First Impressions: Horizon Zero Dawn
I almost never preorder games anymore, but when I saw previews of Horizon Zero Dawn, I hopped aboard the hype train and picked it up on release day. So far, I haven’t been disappointed. I know there are tons of reviews out there already, but here’s some of my thoughts.
This game will be a massive time sink for me. I’m 10 hours in at this point and I’ve minimally progressed in the main quest. Side quests are everywhere, and I like to mix those into the main campaign so I don’t end up doing hours of side quests after finishing.
It really is as beautiful as everyone says. The environment is stunning, and I’m playing on an old PS4 in 1080p. I can only imagine how awesome this looks in 4K. There’s also a camera mode, which allows for some really nice photos! The attached photos were all taken during my gameplay.
Movement mechanics are really well done. While I loved many of the installments in the Assassin’s Creed series, the most recent one I played (AC Unity) suffered from frustrating movement issues, causing me to accidentally leap off huge buildings to my death instead of just progressing forward. Aloy controls beautifully and I hope Ubisoft takes a note of the climbing mechanics for their next AC game, honestly.
The little tidbits of lore & history are really fun, and I wish they’d do more with them. I realized about 5 hours in that the “ancient artifacts” I’d occasionally find were actually things like wine openers, wristwatches, and house keys! No broken pottery here, Aloy’s collecting old coffee mugs complete with logos. It’s not uncommon to stumble on an old rusty car while exploring a beautiful remote forest. I love seeing these little glimpses of our current/future civilization and I hope that as I progress, these will become more frequent.
There’s a lot of stealth, which I love. As I mentioned, I’m actually not terribly far into the game, and at least right now, I’m weak enough where I can’t really sustain a lot of damage without dying. I love sneaking around and stealth killing giant robots, or sniping bandits with headshots from afar. The few times I’ve accidentally messed up my stealth approaches, things got pretty messy. Even playing on normal difficulty, running headlong into a field of robots and trying to melee kill them is likely to end in death.
Robot dinosaurs are as awesome as they sound. I think this needs no explanation. The combat is really fun as well. I am honestly pretty awful at aiming on the fly because I don’t play a lot of FPS games, so I really appreciate the concentration skill that allows me to slow down time during really hectic battles. I love that all the different robots require a different strategy to kill, and it’s fun to sneak around setting traps and bombs and then watching the results of your effort.
There’s a lot of diversity in the cast of characters so far. The Nora tribe that Aloy belongs to has members of every race, and both genders are equally present among the tribe’s warriors. There’s a side quest that involved assisting someone who clearly suffers from a mental illness. The Nora tribe itself is matriarchal, and religion is very present in the first portion of the game. It’s interesting. I was a little disappointed with Aloy herself truthfully. Like many video game protagonists, she’s a little bland… she kind of reads so far as a more righteous Ygritte from Game of Thrones. Other than that, the story is interesting and has kept me intrigued so far. And it mostly feels like any other AAA game except that Aloy happens to be a woman, which is what I’d been hoping for. I love playing female characters, but I don’t want to play games where everyone is obsessed with my character being a woman.
The biggest disappointment for me so far is that there’s limited gameplay or interaction with other characters. There are very few NPCs that Aloy has any sort of relationship with. I’m not sure if this will change as I progress through the game, but it would be fun to team up with NPCs more often. I played one mission so far where you team up with an NPC named Varl for a portion of it, and it was really fun, but Aloy quickly sends him away halfway through. The game also gives you dialogue choices for Aloy, but they don’t really seem to have much of an effect on what happens in-game.
All in all, I’ve been super happy with this game so far, and I’m excited to keep progressing. I’ll be posting a full review when I finish the main story. I will say that it’s not really a drastic departure from the tried-and-true action RPG formula. If you were looking for something groundbreaking in that genre, you’ll need to keep looking, and if you hate that type of game, I don’t see how you’d possibly enjoy this. That’s my favorite genre, and I’ve really been enjoying the game!
Have you started Horizon Zero Dawn? What are your thoughts on it so far?
