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Horizon Zero Dawn
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renay have both been after me to play this game for years. Probably other people as well, but those are the two that I remember best because they were the most persistent about it. :) Playing the game seemed like an ideal way to pass the time while sheltering in place; I finished the final battle yesterday, including the Frozen Wilds DLC. And it is, indeed, an excellent game -- definitely the best I've played since Persona 5, and it may well take a place among my all-time favorites. Although I won't immediately start all over again with a New Game Plus like T did (if nothing else, Persona 5: The Royal is out now, and I should probably also pick up the FFVII remake), there's an excellent chance I'll play through at least one more time -- it seems like a game that rewards at least one replay, given how much you learn about the world as the story unfolds.
There's a lot to like about the game: Aloy is a wonderful protagonist, maybe one of the best every, and the world is full of other engaging and vibrant characters, and the gameplay is super fun, especially once I figured out that stealth-and-sneak was my preferred mode (doesn't work very well against Glinthawks, though). But the biggest strength of HZD is the story and the worldbuilding. It's one of the most fascinating and well-developed game worlds I've ever seen, with the exposition carefully doled out via world exploration and gameplay, and a number of twists that are hard to see coming but are entirely earned in retrospect. To say anything more would, of course, require massive spoilers, so I'll put them behind a cut.
Spoilers start here. The setting of HZD is a post-apocalyptic Western US, mostly Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, and immediately recognizable as such once you know what you're looking for, but it takes awhile before you learn the reasons for the upheaval, and most especially the full story for how the new world developed. Earth's civilization didn't just fall: it was wiped out completely, by a swarm of killer robots that consume biomass (i.e. plants and animals, including humans, down to the microbes) and then self-replicate at an exponential rate, to the point where entire ecosystems were collapsing. (Gotta say, it's a little weird to be in our current moment, playing a game where life on Earth was destroyed by a plague with no cure that grew exponentially.) The world of the game didn't survive; instead, it was rebuilt by a massive terraforming project directed by an AI, designed to trigger after the robots had consumed all the potential fuel and been shut down. Aloy, a young outcast with mysterious origins, learns all this in the process of trying to discover her own history; she breaks into a series of underground bunkers related to the project, where she learns about the destruction of Earth, how it was rebuilt, and the origins of the AI that threatens to destroy it all over again. The main story quests allow her discoveries to unfold gradually, never in a way that feels forced or info-dumpy. And also, it's just a really interesting story. How the system was developed, the purpose of all its complicated subroutines, the stories of the people who helped create it in secret while an unwinnable war with the robots raged on around them. I found it all compelling, and it kept me playing, wondering how it would all play out.
The Frozen Wilds tells a similar story on a smaller scale: the creation of another AI designed to keep the Yellowstone Caldera from ever erupting. That one, I figured out from the context clues almost immediately, but I was fine with it not being a mystery -- it was still a pleasure to see Aloy figure out what was going on, and to save the AI, CYAN, from the destructive AI that threatens to kill it.
I feel like I played a complete story, but in other ways I think I only scratched the surface of what the game world has to offer, and I look forward to learning even more when I take on the New Game Plus.
renay have both been after me to play this game for years. Probably other people as well, but those are the two that I remember best because they were the most persistent about it. :) Playing the game seemed like an ideal way to pass the time while sheltering in place; I finished the final battle yesterday, including the Frozen Wilds DLC. And it is, indeed, an excellent game -- definitely the best I've played since Persona 5, and it may well take a place among my all-time favorites. Although I won't immediately start all over again with a New Game Plus like T did (if nothing else, Persona 5: The Royal is out now, and I should probably also pick up the FFVII remake), there's an excellent chance I'll play through at least one more time -- it seems like a game that rewards at least one replay, given how much you learn about the world as the story unfolds. There's a lot to like about the game: Aloy is a wonderful protagonist, maybe one of the best every, and the world is full of other engaging and vibrant characters, and the gameplay is super fun, especially once I figured out that stealth-and-sneak was my preferred mode (doesn't work very well against Glinthawks, though). But the biggest strength of HZD is the story and the worldbuilding. It's one of the most fascinating and well-developed game worlds I've ever seen, with the exposition carefully doled out via world exploration and gameplay, and a number of twists that are hard to see coming but are entirely earned in retrospect. To say anything more would, of course, require massive spoilers, so I'll put them behind a cut.
Spoilers start here. The setting of HZD is a post-apocalyptic Western US, mostly Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, and immediately recognizable as such once you know what you're looking for, but it takes awhile before you learn the reasons for the upheaval, and most especially the full story for how the new world developed. Earth's civilization didn't just fall: it was wiped out completely, by a swarm of killer robots that consume biomass (i.e. plants and animals, including humans, down to the microbes) and then self-replicate at an exponential rate, to the point where entire ecosystems were collapsing. (Gotta say, it's a little weird to be in our current moment, playing a game where life on Earth was destroyed by a plague with no cure that grew exponentially.) The world of the game didn't survive; instead, it was rebuilt by a massive terraforming project directed by an AI, designed to trigger after the robots had consumed all the potential fuel and been shut down. Aloy, a young outcast with mysterious origins, learns all this in the process of trying to discover her own history; she breaks into a series of underground bunkers related to the project, where she learns about the destruction of Earth, how it was rebuilt, and the origins of the AI that threatens to destroy it all over again. The main story quests allow her discoveries to unfold gradually, never in a way that feels forced or info-dumpy. And also, it's just a really interesting story. How the system was developed, the purpose of all its complicated subroutines, the stories of the people who helped create it in secret while an unwinnable war with the robots raged on around them. I found it all compelling, and it kept me playing, wondering how it would all play out.
The Frozen Wilds tells a similar story on a smaller scale: the creation of another AI designed to keep the Yellowstone Caldera from ever erupting. That one, I figured out from the context clues almost immediately, but I was fine with it not being a mystery -- it was still a pleasure to see Aloy figure out what was going on, and to save the AI, CYAN, from the destructive AI that threatens to kill it.
I feel like I played a complete story, but in other ways I think I only scratched the surface of what the game world has to offer, and I look forward to learning even more when I take on the New Game Plus.
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I love how united fandom was about their hatred of Ted Faro. If there is a next game, I hope I get to smash the ever loving smug out of his cryo-pod or whatever nonsense he probably planned.
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Ted Faro is LEGIT THE WORST. Right before the reveal that the destruction of Apollo was his doing, I found myself wondering if he was the one who triggered Hades. It turned out I was wrong in the moment, but I'll allow that I could be right in the big picture. I've heard that a next game is strongly rumored, but not announced yet. I'd love to play more, though, and follow up on that ending. I'd also love to see a DLC or sequel storyline about restoring Apollo -- there could totally be a secret cache that only Elisabet knew about.
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Been wanting to do a re-play + Frozen Wilds, but my backlog is huge atm.
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