Horizon Zero Dawn Spoiler-free Impressions (for real this time)

I'm being dead serious with this: I'm interested in this game, but FFXV scarred me from open worlds. It was dull and almost nothing of substance to do minus the handful of optional dungeons and the tedious hunts. Main story was really unsatisfying as well.

Can anyone who has played both games say if Horizon is any better?
 
theofficefan99 said:
I'm being dead serious with this: I'm interested in this game, but FFXV scarred me from open worlds. It was dull and almost nothing of substance to do minus the handful of optional dungeons and the tedious hunts. Main story was really unsatisfying as well.

Can anyone who has played both games say if Horizon is any better?
Click to expand...

I quit FFXV 3 hours in for mostly the same reasons and I couldn't put down Horizon. There.

More_Badass said:
A screenshot from Guerrilla's Twitter countdown
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C4tO-trWIAIZsZs.jpg
Is this a city, one of the villages? Looks pretty large, so if that's a village, that would be impressive
Click to expand...

Would you like an answer or is this rhetorical
yes that's part of a city you can visit
.

Wabba said:
Great review, and thanks for you sticking around and answering questions. Just preordered the game from PSN. How is the replayability in this game? I know that you haven't finished it yet, but would it still be possible to answer?
Click to expand...

Thats an interesting question. I'd like to play it again just to see the story develop all over again, but I have enough fun plundering the open world that I kind of don't want to go back to the beginning area hahaha. I don't know how to answer this. There's not a lot different from playing through once or twice. The freshness comes from the interaction with the open world. The plot and NPCs and side quests remain constant.
 
I can totally see some kind of combat arena DLC being released in the near future, and then possibly a side story expansion later on. The gameplay is too good for just one game.
 
My Aloy's about level 42 now - main quest requirements are about level 20ish (lol) so I've started to take them on and move forward with the story. 80 percent of the map has been uncovered I think. I've got a few minor skills to fill in and I would have gotten the whole skill tree

Gotta say, the strengths of the creature design really can't be talked up enough - even with new weapons and upgraded kit, they remain fun to fight and there's something terribly catharthic about taking down the huge beasts.I think with most open world, you run around and then you fight humans and shoot shit and nothing has these "boss fighty" encounters just lying around. Even now, if I'm not careful - fighting the
crocodiles and midway, birds
show up. There's a really high chance of dying.

Fighting the
tunneling robot
Probably the most difficult one for me this game so far. It was very hard. Died a lot of times. Imagine my horror when a bit later
I wander into a corruption zone and there's 2 corrupted versions of it just sitting there
Nope the fuck out of there.

The game mechanically has 4 slots in which to carry weapons/weapon wheel and I'm finding that they're encouraging you to mix up the weapons, hence the inventory slots in which you can carry multiple weapons so you can swap them up as needed. There's a lot of strategy to this. I think you'll all play it a bit different depending on what weapons you end up favouring.

also, you know how in Gears or one of them 3rd person games where you get a heavy weapon and you lose it in the cutscenes? Here you can take it with you (limited by carry/walking speed) and walk around between areas and mow down creatures. Sooooo soo good.

And seriously, this is one hella of a good looking game. I can't believe how good it looks.
 
theofficefan99 said:
I'm being dead serious with this: I'm interested in this game, but FFXV scarred me from open worlds. It was dull and almost nothing of substance to do minus the handful of optional dungeons and the tedious hunts. Main story was really unsatisfying as well.

Can anyone who has played both games say if Horizon is any better?
Click to expand...

I'll say this. I love open world games, but could not stomach more than a few hours of FFXV.
 
Haven't really kept up with every Horizon thread, so sorry if this was already covered, but can someone elaborate a bit on how the HUD options work?

I just listened to the bombcast last night and they were saying if you set everything to dynamic, everything pretty much goes away except when you need it. Sounds like the ideal way to make the game more immersive.
 
RedlineRonin said:
Haven't really kept up with every Horizon thread, so sorry if this was already covered, but can someone elaborate a bit on how the HUD options work?

I just listened to the bombcast last night and they were saying if you set everything to dynamic, everything pretty much goes away except when you need it. Sounds like the ideal way to make the game more immersive.
Click to expand...
Here is what it looks like.

3191827-hud.jpg
 
Two good excerpts from a podcast on the game

On how the combat is tactical
When I say "hunt", it very much feels like that. What I really dig about this game is that so many games feel like shooters. At any given time, I'd say half, if not three quarters, of the weapons in my quick-pick menu were designed to buff my actual attack.

So one would be designed to remove armor at close range, one would be to - say they were birds - pull them down from the air and pin them to the ground. The other would be used to make them cold or electric, which is a buff for your attack. And then I would deal attacks

So it really made me start planning out all of these hunts. Not just in the game's main stages, but going about the environment, I would see a big creature and I would say "I'm going to find a way to kill that thing and strip it for its parts, how can I best do that?"
Click to expand...

