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Horizon Zero Dawn |OT| The Land After Time

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Chance

Member
Young, white, woman with red and/ or brown hair, and a bow and arrow is so specific, and it has still somehow been done over and over again lately. Right off the top of my head there is Aloy, Ellie from The Last of Us, Lara Croft, Katniss from Hunger Games, and whatever her name is from Brave.

I just keep picturing a bunch of white dudes around a conference table agreeing that it's a proven design that makes sound financial sense.

Yep.

"In all of video games, there's that one successful triple-A franchise with a female lead (Tomb Raider). It's not risky at all to do a game in a genre we've never tackled with a girl on the cover - this is proven science."

"Booly for that!"

"Rabble rabble!"

"Ahhh we're playing it so safe! Security is truly a potent intoxicant."

(Sarcasm.)
 
Only Lara Croft is the MC of her game and the weapon she is known for is her twin guns .
Plus this not taking into account the story or the world it self which as GG said was a hard sell .

Got the Platinum Trophy but no theme for me :(

259600-tomb-raider-playstation-3-front-cover.jpg


315670-rise-of-the-tomb-raider-xbox-one-front-cover.png
 
Young, white, woman with red and/ or brown hair, and a bow and arrow is so specific, and it has still somehow been done over and over again lately. Right off the top of my head there is Aloy, Ellie from The Last of Us, Lara Croft

Actually, you should go on. You've listed two other video game characters and already had to change the hair color. Keep going.

Remember, your claim was that her "character archetype is as played out as a bald, beefy, white male space marine with an assault rifle." So please list out all the examples.
 

Chance

Member
Aloy, robot animals and natural environments were the 3 pillars of the game Guerrilla had in their initial pitch, 5 years ago. That is before TLoU, before Lara's reboot and shortly after Brave.

I can't find them cynical or pandering in this. If anything they looked at Mredia and said "yes, and..."
 
The narrative behind what caused the world to be the way it is might be unoriginal, but goddamn it is created in a fantastic way. It's like
The Terminator
, but built up so much better.

Fuck you,
Ted Faro
and
the head Zero Dawn team who let him live with them at GAIA Prime
. Very awesome. I've rarely been so happy to be pissed off.
 

zulux21

Member
is ellie even famous for her bow, i thought she stabbed people

ellie is known to stab people.
lara croft is known for her boobs and guns. (even if the reboot tried for something else she is still known for her twin pistols)
Brave was considered a flop by most people and not a strong agument for something that will sell.
I don't know anything about the hunger games girl... I assume her gimmick is she was hungry :p I know she was always dirty in the pictures I saw. Don't recall a bow though.
and to be fair I doubt Aloy will be known for her bow either... she will merely be known for fighting robot dinos no one will remember the weapon :p
 
is ellie even famous for her bow, i thought she stabbed people

I would think it would be her vulgar language and short knife .( she loves stabbing people lol)

ellie is known to stab people.
lara croft is known for her boobs and guns. (even if the reboot tried for something else she is still known for her twin pistols)
Brave was considered a flop by most people and not a strong agument for something that will sell.
I don't know anything about the hunger games girl... I assume her gimmick is she was hungry :p
and to be fair I doubt Aloy will be known for her bow either... she will merely be known for fighting robot dinos no one will remember the weapon :p

This is also true lol .
Also at this point i think i use her spear just as much :)
 
Young, white, woman with red and/ or brown hair, and a bow and arrow is so specific, and it has still somehow been done over and over again lately. Right off the top of my head there is Aloy, Ellie from The Last of Us, Lara Croft, Katniss from Hunger Games, and whatever her name is from Brave.

I just keep picturing a bunch of white dudes around a conference table agreeing that it's a proven design that makes sound financial sense.

Not really.

A female protagonist is still considered a risky bet all things considered.
 
ellie is known to stab people.
lara croft is known for her boobs and guns. (even if the reboot tried for something else she is still known for her twin pistols)
Brave was considered a flop by most people and not a strong agument for something that will sell.
I don't know anything about the hunger games girl... I assume her gimmick is she was hungry :p I know she was always dirty in the pictures I saw. Don't recall a bow though.
and to be fair I doubt Aloy will be known for her bow either... she will merely be known for fighting robot dinos no one will remember the weapon :p

I'll remember her for the Sling.
 

HowZatOZ

Banned
man I kinda hit that "hmm I think im ready to be done with this" moment, that click in the brain, yesterday when I got to a village for a sidequest and there were 2 more sidequests there, and i bummed me out.

