Horizon: Zero Dawn

Verdict:
Recommended

Content warnings:
Existential dread, graphic violence, lots of fantasy sexism, heavy native american cultural influence, I am not enough of an expert to tell you if it’s appropriation, but it sure feels like it.

Do you play as a woman?
Yes, the only playable character is Aloy, a young woman.

Do women drive the story?
Yes, Aloy’s goals and mission are a big part of the story.

How many men are there?
Lots, most of the NPCs you will meet are men, with a few stand out exceptions.

What are the romance options?
None, Aloy doesnt seem terribly interested.

Is the game any good?

Aloy is just a baby when the game starts, but after a bref exploration section and tutorial taking place during her childhood, you’ll be playing her as a young adult.

Aloy is an outcast, living with her father Rost. She doesn’t know why she’s an outcast, or why Rost is an outcast. All she knows is that because of something that happened before she was born, she is shunned forever by everyone in the area except her adopted father. That fact has had a noticeable and severe impact on her emotional development. It makes her an outsider always looking in, which is also the situation the player will always be in. Convenient.

Aloy is an interesting girl, she is violently opposed to injustice, especially the kind that alienate people from their community. She comes across as being very snarky, very guarded about herself. She isn’t heartless though, and is happy to help regular people in need. She’s clever, crafty, and witty. She genuinely can be quite funny, too. Overall she’s a well rounded and very likeable character.

I wish the same could be said for most of the characters in the game. So many of them feel one note, under developped. Very few characters stick around for more than one quest or quest chain, and of those, most of your time is spent alone, away from them. There’s, as always, a few standouts, but I never found myself caring about the world, or the people within it.

That is a wild statement, by the way. Why? Because the world outside of the cities and towns is mind bogglingly cool. Its a post apocalypse, but a green one. There are very few old world ruins and a lot of gorgeous nature. You’ll walk through snow fields, wade through swamps, hike across deserts, and creep through jungles. All of which is rendered absolutely stunningly, one of the prettiest games I have ever seen.

The wildlife is no slouch either. Aside from the normal foxes, birds, and boars (not the fun kind), the big draw is that most of the animals roaming the land are robots. They move and act like animals, but with so many different mechanical advantages. They will breathe fire, shoot waves of compressed air, arc electricity, and even freeze anything that threatens them.

You will be threatening them too, since fighting the robots is a significant part of the game. They drop the materials and components to upgrade your gear, many quests will require you to fight them to solve a problem, and the highlight of the open world gameplay is hunting them down. Getting to sneak up, watching what they are doing, and planning your approach, is a delight to do. All machines have distinct areas on their bodies that can be destroyed, destroying a part deal a ton of damage and inconveniences the robot in some way. Doing so will often disable attacks, limit movement, or just drop rare materials. Learning where to aim to fight each creature keeps the gameplay fresh and exciting.

The robots are very dangerous though, easily the biggest threat to your safety. By comparison, the human enemies you will encounter are… underwhelming. They do the job just fine but the fights feel tedious after the immense spectacle of the robots. They never get better either, they just get tougher, and by extension, more tedious to fight. Meanwhile as you face more dangerous robots they ramp up sharply in difficulty, but also in complexity and ways to fight them. The basic grazers may only kick and charge, but you’ll eventually fight things tthat barrage you with small arms fire in between cool down periods while it overheats, giving you a chance to counterattack. It leads to a feeling of real accomplishment when you take down some of the massive beasts after a long, tough battle.

The hunts are the undisputed high point of the game, and unfortunately things take a sharp turn off a steep cliff. If you arent hunting robots you are likely running from place to place, talking to people, or collecting basic materials. Most puzzles are solved by activating puzzle solving mode and waiting for Aloy to tell you what to do. It gets boring, fast, not to mention the constant care and attention you need to maintain your health pouch.

There are two ways you can heal in the game, and healing is something you’ll be doing a lot so you’ll be very used to it. The first is health potions, which work as you’d expect, but the more common form is the health pouch. In the world you will be able to find medicinal herbs, they are often identifiable by their red colour, but not always, and not all usable red plants are medicinal. Gathering them adds charge to your health pouch, that you can then drain to fill up your hp. Its a cool system, and since you only drain what you need it fills up any bumps and scrapes easily. The problem is that you need to keep refilling it and medicinal herbs get rarer as you move further into the game. It becomes yet another chore dragging you down and stopping you from getting into the story.

That story is a journey of self actualization and discovery that Aloy embarks upon after the events that open the game. It nice to see a story be so laser focused on who a girl is and what she wants to be in the world. That does eventually blur, as the story opens up and the very personal element is lost. It’s a shame though, since Aloy makes for a very compelling character, and watching her motivation get diluted by all the stuff that happens in the game hurt, even if she is sure to stop the spotlight from straying too far

As the story balloons into something grander in scale, it feels like Aloy starts to lose most of her agency over what she is actually doing. She has men telling her where to go, what to do, and if she doesnt co-operate all her leads disappear. She certainly makes her feelings clear, but hanging a hat on having men make most of the decisions in the game doesnt actually give Aloy any more autonomy. She’s hardly a mindless puppet, but she doesnt feel as self driven and free as I think she should have been.

That being said, it’s still a nice story, and has some incredible beats. It ends up feeling like a young woman has stumbled into something so grand she would be drowned, but she refuses to let herself slip into the water. You end up cheering for Aloy, even if it’s a little frustrating.

A quick note on the DLC, it’s okay. Its pretty short, and only introduces one or two new enemy types, but the environment is neat and the new area is welcome to poke around in. You get some pretty absurdly powerful equipment in it too, which makes going back to the main game feel pretty easy, but that equipment is also pretty fun to use so it’s not too bad. It’s worth getting as a bundle or if it’s cheap.