Spoiler Discussion! Read only after beating..

[linkdevivo]

Oh man. I just got the plat. Thought the "Kinda Funny" boys were exaggerating in the review but.. This is an Amazing game. The graphics, the presentation in general, the gameplay, the layers to combat different machines, the world, AND THE STORY. Jesus Christ. I wanted to discuss what you guys thought of the story in the game. Personally, the reveal that Zero Dawn was the name of the project to start life again through AI was simply jaw dropping, the game did an excellent job to keep me interested the more story missions I played, I hadn't felt this immersion in a story since Bioshock Infinite and The Last of Us. The environmental storytelling was just brutally good, the story behind the Alpha's and Ted Faro... just so good. I hope they can keep this level of excellence in the inevitable sequel, but i don't see it beating this game. The sense of intrigue and exploration to understand what was happening in the world was the fuel that made me beat this game in 2 days, don't see how they can recreate that in the sequel. But HATS OFF Guerilla, what a gem. A perfect package of presentation, gameplay and story.

[Oobedoob S Benubi]

I finished the game yesterday, played through it in about five days.

 

I wasn't really into it at the beginning - perhaps it reminded me a bit too much of Far Cry Primal - but where Primal remained the same bore throughout the game, Horizon Zero Dawn kept evolving, both in surroundings and story, and I became more and more invested in the game as I played on. Loved it by the end.

 

Biggest question I have: WHO THE HELL SENT THAT SIGNAL?

 

I loved to hate Faro, and I wouldn't be surprised if he turned out to be alive (sort of) in the sequel. It may be a clone or his mind copied to an android at the least, or him in person at the worst - he might have put a lot of research into cryogenics towards the end, and I don't think it's a coincidence that his name sounds like 'pharaoh' and he called his bunker 'Thebe'. Big chance that he's being kept as a mummy there right now, or has been unfrozen already and was actually the one to send the signal.

 

Really glad that there was a good resolution to 'who is that woman who seems to be Aloy's mother' which later on became 'why is there a clone of a woman that's been dead for twelve hundred years', GAIA creating a full clone because Elizabet's the one who can actually enter all the facilities sounds really logical and "you are special simply because you were created to be special" is much more believable than the usual "just take our word for it" explanations as to why a player character can do so much.

 

On 3-5-2017 at 0:39 AM, linkdevivo said:

Personally, the reveal that Zero Dawn was the name of the project to start life again through AI was simply jaw dropping, the game did an excellent job to keep me interested the more story missions I played, I hadn't felt this immersion in a story since Bioshock Infinite and The Last of Us. The environmental storytelling was just brutally good, the story behind the Alpha's and Ted Faro... just so good.

 

Yeah they really did a good job on drip-feeding you the information about what happened in the 2060s... Actually I thought it was much better than Bioshock Infinite (which I got bored by and never finished) and The Last Of Us (which to me had bland gameplay and devs that take themselves too serious). Though the intro to TLOU was very powerful, I admit.

 

I can't actually remember the last game that has me so invested in its story. Yes, I enjoyed playing Breath Of The Wild more but it did not have as much of a story, certainly not one with so many plot twists.

 

On 3-5-2017 at 0:39 AM, linkdevivo said:

I hope they can keep this level of excellence in the inevitable sequel, but i don't see it beating this game. The sense of intrigue and exploration to understand what was happening in the world was the fuel that made me beat this game in 2 days, don't see how they can recreate that in the sequel. But HATS OFF Guerilla, what a gem. A perfect package of presentation, gameplay and story.

 

Personally, I'd say that the sequel will probably be even better. The devs seem to be already looking into what parts of the game were received well and not well, so they can improve things the next time around. Though there will also be DLC so I guess we won't have to wait for five years until we can play anything in this universe again, I guess the DLC will be released within a year.

[liquidsol]

The game definitely exceeded all the expectations I had going in. I thought it was going to be derived from other games and even though the game uses some familiar elements, it really stands on its own. The scene where Liz Sobeck explains the role of each subordinate function (the Greek Gods) but conveniently leaves out Hades was brilliant, and the final alpha team scene was heartbreaking.

 

Just like in Bioshock Infinite and The Last of Us, the main story is masterclass writing but the player is rewarded on another level if they take the time to read the optional lore and really pay attention to the details of the game. It's rare to see that in a game, because most game companies feel the need to show you everything they paid to make. So when a game has a lot of optional lore to find (as with Witcher 3 also), it just makes all warm and tingly inside. And damn, the visuals. This game (along with Red Dead 2 and Last of Us 2) will push me to upgrade to 4K.

[linkdevivo]

any ideas for dlc?

[Oobedoob S Benubi]

2 minutes ago, linkdevivo said:

any ideas for dlc?

