Horizon Zero Dawn | Review | Giant Robot Dinosaurs vs. Arrows
13The post apocalyptic genre: god, we geeks can’t get enough of it. From Mad Max to Fallout to The Walking Dead, everyone loves to imagine themselves as some sort of scrappy survivor, whittling together a life in a world that’s essentially amounts to the most extreme camping trip that’s ever been devised. This is all despite the fact that the vast majority of the people doing this fantasizing would more likely be acting as radioactive fertilizer in a world like that. I’m just saying: after the end of the world, there are gonna be plenty of skulls around the skull throne, and only a few Immortan Joes kicking around. And as much as I enjoy the lawlessness and unpredictability of the post-apocalypse, I never really cared for the wasteland aesthetic that most of them go for.
If you know anything about mother nature, you know that she’s a cruel bitch goddess who cares about humanity about as much as Kanye West cares that people see him as grounded and humble. It’s like the poet Carl Sandburg said: “Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work. I am the grass: I cover all.” Humanity can bomb, loot, and irradiate until we’re just a figment of the planet’s imagination: five minutes after we’re gone, the jungles and the forests will come back like the cold sore that ruined your senior pictures.
That’s why I loved the post-apocalyptic setting of Horizon Zero Dawn. Humanity has scattered and returned to an ancient style of tribalism and superstition, and evidence of our meddling and tampering is everywhere: but it’s all obscured by the lush vegetation of an almost prehistoric age. Horizon Zero Dawn is gorgeous: about as beautiful as a game can be. And the creative ways in which the developers at Guerilla Games integrated the old world with the new is part of what makes this a tremendously promising new IP. You play as Aloy, a motherless young outcast who hunts the machine beasts that roam the hunting grounds that surround her tribe: the Nora. Normally, the machine beasts are relatively docile, and rarely need to be dealt with. However, a sort of corruption is spreading across the land, making the creatures stronger and more violent. In undertaking the quest to find out what has caused this corruption, Aloy hopes to also learn more about herself and the mother she never knew. It’s a simple enough story that does a great job of getting you out and active in the playground of a world that surrounds you. Like most open world games, there is plenty to do. However, unlike a lot of open world games from the recent past, the main storyline is broad enough in scope that undertaking side quests, errands and finding collectables in no way undercuts the urgency of the main task at hand.
You’re not going to have any moments that you might have had during Fallout 4, for example, when you’re decorating your 500th settlement and suddenly think, “Oh that’s right: I’m supposed to be searching for my long-lost son. Silly me. Oh well, better go farm some more scrap so I can finish my neon ‘No fat chicks’ sign.” Simply put, Guerilla did an excellent job creating a world that feels unique and fun. You can mow through the main quest if you like,
or you can do what I did and basically explore every nook, cranny, and hollowed robot skull for lore and loot. No matter which direction you go in, your journey feels vital and immediate. Aloy makes for a fun and engaging protagonist: she’s got personality enough that her mysterious past doesn’t feel like a one-size-fits-all plot point. She’s got a point of view and a spark that makes her a pretty three-dimensional characters. Occasionally, the game even lets you choose her dialogue. It’s not roleplaying on a Bioware scale or anything, but it does give you some control over the way you want her to play and be seen by the world around her.
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