On the "towers" and how this game improves upon what people consider a very annoying Ubisoft thing
Doing each of those was really compelling, because it has a really good build for all these side things. Here, do that. Okay, now do that with the challenge of being surrounded by land creatures you have sneak past. Okay, now do that but there are now these nightmare bird things in the air

I really enjoyed that versus the Ubisoft model, which is instead of having seven really good towers, there will be 30 towers and they'll all kind of be the same
Click to expand...
 
Purple_Orchid said:
Every open-world or semi open-world needs a NG+ it boggles my mind why developers don't implement it. I'm still hoping they patch it in after launch.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure they're gonna add that with a patch and some DLC stuff, maybe they announce their plans after release
 
More_Badass said:
Two good excerpts from a podcast on the game

On how the combat is tactical

When I say "hunt", it very much feels like that. What I really dig about this game is that so many games feel like shooters. At any given time, I'd say half, if not three quarters, of the weapons in my quick-pick menu were designed to buff my actual attack.

So one would be designed to remove armor at close range, one would be to - say they were birds - pull them down from the air and pin them to the ground. The other would be used to make them cold or electric, which is a buff for your attack. And then I would deal attacks

So it really made me start planning out all of these hunts. Not just in the game's main stages, but going about the environment, I would see a big creature and I would say "I'm going to find a way to kill that thing and strip it for its parts, how can I best do that?"
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

Yeah, I have been getting the impression that there is also a little Monster Hunter here as well. Which is fantastic.
 
LastMinuteHero said:
You know danny o'dwyer said the same thing; they made climbing the tallnecks cool and fun
Click to expand...

It's all different too. That's the thing about this. They made all their necks a bit different so it's not quite the same route up. I appreciate that.

Btw, climbing in horizon is sorta automated but they don't need to make it trickier. I like that Aloy is able to clamber up walls very easiy. So you can climb a large wall very quickly
 
Can anyone who's played comment on whether it's possible to turn off being able to spot enemies through walls with Aloy's batman-witcher-assassin-googleglass vision?
 
Blackthorn said:
Can anyone who's played comment on whether it's possible to turn off being able to spot enemies through walls with Aloy's batman-witcher-assassin-googleglass vision?
Click to expand...

It's mapped to R3. You can just not use it I guess, I don't think you can turn it off.

I don't find it anywhere near as intrusive as batman vision though. I use it to tag human enemies but mostly just to check the weak points of the robos.
 
Psychological Intellect said:
It's mapped to R3. You can just not use it I guess, I don't think you can turn it off.

I don't find it anywhere near as intrusive as batman vision though. I use it to tag human enemies but mostly just to check the weak points of the robos.
Click to expand...
I'm fine with tagging and highlighting enemies, I just don't like it when I can see enemies through walls. It's the height of cheapness.
 
A few questions for those who are playing the game. Thanks.

1. If you clear out an area of enemies (human or machines), do they respawn when you go back to that area or is it...once it's cleared, it's cleared?

2. When talking to NPC's, if you select one dialogue choice, do the others disappear or can they be selected after the first dialogue choice wraps up?
 
daniel77733 said:
A few questions for those who are playing the game. Thanks.

1. If you clear out an area of enemies (human or machines), do they respawn when you go back to that area or is it...once it's cleared, it's cleared?

2. When talking to NPC's, if you select one dialogue choice, do the others disappear or can they be selected after the first dialogue choice wraps up?
Click to expand...

1. Humans stay cleared, robots respawn.

2. They don't disappear.
 
ironcreed said:
I'll say this. I love open world games, but could not stomach more than a few hours of FFXV.
Click to expand...

I put 150 hours into it, and still came out feeling "Meh." If an open world game ain't trying to do anything innovative regarding traversing it (Like say Gravity Rush), then at least gimme a bunch of actually neat shit to find, and sidequests that actually matter.
 
One last question...

Brandon Jones from Easy Allies said on Frame Trap that there's no HDR on the disc and will be added in with the day one patch. Is this true? Can those who are playing the game confirm if HDR is on the disc or not? Thanks.
 
daniel77733 said:
One last question...

Brandon Jones from Easy Allies said on Frame Trap that there's no HDR on the disc and will be added in with the day one patch. Is this true? Can those who are playing the game confirm if HDR is on the disc or not? Thanks.
Click to expand...

HDR should be on the disc. At the sony show case, it was already working on the tv there and that's off the discs they had.

The patch is to enable you to change settings HDR/SDR + other like framerate/visual quality on the PRO.
 
Sorry if has been asked already but don't have time to read all the thread but how big is the open world compared to other games. Also is there plenty of secrets amd other places to discover in the world, are you free to roam it.
 
Kenzodielocke said:
They should totally add a NG+.
Click to expand...

Yup. Still waiting for info on this.
There's no way you have such good gameplay and no new game + (GG get on this man)
I want to keep hunting mmachines in this world.
from info creating a machine takes a lot of time, so adding lots of loot and costumes with some more padding for dlc and new game + seems like a no brained tbh

From past KZ games I've played, when horizon 2 comes out and it has coop mechanics/online features. Knowing GG and their good support of games, man. It will be epic. I'm talking 95MC, multiple game of the year awards sorry to other games coming out close to it, Cuz that multiplayer will be bonkers!
 
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