 

Aloy goes to The Forbidden West, because reasons. Apparently there's an easter egg somewhere on the shore, an intact little boat? Let's say she's the champion of the whole region now and they need her to go there for something. Perhaps one of those huge robots is waking up, or perhaps there's talk of a station where Apollo may have survived. Perhaps a whole culture even then, where the new humans have actually learned about/from the past.

 

I think Faro is best reserved for the sequel, if he's to appear at all. DLC should not shake things up all too much.

[Salfordladd]

I agree! I was really impressed with the story, and especially the storytelling - open-world games like this often have pacing issues, but I thought this game really nailed it.  Likewise, with the story itself, I was impressed with just how well everything fit together.  I think the story had just the right mix of ambition in the places where it needed it, and yet not feeling like it had to break the mold at every step.  The revelation about what Zero Dawn really is worked so well for me precisely because it wasn't a huge twist - it was a small sidestep from what we were expecting it would be, and that's what made it so satisfying. If they had tried for some big reversal, it would have undermined everything they built. So many games seem to go for these big twists at the expense of building a coherent and consistent world, and that's what I respected most about Horizon - there were some great surprises in the story, but for me, the most satisfying bits weren't when it was shocking me, but when it was comfortably and competently showing me just how deep and well-thought out its world and backstory was.

 

The one quibble I have--though I'm not sure there's much of a way around it--is how important the scannable audio artifacts found in the main quest areas were to understanding the depth of the story, but the game kinda required you to just stand still and listen to each of them before progressing, rather than being able to move, lest the audio from the recording keeps playing while Aloy or Silens are talking in the present. I'm not sure there was a good way to do this--I appreciate the fact that they wanted to keep the forced exposition holograms limited to only what you need to know to understand the story, for those players who don't really want to bother with the backstory and just want to keep the game moving. This was a good compromise, to allow those like me who want the full backstory to get it (and not just in text dumps), while also keeping the gameplay relatively streamlined. But I wish there were a way to pick up and listen to the recordings while continuing to traverse the level without running the risk of cutting off or drowning out the present conversation.

 

Here's my one question (and I'm betting the answer is somewhere in the data logs, perhaps I just missed it or forgot it): okay, so there's a master override signal that was created that could control HADES and shut down the doomsday machines should they be activated. But if Sobeck and her team could create that override signal and it works just as it does at the end of the game, why couldn't they have used that signal on the Faro machines back in the day? Are we supposed to assume that the "corruption" power sent out by HADES to resurrect the old machines was subject to the override code, but that the override code wouldn't work on whatever code animated the machines back in the 21st century? I loved the part of the game that said that, once activated, the machines couldn't be stopped, which laid the whole foundation for the Zero Dawn project--but it seemed like a bit of a disconnect when the Faro machines were resurrected and were shut down with an override signal (exactly the thing that Ted Faro and Elizabet Sobeck agreed wasn't feasible before). It's not a huge deal, but it did seem to me like a small stumble in an otherwise pretty solid story - unless, of course, there's something about the nature of the override that I missed.

 

Other than that, I'd say the part of the story I liked the least was maybe the little post-credits sequel setup! I love Silens and appreciate that he's a complicated character who will be returning, but this seemed like a relatively easy way to set up a potential sequel that didn't quite embrace the really wonderful way this story was brought to a satisfying close. Twenty years ago, Silens awoke HADES, put him in a Metal Devil, and then decided he needed to fix things. Even if we buy that he had ulterior motives, would he really do the exact same thing again?  That said, I was a bit surprised that we didn't fight a Metal Devil in the game, so clearly that was always going to come in the sequel...

 

But yeah, all in all, a really fantastic story experience that I think a lot of games could learn from. And I really have to tip my hat to the writing team that understood that unique characters are what make for a really great story. Aloy is a FANTASTIC hero, and was so because she was a woman, not in spite of it. Likewise, the game expressed the heroism in compassion, in community, in cooperation, which dovetailed really well with their quietly-progressive cast of NPCs - women in positions of power, characters of color, gay characters, trans characters, some characters I suspected were neurodiverse as well. The game world reflected the variety of our world, the vision of our world that the Alphas had, and that resulted in a really nuanced story where each character's identity adds to the world building. It's not an accident, I don't think, that one of the most competently diverse video games we've ever seen is also one of the most narratively satisfying. Anyway, not to deliver some kind of monologue on marginalized rep here, but I loved this aspect of the game, its message about what heroism means and who gets to define it, and it was a big part of what kept me engaged.