I was very tired/sleep deprived from working graveyard shift the night before tho, and I kinda have Zelda on the brain lately (just like I had Horizon on the brain before buying it which also kinda ruined other games), so im not sure if I was just messed up yesterday from a combination of both, ill see how I feel later today. If I still feel the same, I guess Ill do a bee line for story missions, which ive been negleting for ages now clearing up all the content (im at about 35 hours)
I'm getting to the same point. I went to a random village after trying to find some escaped people and a few quests popped up. Just could not be bothered and I'm now skipping dialogue because it feels like a waste. I think I might just finish up the main story and call it a day, never bothered to 100% open world games.

Though funny enough I have Zelda on my mind as well, can't stop thinking about the endless creativity that game offers and I don't even have a switch yet.
 

zulux21

Member
Not really.

A female protagonist is still considered a risky bet all things considered.

Heck, blizzard uses Tracer in a lot the marketing for overwatch and yet when it came to the collectors edition they still went with a male statue instead of a Tracer statue.


that being said... while I really like the Aloy statue... I am not sure if I would have prefered the Australian statue...


I... think I would trade my Aloy statue for that one :/

I'll remember her for the Sling.
likely ropecaster for me as the first thing that really sold me on the game being kinda cool was the ropecaster taking down the big dino

I'm getting to the same point. I went to a random village after trying to find some escaped people and a few quests popped up. Just could not be bothered and I'm now skipping dialogue because it feels like a waste. I think I might just finish up the main story and call it a day, never bothered to 100% open world games.

Though funny enough I have Zelda on my mind as well, can't stop thinking about the endless creativity that game offers and I don't even have a switch yet.
see and I have finished up horizon to get to zelda and while playing zelda I am just sitting there thinking about how much more fun it was to play horizon.
I figure zelda will get better when I get stuff to increase my climbing speed, but while horizon had the issue that I didn't really feel like I got rewarded for exploring, the zelda game right now has me actively against exploring because it's not fun to do so.
 

Zackat

Member
Heck, blizzard uses Tracer in a lot the marketing for overwatch and yet when it came to the collectors edition they still went with a male statue instead of a Tracer statue.


that being said... while I really like the Aloy statue... I am not sure if I would have prefered the Australian statue...



I... think I would trade my Aloy statue for that one :/

you can buy that statue separately
 

Alpende

Member
I got it today and played like 6 hours already. Visually it looks stunning and the gameplay is very fluid as well. Right now I'm playing it on very hard and I think I'm going to stick to that, it gives me a good enough challenge. I keep collecting everything, not selling stuff because I always fear that I might need parts for upgrading things.

Just finished the first area, cleared the first bandit camp and tomorrow I'm going back to explore more. Good stuff.
 
The narrative behind what caused the world to be the way it is might be unoriginal, but goddamn it is created in a fantastic way. It's like
The Terminator
, but built up so much better.

Fuck you,
Ted Faro
and
the head Zero Dawn team who let him live with them at GAIA Prime
. Very awesome. I've rarely been so happy to be pissed off.

I thought that Faro did not live at GAIA Prime? It seemed like he lived somewhere else from one of the data points saying he is in his bunker with holos/etc. I was so just baffled when that cut scene plays. Like of all the sub commands, you choose to erase APOLLO?!

Makes sense for their to be a sequel, but still!


How many hours are people getting the Platinum in?
 
The issue I have with side quests in general is that they are "filler episodes", as I mentioned a while back. Sometimes a side episode can have a good plot and be as engrossing as the 'main story', but most of them just end up feeling pointless.

Horizon tries to separate this by having side quests and then errands, but they kinda blur together. It would have been cool to have side quests be more lengthy sub plots to the main one, and then errands would involve more of the tracking, gathering, killing business. If that's how it's already done, then I really can't tell the difference. Unlike the story missions, which I was eager to complete, I just look at a quest's distance tracker and go "nah, that's too far away, i'll just do something else."
 

robo

Member
On the road again, packed up ps4, forgot the 🎮, gutted having to watch shitty sd TV in hotel for 2 days until I get home.

Level 43 almost ready to face hades when I get home, finish off some side bits and then go for missing trophies
 
Has anyone else rewatched the E3 footage after playing through the game? What stuck out most to me is that there were roaming Tallnecks in both of the trailers. Tallnecks were always shown as more than one at a time. Of course, in the game there is never more than one at a time.

Why do you think that aspect ended up changing? Were they always meant to be the Ubisoft radio towers of the game, or could they have been more standard machines at some point in development?

