Horizon Zero Dawn - Preview Thread [Up: All Previews Live]

Haven't read the previews yet, but for those that have, what are some negatives that are popping up?
There's one side quest with bad animation and voice acting. Pack it in, cancel your preorder, and erase this game from your memory. Guess we should had listened to the people in the "biggest flop of the year" thread
 
From Playstation Japan's Facebook

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Yo, where is that?
 
It's pretty easy to see why Jones said that watching the video. All the animations in the preview looked really good.

It's clear that for some, that one side-quest has negatively colored the perception of the entire game.

Yeah, some haven't moved past that one scene. As if the entire game depends on it.

There's one side quest with bad animation and voice acting. Pack it in, cancel your preorder, and erase this game from your memory. Guess we should had listened to the people in the "biggest flop of the year" thread

I hope people pay attention to your comment and actually watch some of the other scenes.
 
I have said it before and I'll say it again, facial animations in Horizon are better than any other open world RPG with dialogue options.

If there's anything better, please link it.

You know, I thought they were bland when I was at work looking ii in a terrible laptop and bad internet. As soon as I got home I watched everything on my TV and thought "hey wait... this is not bad... not bad at all!"

Haven't seen hilarious cutscene again though.
 
I have said it before and I'll say it again, facial animations in Horizon are better than any other open world RPG with dialogue options.

If there's anything better, please link it.

What exactly are you watching that leads you to believe this? I've been trying to stay away from spoilery stuff, but in one of the non Brom videos, it's still pretty awful. It looks like people have been shot full of novocaine and in some cases, their jaws partially wired shut.

"omg that cutscene, story must suck etc."

Always funny though to read those, Goty can´t come soon enough.

Does it really matter though when the poster is mainly concerned, and excited with the gameplay? And what does GOTY have anything to do with someone's opinion? Looking for something to validate your own and somehow discredit someone else's?
 
I already bought a vertical stand, now I just have to wait until PS4 Pro itself becomes available again. Out-of-stock or too expensive at all the local retailers.
 
You know, I thought they were bland when I was at work looking ii in a terrible laptop and bad internet. As soon as I got home I watched everything on my TV and thought "hey wait... this is not bad... not bad at all!"

Haven't seen hilarious cutscene again though.

Yeah all the other scenes are much better. I think they should maybe patch that one scene up before release.


What exactly are you watching that leads you to believe this? I've been trying to stay away from spoilery stuff, but in one of the non Brom videos, it's still pretty awful. It looks like people have been shot full of novocaine and in some cases, their jaws partially wired shut.

competent voice acting and good facial animation
 
Armor creation and modifications feel like DA Inquisition, which is a good thing for me. But that skill tree page with the preview video reminds me of FC Primals. Now what I've learned about the itemizations and dialog wheel, I'm leaning towards getting the game day/week 1 now from the previous wait and see. It looks RPG enough for me.

Also, all of these previews are being played on a regular PS4, right? Looks pretty good with stable framerates.

I haven't kept up on all the footage, but the animations in side quest cutscenes are embarrassing for a 2017 AAA open world title. I would assume they aren't like that in the main scenario. They were completely taking away from the plot happening on screen.

I wouldn't call it embarrassing. Bioware-tier, maybe. Actually, watching the cutscenes in the preview made me remember of Bioware games. I mean, they're not the best, but not that bad either.
 
What exactly are you watching that leads you to believe this? I've been trying to stay away from spoilery stuff, but in one of the non Brom videos, it's still pretty awful. It looks like people have been shot full of novocaine and in some cases, their jaws partially wired shut.



Does it really matter though when the poster is mainly concerned, and excited with the gameplay? And what does GOTY have anything to do with someone's opinion? Looking for something to validate your own and somehow discredit someone else's?

Brom cutscene is an outlier to the extent I'm curious if it was bugged. Every other cutscene has much better facial animation (albeit, lip syncing isn't always the best, but it was probably automated).

Look at clips of talking to Sona and the guy guarding a gate (I forget his name though).
 
I'm canceling my preorder. I was never so hyped as everyone else, but it looks more generic than I expected, I'm not in the mood for another FC Primal, robot dinosaurs or not.

I'm sure I'll play it, but no point buying on launch at full price when I know Zelda will easily grab my full attention.
 
I really hope I can hide all, or most, of the markers on the map. I'd hate looking at the map after I discovered more places or points of interests later. Fortunately enough, it seems that we can only mark one active quest at a time so they won't bother me in gameplay.
 
There's no denying that the scene direction/animation/lip-syncing of the optional side-quest stuff of a notably lower quality than the more directed unskippable story scenes.

Even putting aside the Bromy scene, the part where Aloy talked to the dude shortly after the gate scene shows that it's not all sunshines and rainbows in terms of quality. It falls into the Dragon Age: Inquisition-ish trap of 'stilted people standing around talking to each other' type of RPG conversation game design.

