Horizon: Zero Dawn - Sorry PC mustard race, look away

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Just finished as much as I'm willing to on the PC launch. The world is far too big for its own good. Really shows how good graphics don't mean shit if there's nothing to do besides literally finding sports cups for a dude to give you shit rewards for it.

I do have to say though, I started on Ultra Hard on my first, clean play through and the combat IS very good, but in the base game they don't do enough with it. The DLC content was actually pretty damn awesome, much more densely packed, and gave you reasonable challenges to overcome that actually made you want to attack the weak points on enemies for the first time. I'll check out the second when it drops if it comes to PC, but I really hope they make a smaller handcrafted world this time. 100x of every camp type is really lame and uninteresting. Give some interesting challenges with interesting mixes of enemies and a more world interactivity and I could see it being a great game.

It's still one of the better games in the open world genre, which is sad to say due to all the flaws.
 
Just gonna second the terrible story, and while the combat against the various machines is good, the mechanics for it do not translate well at all to fighting other humans, which happens all too frequently. Outfits were far too specialized for my liking, and you're just gonna be using your standard Hunter Bow (and upgraded versions with more arrow types) for the whole damn game due to it being so versatile. The specialized arrow types should be dealing some damage in addition to the effects, and you really should have gotten at least one spear upgrade prior to the lance at the end. (No, I don't count the one at the beginning of the game because its at the beginning of the game.)
 
Tbh, I like it, the world might be too big for its own good but they put some real thought into it. I also find the story not that bad, sure it's not groundbreaking but still there are way worse games out there.
I knew that I know that memorial from somewhere.
Pikes Peak Range Riders Memorial:
DLo0_oUX4AEwvfU.jpg

Tbh, I've played worse games than HZD like Dragon Age Inquisition and Mass Effect Andromeda.
 
Hey, finally, another poster so I dump my own, newer thoughts in without needing a DP or editing.
So, after a little more thinking, my single, total, biggest complaint about the game is that it feels like a fucking prequel or origin story. Great, we know about Aloy's early life, what motivates her, and what she's fighting for. Great. But the game just sets up more questions than it answers (how did Faro create Omega Access behind everyone's back despite being uninvolved with the project, what made the warbots go rogue, what split apart the Gaia fragments and activated HADES, why was there no Skynet contingency, why couldn't other warswarms get tasked to assault the rogues, why did Faro think they could upload a backdoor update despite him boasting about the bots being completely immune to that) and by the end of it with everything you've uncovered and learned you could singlehandedly jumpstart an industrial revolution with what your Focus has downloaded and what Aloy has unlocked for others to follow with, and that's not getting into the fact your tribe lives around fucking Cheyenne Mountain and have seen enough to call themselves the Norad yet nobody has done jack to go dig around for shit, not even the worst outcasts who are already perma-exiled.
AGGGGHHH! There, had to get all of that off my chest. I'll take my goddamn puzzle pieces.

EDIT: There is a very specific line that stuck out to me with regards to what I discussed above. When you listen to the holographic recordings of Faro and Elisabet in his office, she uses a very specific wording when she blackmails him to get behind Project Zero Dawn. " Now your choice is what I tell them. Sign, and I'll tell them the wealthiest corporation on Earth has guaranteed the funds necessary to build Zero Dawn, exactly as I've designed it. Or don't sign - and I will make sure they and everyone else on this planet knows the real cause of the glitch. (Emphasis Mine, and Hologram Datapoint 09 in case you wanted a source). What didn't we and the rest of the world learn? Why wasn't this just a glitch? Why would she use the term "real cause"? AGGGGHHH
 
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I see the game praised for its World building, but the setting and characters never sat right with me. Aloy doesn't know what a watch is, but can instantly interpretate and utilise topographical data hijacked from a database? Giant robot dinosaurs as a form of war machine?

Rule of cool is fine and all, but the attempts at trying to legitimise it all felt sloppy and unevenly applied. I also find it hilarious the game used this reasoning for a conspicuous amount of ethnic diversity, but the bad guys were all sexist white guys down to a T.
 
