to Jan for stepping in while Jeff is on assignment. Doing a great job hosting these.

@mister_v: Seconded. Jan's been killing it during this weird transition period for the site.

@janman Dude, you are pretty good at this hosting thing!

Played the first Horizon in (2019 I think?) and enjoyed it, looking forward to this one.

Like others, I wanted to write in to compliment Jan in hosting these. It's obviously hard work and it takes skill, but you make it come across very naturally! Pretty awesome.

For a second i thought Jan had a cat on his head.

excited for the 7 hour drive from SF to LA to somehow take 8 minutes on foot. No really I'm excited for that.

Wait was I looking at that future map wrong? Looks like SF and LA are lit up on it towards the end there.

@janman just want to say you're really knocking it out of the park with your producing and hosting.

If Danny is a permanent addition, that could lower the sting from the departures. For me at least.

The hype is real! Digging on the traversal variety. I really enjoyed Aloy as a character. The first game did such an amazing job with the lighting. I frickin' loved stalking around at night and looking for glowy mecha-fauna to start shit with. Looking forward to this for sure!

Going to have issues to selling this to more than as many ps5 exist.

Playing the first one now, really good game.

Well crap, now I have to find time to play the first game again. Love these talk overs

Was that Thief box always featured in Danny's background? I'd go wild for a No Clip Thief doc.

Also, Rorie. Put on some gosh darn pants when you are streaming to thousands of people online!

I feel like Jan is stepping up in a big way, and I LOVE IT!