Bromy scene is notably worse because they tried to do the whole 'mad suicidal man flailing about thing' which amplifies the errs since it's not done well, but in general, one could look at the overall 'talking head' scenes and see that the game's sidequest would generally have that feel to it, most of the time.

Is it good? Nope. But honestly it's not something that is worse than most other games of its ilk. Some games like TW3 do it better since they have a better implementation of a cinematic camera during talking-head-scenes, but by and large they're still talking heads with subpar animation.
 
Yeah all the other scenes are much better. I think they should maybe patch that one scene up before release.




competent voice acting and good facial animation

LOL. That's actually the video I did watch and am referencing. Look at how their faces react (or not) with what's coming out of their mouths. It might be moving around a bit, but it looks very animatronic and unnatural.

Brom cutscene is an outlier to the extent I'm curious if it was bugged. Every other cutscene has much better facial animation (albeit, lip syncing isn't always the best, but it was probably automated).

Look at clips of talking to Sona and the guy guarding a gate (I forget his name though).

Which again, is why I said a non Brom video.
 
I really hope I can hide all, or most, of the markers on the map. I'd hate looking at the map after I discovered more places or points of interests later. Fortunately enough, it seems that we can only mark one active quest at a time so they won't bother me in gameplay.

As to your first post: most videos indicate whether or not it's regular PS4 or Pro. Both versions have footage of the game across the different previews.

In regards to markers: yes, you can turn most of them off, hide them or scale the size.
 
I wrote the preview for Press Start about the game having Dungeons (known as Cauldrons). I spent about an hour playing in one of them, and have footage but unfortunately am not allowed to share it which is a real shame as it's like nothing seen in any other footage.

The Director of Guerrilla said that they were where Robots are created and born so think of them as underground Robot factories.

It's unclear whether there is only one of them or multiple but it was HUGE and not apart of the regular story.

http://press-start.com.au/news/play...n-zero-dawn-features-badass-robotic-dungeons/

In my session with 50+ other outlets, there was only one other person who managed to get to the Cauldron as it was all the way at the other side of the map. Happy to answer any questions :)
 

There are two negatives he talks about. Alloy talks to herself (I know a lot of people don't like that, but I am fine with it). And there is resources gathering. I know you put in there for guys and gals like Ian, but come on Jones, how is resource gathering a negative in and of itself? Unless it doesn't feel natural or in-sync with rest of the game, resource gathering is fine.
 
I don't really get the chatter criticism. Why is it a bad thing for Aloy to talk to herself? Geralt did that plenty when investigating things in TW3 and nobody had a problem with that. I just don't understand why someone would find the character they're playing to be annoying when they talk.
 
I wrote the preview for Press Start about the game having Dungeons (known as Cauldrons). I spent about an hour playing in one of them, and have footage but unfortunately am not allowed to share it which is a real shame as it's like nothing seen in any other footage.

The Director of Guerrilla said that they were where Robots are created and born so think of them as underground Robot factories.

It's unclear whether there is only one of them or multiple but it was HUGE and not apart of the regular story.

http://press-start.com.au/news/play...n-zero-dawn-features-badass-robotic-dungeons/

Happy to answer any questions :)

These sound amazing, thanks for sharing.
 
The game looks gorgeous, but man, is the writing/voice acting weak. The previews so far are positive despite that so maybe it won't be so bad? I'm probably just going to wait until reviews hit instead of getting it at launch.
 
LOL. That's actually the video I did watch and am referencing. Look at how their faces react (or not) with what's coming out of their mouths.

So are you going to link an open world RPG with better facial animations? I have played through The Witcher 3 and not once did it animate as good as it does in Horizon.
 
As to your first post: most videos indicate whether or not it's regular PS4 or Pro. Both versions have footage of the game across the different previews.

In regards to markers: yes, you can turn most of them off, hide them or scale the size.

I see. I watched (skimmed) the videos muted so I had no idea.

That's fantastic then.
 
I don't really get the chatter criticism. Why is it a bad thing for Aloy to talk to herself? Geralt did that plenty when investigating things in TW3 and nobody had a problem with that. I just don't understand why someone would find the character they're playing to be annoying when they talk.
Nathan Drake does it as well
 
There are two negatives he talks about. Alloy talks to herself (I know a lot of people don't like that, but I am fine with it). And there is resources gathering. I know you put in there for guys and gals like Ian, but come on Jones, how is resource gathering a negative in and of itself? Unless it doesn't feel natural or in-sync with rest of the game, resource gathering is fine.

His 2nd criticism, imo, can be rounded up as "this game is fundamentally a collection of many different open-world design trends put together. Well-put, but still of that ilk. Crafting, harvesting, towering, base-conquering, etc."

For those who are completely turned off by open-world game design by the very basic principals of it, this probably ain't going to be for that person.
 