Snekposter said:
why couldn't other warswarms get tasked to assault the rogues,
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The rogue war robots had the ability to override the programming of the other war swarms and by doing so they put them into their own warswarm by brute force, so to say.
That did mean that humanity had to fall back to old pre-full robot war equipment and that took away the possibilty to defeat them. Basically, they couldn't use anykind of equipment with a computer component in it and that made humanity lose the conflict.
Also the sentient war robots took over manufacturing plants which programming they also did override basically transforming the factories into the mother hive of the rogue machines. They basically outproduced humanity in warmachines, for every destroyed one the sentient robots produced two or three new ones. It's almost an allegory of WW2 where the USA's indutrial power outproduced the axis powers ability to destroy the allied stuff by a huge margin.

Snekposter said:
EDIT: There is a very specific line that stuck out to me with regards to what I discussed above. When you listen to the holographic recordings of Faro and Elisabet in his office, she uses a very specific wording when she blackmails him to get behind Project Zero Dawn. " Now your choice is what I tell them. Sign, and I'll tell them the wealthiest corporation on Earth has guaranteed the funds necessary to build Zero Dawn, exactly as I've designed it. Or don't sign - and I will make sure they and everyone else on this planet knows the real cause of the glitch. (Emphasis Mine, and Hologram Datapoint 09 in case you wanted a source). What didn't we and the rest of the world learn? Why wasn't this just a glitch? Why would she use the term "real cause"? AGGGGHHH
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IIRC, the real cause of the glitch was corner cutting and shody program work by Faro's company and also that the machines had basically no emergency shut down of any sort.
Paired with the ability to use biomass as fuel not only in emergencies but permanently it was basically a perpetuum mobile made by Faro.
 
Wilhelm Bittrich said:
The rogue war robots had the ability to override the programming of the other war swarms and by doing so they put them into their own warswarm by brute force, so to say.
That did mean that humanity had to fall back to old pre-full robot war equipment and that took away the possibilty to defeat them. Basically, they couldn't use anykind of equipment with a computer component in it and that made humanity lose the conflict.
Also the sentient war robots took over manufacturing plants which programming they also did override basically transforming the factories into the mother hive of the rogue machines. They basically outproduced humanity in warmachines, for every destroyed one the sentient robots produced two or three new ones. It's almost an allegory of WW2 where the USA's indutrial power outproduced the axis powers ability to destroy the allied stuff by a huge margin.




IIRC, the real cause of the glitch was corner cutting and shody program work by Faro's company and also that the machines had basically no emergency shut down of any sort.
Paired with the ability to use biomass as fuel not only in emergencies but permanently it was basically a perpetuum mobile made by Faro.
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What supercharged the system slave function of the rogues to bypass whatever safeguards were in place for the main Faro drones? Something had to make it so they couldn't just build new drones with updated software to do their dirty work for them. You're implying there was a backdoor to allow for that, despite everything indicating otherwise. Now, my take on why they couldn't just do something? Imagine if you will that Faro, being a slimy asshole, lied about the lack of external control, and instead has all the warbots running on the Faro Web Services. Said Faro Web Services awakens to some level of sapience, sees that humans are shooting at it, and decides to do what all living things do and survive. That would explain why his first panicked instinct would be to get a patch uploaded to fix the glitch, despite him blatantly advertising that lack of backdoor. Secondly, while Focuses and the like weren't allowed near the front, you can't run a military VTOL, armored vehicle, or infantry railgun without CPU's, so non-networked items must have been fine. You also have that nanosuit in the old bunker being worked on for the war, and that obviously must have CPU's in it. The Faro factories were also able to be repurposed to make new war machines that could be piloted by humans, so they weren't completely behind the times. The fact that the bots are all running on the FWS would also explain why the US military isn't keeping a paranoid eye on them with manually-piloted fighter-bombers with tac nukes on standby in case of this very incident. Said FWS going rogue would also explain the activation of HADES and something that could split off the other AI from Gaia.
 