I posted gifs of it some odd pages back. I never saw any footage of this game after the E32015 reveal, so when I looked through the E32016 stuff and then found the location in game, it kinda ruined the game for me. Obviously what we got is great, but one of the selling points of the game for me 2 years ago was that "herd like" visual of these "dinosaur robots" wandering massive plains, which is something that rarely happens in the game to the scale it did in the demos.

I disagree that adding more of them "wont add much". One of my suggestion was to have "herds" appear as some kind of timed event, with the Tallnecks somehow rallying nearby machines to follow them to a destination. As for what purpose those herd events serve, that's beyond me at this point. But I think it would have been part of the visual memory that people take away from this game much like the E3 demos showed.
 
The issue I have with side quests in general is that they are "filler episodes", as I mentioned a while back. Sometimes a side episode can have a good plot and be as engrossing as the 'main story', but most of them just end up feeling pointless.

Horizon tries to separate this by having side quests and then errands, but they kinda blur together. It would have been cool to have side quests be more lengthy sub plots to the main one, and then errands would involve more of the tracking, gathering, killing business. If that's how it's already done, then I really can't tell the difference. Unlike the story missions, which I was eager to complete, I just look at a quest's distance tracker and go "nah, that's too far away, i'll just do something else."

Hopefully for the next one we get more quest like that .
Some of them are really nice like one with Vanesha or the hunter lodge one ( can't remember the NPC name lol)
 

zulux21

Member
I posted gifs of it some odd pages back. I never saw any footage of this game after the E32015 reveal, so when I looked through the E32016 stuff and then found the location in game, it kinda ruined the game for me. Obviously what we got is great, but one of the selling points of the game for me 2 years ago was that "herd like" visual of these "dinosaur robots" wandering massive plains, which is something that rarely happens in the game to the scale it did in the demos.

I disagree that adding more of them "wont add much". One of my suggestion was to have "herds" appear as some kind of timed event, with the Tallnecks somehow rallying nearby machines to follow them to a destination. As for what purpose those herd events serve, that's beyond me at this point. But I think it would have been part of the visual memory that people take away from this game much like the E3 demos showed.

I'm willing to bed that things were changed in order to get the thing to even run on the ps4.

a heard like thing sounds great on paper, but there is a good chance it could cause issues on the ps4 given how much of the system resources the game has to be taking up already.

I imagine a ps5 sequel might go more back to that type of thing where it has more resources to be able to do all of that. but I also imagine that won't be until horizon 3 as I figure horizon 2 would at least be cross gen if it is even on the ps5 and thus wouldn't be aiming for that either.
 

VanWinkle

Member
Man, I just did a session of a couple hours where I just did some hunting trials and cleared a bandit camp with Nil, and it was a great time. Sometimes I just want to do some side stuff for a full session, and other times I want to only work on main quests. It really mixes things up to do it this way, I think.

Also, is that first open area in the game as adult Aloy not able to be returned to? I think it may have been Mother's Embrace? Or something. I couldn't find out how to get there.
 
I'm willing to bed that things were changed in order to get the thing to even run on the ps4.

a heard like thing sounds great on paper, but there is a good chance it could cause issues on the ps4 given how much of the system resources the game has to be taking up already.

I imagine a ps5 sequel might go more back to that type of thing where it has more resources to be able to do all of that. but I also imagine that won't be until horizon 3 as I figure horizon 2 would at least be cross gen if it is even on the ps5 and thus wouldn't be aiming for that either.
H2 will come out before PS5 is my guess, a year after Death Stranding, would be awesome
 

aristotle

Member
Man, I just did a session of a couple hours where I just did some hunting trials and cleared a bandit camp with Nil, and it was a great time. Sometimes I just want to do some side stuff for a full session, and other times I want to only work on main quests. It really mixes things up to do it this way, I think.

Also, is that first open area in the game as adult Aloy not able to be returned to? I think it may have been Mother's Embrace? Or something. I couldn't find out how to get there.

You'll be able to go back there later. It's closed off for a bit, but I don't remember for how long. Once you progress the story a little more, it opens up.
 

zulux21

Member
H2 will come out before PS5 is my guess, a year after Death Stranding, would be awesome

eh... I would expect both horizon 2 and the ps5 around the same time.

more so... playstation 3 was launched in 2006
ps4 come out in 2013 which was 7 years.

that gen was already longer than most would like, so 5-6 years is likely more in line for when the ps5 will come. even if we go with 7 years though.... horizon 2 will take at least 3 years which would put it at the 7 year mark anyways.

even if horizon somehow only takes 2 years the ps5 will likely be launching at the fall of 2019 (fits with timeline expectations and would make the pro in the middle of the gen's life) and would make sense at that point to pull a zelda and delay the ps4 version until it can launch at the same time as a ps5 version.
 

