[If you liked this screenshot, and don't want to bother reading about the game, head over to Horizon : Zero Dawn - Screenshot Showcase.]
This game was never in my wishlist
When I saw Hideo Kojima's name mentioned in the Special
Thanks section of the credits, I was surprised not at the mention itself, but rather at my intuition. I had been drawing parallels between Horizon: Zero Dawn and Death Stranding,
Kojima's latest, all through the game. Therefore, Kojima's name in the credits
was a pleasant validation of what I'd been feeling all along, though I never
thought that he had contributed to this game in any way. Moreover, I'm just now
realising that HZD is more similar to Death Stranding than I had previously
thought.
For starters, both were originally released for the
PlayStation and later ported to PC, but also, both of these games were never in
my wishlist to begin with. I wasn't particularly interested in playing either
one but having an unfair affinity for good graphics, I nevertheless decided to
try them out. That, and... I wanted to see if my laptop could run these latest
titles. Call it a need to vindicate my laptop choice or whatever, but that
curiosity of finding out whether I'd be able to play the latest games and then
taking pride in the fact that I could, was indeed a factor behind these two
games ending up on my hard drive.
Not as distant into the future as it seems
So when I saw it running, I was beside myself with joy. It
looked so beautiful! The graphics were amazing and the open world looked ripe
for exploration. Not to mention the curiosity that the premise invokes. The
very first cutscene provides a brief glimpse of what to expect as Aloy, a baby
girl and the protagonist, is being carried in her guardian Rost’s arms to her
naming ceremony. On the way we hear Rost talking about how people have started
living in tribes, and primitive notions like caste-based expulsion have
reappeared in the society; while showcasing the brilliant and vibrant open
world of the game as he traverses stream and forest, and crosses a plain on
which walk machines – highly advanced metal forms built in the image of
the fauna that we see around us, but which seems to have vanished in Horizon. It becomes pretty clear that Horizon’s world is not the same as ours.
For someone who dives into the game without any idea of what
it holds, things can be pretty confusing at first. The world might feel too
unrealistic, the setting too fantastical; and it is quite understandable. On
the one hand you have the tribes with their face paint, quaint clothing,
ancient artifacts, rituals and societal structure; and on the other hand, you
see these high-tech machines that roam the land with radars on their backs and
laser shooting eyes. There are signs of both future and past in this world, and
it makes you wonder if it isn’t some other planet entirely.
As you progress in the game, you’ll find that it’s the very same Earth you are inhabiting right now, but a long way into the future. How it came to be this way, is what Horizon is all about. And though its portrayal may feel very distant at first, gradually it will dawn upon you that it’s not. In fact, it might be more relatable than many other futuristic games out there, such as Death Stranding.
The Machines
HZD can easily be classified as an open-world action RPG.
You play as Aloy, a teenage girl of the Nora tribe, who is brought up as an
orphan and is in search of her mother. Through her journey, we come to know of
Horizon’s world and how it came to be in this state. The gameplay involves
exploring the land, completing quests and hunting machines. Through these, Aloy
gains XP and skill points which can be used to unlock new skills. There are
also merchants scattered around the world, facilitating buying and selling of resources,
weapons and ammo. Then there’s foraging and crafting.
Quite the usual ingredients of an action RPG, but what sets HZD apart is its beautifully crafted sandbox world, and the variety of machines, both in design and functionality. Every machine is unique, has different components, and needs to be tackled in a different manner. Some have Blaze Canisters mounted on their backs which cause a blast when hit with fire arrows, some have Power Cells that need to be overloaded with shock, while the more difficult ones have smaller weaknesses that are harder to aim at. Each machine needs a different strategy but with the right one, even humongous Thunderjaws and Behemoths, machines the size of a fighter jet, can be defeated in a matter of minutes.
Talking about the machines themselves, it is evident that a lot of effort has been put into their designs. Each is modelled after a real-world animal, like the Snapmaw is based on crocodiles/alligators, while the Strider takes after horses. This could be left as one of those things that the game just wants players to accept, but Horizon explains even this bit in its story, taking care to provide a plausible reason as to why the machines were modelled so.
Looking back at the present
Moving on to the world of HZD, I haven’t come across anything
like it yet. It’s the most beautiful world I have seen in a game, and the
60-odd screenshots that I captured prove just that. Of the 92 hours that I
spent on the game, I’m quite sure a fourth of them has been spent just admiring
the sights around and finding the perfect angle to capture a screenshot in the
Photo Mode. On many occasions I chose not to fast travel as I actually wanted
to journey through the narrow paths and the broad water bodies, to experience
the world more closely. Even after this I’m sure there are many areas I have
not ventured into.
From rocky mountains to snowy hills, rivers and streams to
swamps, forests and deserts; HZD has it all. And amidst all these natural
elements, crumbling remnants of the Old Ones (that’s what they call the humans
from the bygone era - us as we are now), ruined, fallen, and full of rust and
decay have been placed around the world to dive in and explore. There are
“datapoints” scattered around which Aloy can scan with her Focus (a device of
the Old Ones) and gain insights into the lives of earlier civilizations.
HZD paints our present world in ancient colours, and it is refreshing to look at the lives that we are living right now through a primitive lens. We think we are advanced, but our wrist-watches become “Ancient Bracelets” and our coffee mugs are christened “Ancient Vessels” in Horizon’s world. The people in Aloy’s world have their own theories about artifacts like these, and one particular conversation between Aloy and a merchant comes to mind here. The merchant tries to surmise what these “Ancient Vessels” must have been used for, and settles on the theory that they must be part of some ancient ritual. When Aloy suggests that perhaps these vessels were simply used for drinking, the merchant is quick to dismiss it as too plain an explanation.