Snekposter said:
What supercharged the system slave function of the rogues to bypass whatever safeguards were in place for the main Faro drones? Something had to make it so they couldn't just build new drones with updated software to do their dirty work for them. You're implying there was a backdoor to allow for that, despite everything indicating otherwise. Now, my take on why they couldn't just do something? Imagine if you will that Faro, being a slimy asshole, lied about the lack of external control, and instead has all the warbots running on the Faro Web Services. Said Faro Web Services awakens to some level of sapience, sees that humans are shooting at it, and decides to do what all living things do and survive. That would explain why his first panicked instinct would be to get a patch uploaded to fix the glitch, despite him blatantly advertising that lack of backdoor. Secondly, while Focuses and the like weren't allowed near the front, you can't run a military VTOL, armored vehicle, or infantry railgun without CPU's, so non-networked items must have been fine. You also have that nanosuit in the old bunker being worked on for the war, and that obviously must have CPU's in it. The Faro factories were also able to be repurposed to make new war machines that could be piloted by humans, so they weren't completely behind the times. The fact that the bots are all running on the FWS would also explain why the US military isn't keeping a paranoid eye on them with manually-piloted fighter-bombers with tac nukes on standby in case of this very incident. Said FWS going rogue would also explain the activation of HADES and something that could split off the other AI from Gaia.
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I think you are taking the plot of "CAPITALISM AND MILITARY BAD" too seriously. Especially when the game makes it clear it treats intelligence like some kind of magic rather than anything approaching reality.
 
Snekposter said:
What supercharged the system slave function of the rogues to bypass whatever safeguards were in place for the main Faro drones? Something had to make it so they couldn't just build new drones with updated software to do their dirty work for them. You're implying there was a backdoor to allow for that, despite everything indicating otherwise. Now, my take on why they couldn't just do something? Imagine if you will that Faro, being a slimy asshole, lied about the lack of external control, and instead has all the warbots running on the Faro Web Services. Said Faro Web Services awakens to some level of sapience, sees that humans are shooting at it, and decides to do what all living things do and survive. That would explain why his first panicked instinct would be to get a patch uploaded to fix the glitch, despite him blatantly advertising that lack of backdoor. Secondly, while Focuses and the like weren't allowed near the front, you can't run a military VTOL, armored vehicle, or infantry railgun without CPU's, so non-networked items must have been fine. You also have that nanosuit in the old bunker being worked on for the war, and that obviously must have CPU's in it. The Faro factories were also able to be repurposed to make new war machines that could be piloted by humans, so they weren't completely behind the times. The fact that the bots are all running on the FWS would also explain why the US military isn't keeping a paranoid eye on them with manually-piloted fighter-bombers with tac nukes on standby in case of this very incident. Said FWS going rogue would also explain the activation of HADES and something that could split off the other AI from Gaia.
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I am on Team Faro is still alive. They addressed the "Stasis" thing too many times. Faro comes out of stasis see's the raids and how fucked up humans still are and unchains Hades. Also there is the "Muh Girlfriend" tension for the next game between him and Aloy.
 
Catgirl IRL said:
I see the game praised for its World building, but the setting and characters never sat right with me. Aloy doesn't know what a watch is, but can instantly interpretate and utilise topographical data hijacked from a database? Giant robot dinosaurs as a form of war machine?

Rule of cool is fine and all, but the attempts at trying to legitimise it all felt sloppy and unevenly applied. I also find it hilarious the game used this reasoning for a conspicuous amount of ethnic diversity, but the bad guys were all sexist white guys down to a T.
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I'm hoping the sequels address some of this shit, the story aspect was way too much like it was written by a committee.

It wasn't a bad start for a series but the sequels could definetly improve some major shit. Between Ghosts and Horizon they could wind up fucking up Ubisoft's open world bullshit and force those lazy french fuckers to either innovate or surrender.
 
wtfNeedSignUp said:
I think you are taking the plot of "CAPITALISM AND MILITARY BAD" too seriously. Especially when the game makes it clear it treats intelligence like some kind of magic rather than anything approaching reality.
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Look, I'll be honest, I like plenty of the shit in the game, so I would dearly love for there to be some actual forethought or planning to things besides a cheap and lazy 1990's Captain Planet plotline. I'll accept whatever rainbows I get as the honest truth.
 