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
Why has this game taken 19 minutes to install and still says it has 6 mins left?

Is my external drive throttled?
 

timedesk

Neo Member
is ellie even famous for her bow, i thought she stabbed people

Yeah, I think her switchblade was her most iconic weapon. It was unique in the game because it could not break, and she used it during a few scripted sequences. The only other weapon I associate with her is the machete. Hell they even had a machete at her feet in the trailer for the TLoU2.
 
Hunger games protagonist is the only thing I thought of with aloy. Brave is a much younger English accent girl in a land of magic and Ellie is not at all defined by her bow. Neither is Laura Croft.

I think she's pretty unique in the entertainment world.
 
Overriding a Stormbird and watching it destroy two Sawtooths was an absolute spectacle. I always find something to make me love this game more every time I play.
 

HowZatOZ

Banned
see and I have finished up horizon to get to zelda and while playing zelda I am just sitting there thinking about how much more fun it was to play horizon.
I figure zelda will get better when I get stuff to increase my climbing speed, but while horizon had the issue that I didn't really feel like I got rewarded for exploring, the zelda game right now has me actively against exploring because it's not fun to do so.
Oh definitely each to their own. I'm getting the scratch for Zelda because Horizon, while gigantic in its landscape, is still very structured in I know where I need to go.

Like the poster before who stumbled on somewhere they weren't suppose to, I kind of did with a place to the very north in the first section of the game. While the game told me I couldn't go there yet, I was kind of bummed that I couldn't. That to me is a big difference to Zelda's open world approach in that you can go in that cave at your own peril. Obviously this is done by not tying the cave to the story like I presume Horizon has but it is a nice touch to making the world feel open.

I think my current problem is I'm getting burnt on the side quests while ignoring the main story portion which is top notch. Side quests barely deliver reasonable storylines, mostly repeating themselves with fetch objectives or "detective" mode like Batman. Again, not a major problem as an open world game does need it's fluff but too much can be a detriment when the player does want to go off the leash.

I'd like to repeat that I'm having an absolute blast with this game. It is amazing and was one of my major reasons for trading in my Xbox One for the PS4. I'm at 40+ hours, bit it is running its course on me when I'm bring teased by Zelda's open world approach.

Also yes, our Australian statue is the superior one ;)
 
Overriding a Stormbird and watching it destroy two Sawtooths was an absolute spectacle. I always find something to make me love this game more every time I play.

I corrupted a Stormbird and it was mocking on two Sawtooths, it took its time so eventually I felt pitty about the poor doggies because there were nothing they could do and they were just watching, above... in pain, while the Stormbird shot them. I left.
 

calder

Member
Overriding a Stormbird and watching it destroy two Sawtooths was an absolute spectacle. I always find something to make me love this game more every time I play.

I really wanted to see a stormbird and a thunderjaw go at it but I couldn't find a place where they existed close enough to make it work. Wonder if there is, the stormbird seems willing to chase you down quite a long ways (unlike the thunderjaw, which is frankly pretty lazy and gives up as soon as you cross ankle deep water) so maybe you could kite one far enough to make it happen. I *think* a overridden thunderjaw would agro on a stormbird.
 

Razgreez

Member
My son, 3 years old, is into DINO TRUX.



Me, 3* years old, into Horyzon.



Boys, we grow, but we don't really change :)

My 5 year old used his zoobs to build a tallneck, watcher and shell walker. He loves watching me play the game but the questions just never stop

I suppose it's impossible to please everybody but I'm bemused that people are complaining about the story. They tried to cram as much information into the game in way that allows the player themselves to determine their interest in and thus be rewarded by.

I.e. barely interested in the story? Just skip the scenes/conversations. Interested mildly? Watch the scenes, follow the conversations, holos etc. Quite interested in the story? Read all available/coiled data points etc along with the above. Heavily invested in the story? Collect, read, watch, listen to everything.

I felt the story was quite well done if not a bit rushed at the end. Not amazing yet better/more interesting than most scifi movies I've seen recently.

Also, killzone 3 had better credits :D
 
My 5 year old used his zoobs to build a tallneck, watcher and shell walker. He loves watching me play the game but the questions just never stop

I just shown my little boy some landscapes and a tallneck, he was all excited :) I don't want to show him combat yet... Let's wait another couple of years :)

Even then, he asked 100 questions in the 30 sec I shown... I guess it's normal :D
 
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