SEARCHING FOR ANCIENT FOLLIES
Behold—a hard reboot of planet Earth. Horizon Zero Dawn unfolds in an uncharacteristically beautiful post-apocalyptic world. The opening credits roll at the break of a new day: sunlight glistens in mountain streams rushing down snowy slopes, while a weather-worn man clad in furs walks a narrow path with a baby strapped to his back. He pauses at the edge of a field where majestic, animal-like machines roam freely, calmly telling the child how she will one day learn to hunt them.
On paper, the concept sounds corny. In practice, Horizon Zero Dawn treats itself with surprising earnestness. It tackles daring science-fiction ideas about humanity’s near future, and what amazes me is how—now on my second playthrough—that initial sense of wonder still hasn’t faded. This isn’t just food for thought; it’s convincingly realized. Since my first run at launch, HDR support has been added, allowing sunsets to bathe the landscape in an almost magical light that further enhances the sense of awe.
Guerrilla Games—previously known almost exclusively for the Killzone franchise—gets nearly everything right in its first foray into the open-world genre. Challenging, responsive combat is paired with a vast, striking world and story content that is almost too clever for its own good. For long stretches, very little happens on a mechanical level, yet the science-fiction themes churn relentlessly in the background, creating an internal conflict that keeps my mind engaged. When that subsides, I’m drawn straight back into exploration, stealth, survival, and combat. Dozens of hours pass effortlessly, none of them feeling wasted.
You play as Aloy, a flame-haired, agile, and sharp-witted young woman born an outcast under mysterious circumstances. Raised by another exile, Rost, she is taught how to survive in the wilds beyond tribal society. Once grown, Aloy embarks on a quest to uncover the truth about her origins. What begins as a deeply personal search soon becomes inseparable from the fate of the world itself, as she stumbles upon an ancient threat poised to trigger a second apocalypse.
Aloy’s defining traits are curiosity, moral clarity, and an instinctive drive to understand the unknown. Her journey gradually expands to almost biblical proportions, culminating in a message that feels unexpectedly life-affirming. While exploring long-forgotten ruins and subterranean facilities, she uncovers recordings left behind by the final humans before the apocalypse—fragments of panic, grief, and desperate hope. Despite Aloy’s growing importance, her restrained personality never eclipses the world around her; instead, it frames and amplifies its mysteries.
The journey spans diverse climates and cultures. You encounter settlements, tribes, and belief systems, many with substantial questlines of their own. At their core, most conflicts revolve around religious superstition versus scientific understanding, and how either can become a weapon when placed in the wrong hands. While the world is dotted with the usual assortment of optional busywork, the combination of exploration and narrative pulls me in far deeper than I expected.
Combat is Horizon Zero Dawn’s greatest strength. Enemies range from hostile humans and raptor-like Watcher machines to colossal, Tyrannosaur-esque robots armed with lasers and missile launchers. Not every encounter is equally enjoyable—burrowing Rockbreakers remain a personal nemesis—but the sheer variety of enemy behaviors, weaknesses, and patrol patterns turns each fight into a small tactical puzzle, especially when you’re caught off guard. Machines guard ruins, resources, and lore, making the act of discovery all the more enticing.
Your spear and selection of bows and slings form the backbone of combat, particularly when you understand which ammunition to use, in what order, and where to strike. On higher difficulties, careful preparation—setting traps, exploiting terrain, and ambushing enemies—becomes far more rewarding than direct confrontation. Combat is satisfying at any level, but harder settings emphasize planning and adaptability in ways that elevate the experience.
That said, the very hardest difficulty can be punishing in less satisfying ways. Aloy can survive only a handful of hits, and enemies become damage sponges unless you obsessively min-max weapon mods for each encounter. What should be a test of skill instead risks devolving into tedious menu management, an investment that rarely feels worth the effort.
Beyond that, criticism is limited to minor issues. Some late-game skills feel underwhelming, inventory space fills up too quickly, and facial animations occasionally betray their technical limits—characters sometimes appear more robotic than human during dialogue, with uneven lip-syncing to match.
Most other shortcomings are easy to forgive. Loading times when fast-traveling or entering dungeons are long, but the seamlessness of open-world traversal compensates for it. Horizon Zero Dawn isn’t revolutionary; it borrows liberally from the best ideas of its predecessors. But it borrows wisely. With immense resources invested in the right areas, the result is a remarkably polished whole.
Years after its release, it remains one of the finest open-world experiences available and an essential entry in any PlayStation library. Other games may surpass it in specific areas—Marvel’s Spider-Man in traversal, The Witcher 3 in narrative depth, Red Dead Redemption II in world simulation, Breath of the Wild in exploratory freedom—but few match Horizon Zero Dawn’s consistency. It has no glaring weak points. Every system supports the next.
Rarely does a new franchise debut with such a strong foundation. Horizon Zero Dawn frames survival as a process of learning: through combat training, research, hunting, crafting, analysis, and discovery. That philosophy permeates both story and mechanics. I approached the game with relentless curiosity—and I still regret not uncovering every last codex entry.
Comments
Post a Comment