Edited May 25, 2017 by Salfordladd

[SuperSaiyan3985]

On 5/2/2017 at 6:39 PM, linkdevivo said:

Oh man. I just got the plat. Thought the "Kinda Funny" boys were exaggerating in the review but.. This is an Amazing game. The graphics, the presentation in general, the gameplay, the layers to combat different machines, the world, AND THE STORY. Jesus Christ. I wanted to discuss what you guys thought of the story in the game. Personally, the reveal that Zero Dawn was the name of the project to start life again through AI was simply jaw dropping, the game did an excellent job to keep me interested the more story missions I played, I hadn't felt this immersion in a story since Bioshock Infinite and The Last of Us. The environmental storytelling was just brutally good, the story behind the Alpha's and Ted Faro... just so good. I hope they can keep this level of excellence in the inevitable sequel, but i don't see it beating this game. The sense of intrigue and exploration to understand what was happening in the world was the fuel that made me beat this game in 2 days, don't see how they can recreate that in the sequel. But HATS OFF Guerilla, what a gem. A perfect package of presentation, gameplay and story.

I completely agree man, I haven't felt this captivated by a story since UC4. As much as I loved the Old Ones arc, I couldn't care less about Errend & Ersa's side of things. Regardless props to Guerrilla for delivering something to love! 

PS Take notes Ubisoft.

Edited May 26, 2017 by SuperSaiyan3985

[linkdevivo]

10 hours ago, Salfordladd said:

I agree! I was really impressed with the story, and especially the storytelling - open-world games like this often have pacing issues, but I thought this game really nailed it.  Likewise, with the story itself, I was impressed with just how well everything fit together.  I think the story had just the right mix of ambition in the places where it needed it, and yet not feeling like it had to break the mold at every step.  The revelation about what Zero Dawn really is worked so well for me precisely because it wasn't a huge twist - it was a small sidestep from what we were expecting it would be, and that's what made it so satisfying. If they had tried for some big reversal, it would have undermined everything they built. So many games seem to go for these big twists at the expense of building a coherent and consistent world, and that's what I respected most about Horizon - there were some great surprises in the story, but for me, the most satisfying bits weren't when it was shocking me, but when it was comfortably and competently showing me just how deep and well-thought out its world and backstory was.

 

The one quibble I have--though I'm not sure there's much of a way around it--is how important the scannable audio artifacts found in the main quest areas were to understanding the depth of the story, but the game kinda required you to just stand still and listen to each of them before progressing, rather than being able to move, lest the audio from the recording keeps playing while Aloy or Silens are talking in the present. I'm not sure there was a good way to do this--I appreciate the fact that they wanted to keep the forced exposition holograms limited to only what you need to know to understand the story, for those players who don't really want to bother with the backstory and just want to keep the game moving. This was a good compromise, to allow those like me who want the full backstory to get it (and not just in text dumps), while also keeping the gameplay relatively streamlined. But I wish there were a way to pick up and listen to the recordings while continuing to traverse the level without running the risk of cutting off or drowning out the present conversation.

 

Here's my one question (and I'm betting the answer is somewhere in the data logs, perhaps I just missed it or forgot it): okay, so there's a master override signal that was created that could control HADES and shut down the doomsday machines should they be activated. But if Sobeck and her team could create that override signal and it works just as it does at the end of the game, why couldn't they have used that signal on the Faro machines back in the day? Are we supposed to assume that the "corruption" power sent out by HADES to resurrect the old machines was subject to the override code, but that the override code wouldn't work on whatever code animated the machines back in the 21st century? I loved the part of the game that said that, once activated, the machines couldn't be stopped, which laid the whole foundation for the Zero Dawn project--but it seemed like a bit of a disconnect when the Faro machines were resurrected and were shut down with an override signal (exactly the thing that Ted Faro and Elizabet Sobeck agreed wasn't feasible before). It's not a huge deal, but it did seem to me like a small stumble in an otherwise pretty solid story - unless, of course, there's something about the nature of the override that I missed.

 

Other than that, I'd say the part of the story I liked the least was maybe the little post-credits sequel setup! I love Silens and appreciate that he's a complicated character who will be returning, but this seemed like a relatively easy way to set up a potential sequel that didn't quite embrace the really wonderful way this story was brought to a satisfying close. Twenty years ago, Silens awoke HADES, put him in a Metal Devil, and then decided he needed to fix things. Even if we buy that he had ulterior motives, would he really do the exact same thing again?  That said, I was a bit surprised that we didn't fight a Metal Devil in the game, so clearly that was always going to come in the sequel...

 

But yeah, all in all, a really fantastic story experience that I think a lot of games could learn from. And I really have to tip my hat to the writing team that understood that unique characters are what make for a really great story. Aloy is a FANTASTIC hero, and was so because she was a woman, not in spite of it. Likewise, the game expressed the heroism in compassion, in community, in cooperation, which dovetailed really well with their quietly-progressive cast of NPCs - women in positions of power, characters of color, gay characters, trans characters, some characters I suspected were neurodiverse as well. The game world reflected the variety of our world, the vision of our world that the Alphas had, and that resulted in a really nuanced story where each character's identity adds to the world building. It's not an accident, I don't think, that one of the most competently diverse video games we've ever seen is also one of the most narratively satisfying. Anyway, not to deliver some kind of monologue on marginalized rep here, but I loved this aspect of the game, its message about what heroism means and who gets to define it, and it was a big part of what kept me engaged.