Looking at our world through such a perspective makes exploration much more interesting. It’s like looking at the present through a veil of future, a periscope that shows us how our civilization would be perceived if dug up from the earth much like we dig up ancient cities.
The Tribal Societies
Horizon is also replete with lore, not just of the past civilization but also the current one. There are different tribes like the Nora, the Carja, and the Banuk, and the level of details with which these tribes are created is mind blowing. It’s not just static stuff like their dress code and backstory, but even their mannerisms and the dynamics between the tribes is so well thought out that it breathes life into the world. Little things like talking to NPCs have a significant impact on the player’s perception of HZD’s world, because the dialogues clearly reflect what the NPC thinks of Aloy’s tribe, Nora. Listening to random conversations reveal what the Carja think about the Banuk, or how the Oseram perceive the Nora.
The principles, philosophies, ideologies and societal structures of all the tribes are also very well-defined. You can see why they would want to form a tribe of their own, what makes them tick, what they are working towards, all by talking to them. That’s how beautiful the dialogues and the characterisation is.
A Potpourri of Activities
All of the above makes for a game that doesn’t bore you for
one moment. There’s so much to do in HZD – apart from the numerous side quests,
there are various Bandit Camps that you can destroy, much like the Outposts in
Far Cry 4. There are Hunting Grounds where you can test your skills against
machines in pre-prepared scenarios.
There is also the good-old practice of unlocking regions in
the map, but it is implemented through Tallnecks, the most interesting
map-revealing mechanism I have seen so far. Tallnecks are humongous machines,
probably modelled after giraffes, that roam certain areas and collect
geographical information of the area. Aloy needs to climb the Tallneck and
override it, thereby accessing all the information it has collected and
de-clouding the region on the map. And the view from the top of a Tallneck is
truly a sight to behold! I never felt like climbing down once I reached the top.
All these activities are worth completing, never once giving the impression that they have been crammed in. And so, going for 100% completion doesn’t seem a daunting task. At times, I found myself so involved in the side activities that I almost lost track of the story. Uncovering new bits of information about the vast world and its inhabitants and seeing places crafted with great detail was immensely satisfying.
Some flecks on the horizon in an otherwise immaculate sky
Another activity in Horizon: Zero Dawn, and perhaps one of
the very few things that could have been improved, are the tutorials. Every
time you get a new weapon, you also get a tutorial to complete with it. It’s
kind of a minor quest, where you have to kill a bunch of machines using that
weapon. Sometimes in a specific fashion, which requires a fair bit of planning.
Now here’s the annoying part: you have to ‘activate’ the tutorial for your
kills to count towards it. Failure to do so results in the tutorial progress
remaining unchanged, no matter how much you planned to ‘kill multiple enemies
with one shot’, which is exactly what happened with me on multiple occasions
just because I forgot to activate the tutorial. It would have been better if
these tutorials were modelled as background activities, like Steam
achievements and trophies.
Talking about things that could be improved, another thing that bugged me was the weather changes, which were too abrupt sometimes to feel realistic. Heavy, stormy rain transitioned to bright sunlight in a matter of seconds without any overcast in between. Same happened with snow. The individual effects of each whether were excellent and the way the environment reacted to them was convincing too, it was just the transition that bothered me at times. Or maybe it’s just a clever example of attention to detail where they’re telling us how climate change is going to affect us in the far future?
Why I was reminded of Death Stranding
Other than the obvious similarity that both Horizon Zero
Dawn and Death Stranding have massive, sprawling open worlds, HZD felt so
reminiscent of Death Stranding because they both are set in the distant future
and have an apocalyptic event as the backdrop, about which the player
subsequently learns over the course of the game. Both involve exploration and
crafting, and feature technical concepts that are highly advanced and
imaginative.
Yet, HZD executes this premise of a post-apocalyptic distant future way better by improving upon the single worst thing about Death Stranding - springing new jargon and overloading the player with abstract new concepts while expecting them to just accept it. There is no dearth of jargon and technical information in HZD, but the way in which it is presented and explained, with patience and simplicity yet never underestimating the player 's intelligence, is the USP of this game. While both these games have engaging storylines, and both bring something new to the table, there's no doubt that Horizon presents itself better than Death Stranding, like a more optimistic half-sister with better fashion sense and consideration for others.
92 hours and 60-something screenshots later…
So, after spending the longest time ever on a single game,
and still managing to complete only 88%, with Story difficulty on top – ah, the
Story difficulty mode, of course. Allow me to digress a bit here.
About 65% into the game, I accidentally changed the
difficulty level to normal, and came to know about it only when I couldn’t kill
the machines in one strike of my spear and was losing a lot more health than
earlier. I really felt like a noob right then, and realized that Story difficulty was
even easier than Easy difficulty. Then again, the game had made it clear
from the start that Story difficulty would allow me to focus more on
exploration and narrative, and that’s what happened, and I’m glad it did.
The kind of player that I am, I think I was able to experience Horizon: Zero Dawn in the best way possible on the Story setting. It was just the right amount of strategizing to deal with the machines, follow the story, the side quests, hunting, foraging, crafting…everything. Any more grinding and I may have folded, sticking only to the main story like I did with Death Stranding.
So, coming back to what I was saying, after spending so long
in Aloy’s world, it was difficult to detach. I am feeling somewhat similar to
the time when I finished Batman: Arkham Knight. For the longest time I didn’t
uninstall it after I’d finished, and I haven’t been able to uninstall HZD either,
but I know I will. The curiosity to start a new game and experience a new world
is still there, for one, and Horizon: Forbidden West is coming out soon.
Hopefully it gets ported to PC as well, and doesn’t turn out to be the game
that breaks my rig!
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