Any good videos comparing base ps4 vs the Pro version? Trying to decide if i wanna get the pro for this one.
Also they should have got Samuel Jackson to voice Brom lol
 
There are two negatives he talks about. Alloy talks to herself (I know a lot of people don't like that, but I am fine with it). And there is resources gathering. I know you put in there for guys and gals like Ian, but come on Jones, how is resource gathering a negative in and of itself? Unless it doesn't feel natural or in-sync with rest of the game, resource gathering is fine.

I don't think he put it as a true negative so much as he's acknowledging that some might not like it even though he personally enjoys it.

I think it'll depend on how customizable the HUD ends up being for me. If loot is fairly easy to discern without the marker, I'm game.
 
I'm canceling my preorder. I was never so hyped as everyone else, but it looks more generic than I expected, I'm not in the mood for another FC Primal, robot dinosaurs or not.

I'm sure I'll play it, but no point buying on launch at full price when I know Zelda will easily grab my full attention.

Then why did you preorder in the first place? Makes no sense.
 
I don't really get the chatter criticism. Why is it a bad thing for Aloy to talk to herself? Geralt did that plenty when investigating things in TW3 and nobody had a problem with that. I just don't understand why someone would find the character they're playing to be annoying when they talk.

Have you played Dragon's Dogma? That was one of the worst things ever in that beatifully flawed masterpiece. After the hundredth "HARPIES HATE FIRE!!!!" and "WOLVES HUNT IN PACKS!!!", you really would have done anything for a chatter toggle. That was of course not counting the non stop shit they would say in between repeating their battle cries. It's not the fact that a character is talking, it's the volume of it.
 
I don't really get the chatter criticism. Why is it a bad thing for Aloy to talk to herself? Geralt did that plenty when investigating things in TW3 and nobody had a problem with that. I just don't understand why someone would find the character they're playing to be annoying when they talk.

That's always something that struck me as odd. Maybe if it sounded like a monologue in her head rather than her talking out loud, they'd react to it better I dunno.

Have you played Dragon's Dogma? That was one of the worst things ever in that beatifully flawed masterpiece. After the hundredth "HARPIES HATE FIRE!!!!" and "WOLVES HUNT IN PACKS!!!", you really would have done anything for a chatter toggle.

This is definitely more like Uncharted where Aloy talks after a specific script trigger though. It's nothing like Dragon's Dogma issue.

His 2nd criticism, imo, can be rounded up as "this game is fundamentally a collection of many different open-world design trends put together. Well-put, but still of that ilk. Crafting, harvesting, towering, base-conquering, etc."

For those who are completely turned off by open-world game design by the very basic principals of it, this probably ain't going to be for that person.

You could say the same thing of Zelda too which I find odd minus the lack of quest markers (which is admittedly a design changing decision). I think its more a criticism about a presentation of content and the structure that binds them rather than the content itself. If it comes across as a hodgepodge of tropes, it's an issue.
 
So are you going to link an open world RPG with better facial animations? I have played through The Witcher 3 and not once did it animate as good as it does in Horizon.

That might be true, but so far the writing has been no where as good as TW3. From what I have seen anyway. It wouldn't bother me so much if the stuff coming out of the characters was up to that caliber in terms of writing and VO work.
 
Yeah if I decide to stick w/ LED, the KS8000 is the one I would go for. One of my coworkers just picked that one up and it looks fantastic.
Got the 65 during the samsung epp deal its a bad ass tv. Which makes me wonder if i even need the pro since the thing upscales beautifully. Good luck whatever set you choose. The LG oleds are bad ass too unfortunately out of my range for the 65.
 
I don't really get the chatter criticism. Why is it a bad thing for Aloy to talk to herself? Geralt did that plenty when investigating things in TW3 and nobody had a problem with that. I just don't understand why someone would find the character they're playing to be annoying when they talk.
When games are so good even things that don't really matter get nit picked. That's the sign of a good game. Look at TW3 with grass criticism.
 
Have you played Dragon's Dogma? That was one of the worst things ever in that beatifully flawed masterpiece. After the hundredth "HARPIES HATE FIRE!!!!" and "WOLVES HUNT IN PACKS!!!", you really would have done anything for a chatter toggle. That was of course not counting the non stop shit they would say in between repeating their battle cries. It's not the fact that a character is talking, it's the volume of it.

Yeah, wolves hunt in packs, but from what I gather, Aloy's chatter is more akin to Geralt's when he's investigating things, no? I guess I need to experience for myself to see if it'd be annoying, but the chatter that people complain about in the E3 gameplay demos were never bothersome to me.
 
The more I watch the videos, the more I remember Dragon Age Inquisition, especially for the narrative and open world gameplay/mechanic with the unlocking new places to gather new quests. Combat is totally different though, of course.
 
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