All great points. Agree on every aspect. The post-credits scene didn't do much for me either, it was like oh here's this just in case we get greenlit for a sequel.

[Briste]

On 5/25/2017 at 3:09 PM, Salfordladd said:

Here's my one question (and I'm betting the answer is somewhere in the data logs, perhaps I just missed it or forgot it): okay, so there's a master override signal that was created that could control HADES and shut down the doomsday machines should they be activated. But if Sobeck and her team could create that override signal and it works just as it does at the end of the game, why couldn't they have used that signal on the Faro machines back in the day? Are we supposed to assume that the "corruption" power sent out by HADES to resurrect the old machines was subject to the override code, but that the override code wouldn't work on whatever code animated the machines back in the 21st century? I loved the part of the game that said that, once activated, the machines couldn't be stopped, which laid the whole foundation for the Zero Dawn project--but it seemed like a bit of a disconnect when the Faro machines were resurrected and were shut down with an override signal (exactly the thing that Ted Faro and Elizabet Sobeck agreed wasn't feasible before). It's not a huge deal, but it did seem to me like a small stumble in an otherwise pretty solid story - unless, of course, there's something about the nature of the override that I missed.

 

I just finished it myself and I thought the story was amazing. At first I was glossing over the data points and not really reading them, however as the story got more involved, I started to take the time to read them. I think the answer to this question may be that they didn't have the override needed at the beginning. Sobeck said that it would take 150 years to break the encryption. I'm wondering if it was something one of the protocols (GAIA or Hephaestus maybe?) that was able to finally crack the encryption and create the code after everyone had died.

 

I did all of the side missions and collectibles before doing the main story, but I plan on going back through to get all the data points I missed to see if I can get the whole story at some point. As far as story telling goes...I haven't been this into a story line like this since I first played Final Fantasy VII 20 years ago.

[richtayls]

At first I found the game a bit slow going, too much of the game world felt like "just because", but then as I progressed through the main story missions everything that was revealed meant all the "just because" got explained in ways that were more satisfying than I've ever experienced in a game, with everything that existed in the world being there for a reason.

 

I played through every side mission and errand, and was glad I did as they were well written and added to the back story, I liked how the people you had helped came to help in the final battle, even stuff like the fetch quests played out, for example building the powerful weapon that was then used in the battle in the ridge.  I spent a lot of time reading / listening to the optional collectibles, they gave a brilliant sense of what the human race went through before extinction - and how refreshing that only certain collectibles were needed for trophies, in particular I thought the way the location on the map was an just an approximation which meant you could enjoy putting effort into finding them, rather than breaking the immersion by using a guide to walk straight to them, was very well done.

 

The only down note at the end was that following the touching reunion with her "mother" I thought there should have been a tribute to Rost so I decided to do my own by ending my travels by going to Rost's camp, but was disheartened when I got there as it played in the standard audio "there is nothing for me here", I wasn't expecting an Easter egg tribute to play or anything, but silence on arrival would have been better than that.

 

Personally I loved the post credits tease, yes it's a cliche that the big bad isn't really dead, but until that played I couldn't imagine where they could take it for a sequel, but now I'm left desperate for more.  I'm hoping the DLC is the story of the return of the royal family, as you could do quite a bit with how that plays out with the cultists now they don't have Hades to worship, with the sequel being the return of Hades.

 

 

[TheSowIsMine]

On 6/4/2017 at 2:04 PM, richtayls said:

The only down note at the end was that following the touching reunion with her "mother" I thought there should have been a tribute to Rost so I decided to do my own by ending my travels by going to Rost's camp, but was disheartened when I got there as it played in the standard audio "there is nothing for me here", I wasn't expecting an Easter egg tribute to play or anything, but silence on arrival would have been better than that.

There is a memorial place there where you can talk to him.

[NeilBefore_ZOD]

On 7/22/2017 at 3:02 AM, TheSowIsMine said:

There is a memorial place there where you can talk to him.

 

Yes, and from what I understand, if you go there throughout the game, she talks about the different things she's finding out. I'm making it a point to go back there and interact with his grave site during my NG+ playthrough.

[Meins1665]

I think the reason why they couldn't use the master override to stop the machines before extinction is because the master override is a killswitch for GAIA. GAIA at this point has no control over the machines but after cracking the code with one of its protocols it shuts them down. At the time of Horizon: Zero Dawn all of GAIA's protocols work independent from GAIA due to the rogue signal that is mentioned. But because they were designed as part of GAIA they all can be controlled through the master override. And because HADES now controls the warmachines the machines can be stopped by purging HADES by using the master override. At least thats my take on it feel free to share other opinions.