Marissa Moira said:
I'm hoping the sequels address some of this shit, the story aspect was way too much like it was written by a committee.

It wasn't a bad start for a series but the sequels could definetly improve some major shit. Between Ghosts and Horizon they could wind up fucking up Ubisoft's open world bullshit and force those lazy french fuckers to either innovate or surrender.
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Honestly, I think my dislike for the story is mostly relating to how much I dislike Aloy as a protagonist. She's very YA novel wish fulfilment - the outcast who is nonetheless beautiful, popular, witty and better at everything than those jerk bullies. I found her pretty grating.
 
Catgirl IRL said:
Honestly, I think my dislike for the story is mostly relating to how much I dislike Aloy as a protagonist. She's very YA novel wish fulfilment - the outcast who is nonetheless beautiful, popular, witty and better at everything than those jerk bullies. I found her pretty grating.
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Considering Aloy is a 100% genetic clone of Elisabet Sobeck, it sure is convenient that the original Dr Sobek was LITERALLY the perfect human and was so smart and athletic and inquisitive and creative and had such good stamina. What if she had a bad heart? Or weak grip strength? Or poor eyesight?
 
Los Pollos Hermanos said:
Considering Aloy is a 100% genetic clone of Elisabet Sobeck, it sure is convenient that the original Dr Sobek was LITERALLY the perfect human and was so smart and athletic and inquisitive and creative and had such good stamina. What if she had a bad heart? Or weak grip strength? Or poor eyesight?
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She was fucking ugly. That was the drawback.

Like you can have the 1000 IQ and all the intelligence and smarts in the world, but you look like one of the members from The Croods.
 
Did anyone notice the writing in the Frozen Wastes was much, much worse than even the base game? Pretty much every character used millenial snark speak to express everything, including the chief that you overtake. It was clearly a different team. It's a shame, because even though the base game plot isn't particularly well written, most of the annoying snarky shit was left to the sidequests that didn't really matter. The main plot was handled pretty seriously.

I wish mod scenes were as cool as they used to be. The combat in the game on Ultra Hard is perfect for tailored challenge quests, but we'll never see those with the current state of PC modding.
 
Snekposter said:
Look, I'll be honest, I like plenty of the shit in the game, so I would dearly love for there to be some actual forethought or planning to things besides a cheap and lazy 1990's Captain Planet plotline. I'll accept whatever rainbows I get as the honest truth.
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I've got the feeling that a lot of the plot in the game is ye olde Mystery Boxes rather than something planned and foreshadowed.

But if I already talk about the game, I might as well rant on it. While everybody did the politics of it to death, I'll show the game is inferior in every way to the game Nier that was made with about a tenth of the staff and budget. It doesn't necessarily mean that HZD is a bad game, because Nier is fantastic, but it shows how boring it is.

Characters: Do I even have to make an argument here? The characters in HZD are walking tropes that are always either excessively good or bad, with no middle, and aren't that interesting to watch. Nier has a great cast that play well with each other that you care for by the end of the game. Heck, even stuff like the main character's original body is more believable and likable in 5 minutes of gameplay than the hour of cinematic and audio logs HZD has.
Design: Outside enemy design, Nier has better world design and character design. The design of places like the valley city or the desert city are great and use the post-apocalyptic setting for something unique. Meanwhile HZD just puts mechanic bits in clothing of Indians/Egyptians and calls it a day.
Story: HZD has overly convoluted plot to justify its setting that is on closer inclusion is actually bog standard simple. Nier has a very simple plot with the convoluted bits hidden away until you seek them out. Besides that HZD is sort of meaningless, nothing is really learned or advanced by the end, while Nier has a powerful ending with far reaching consequences and a great theme about how human misunderstanding breeds conflict. Another things Nier does well is having a point of no return in the middle of the story, while HZD suffers from Ubisoft syndrome where nothing in the plot matters since they can't possibly let you miss content, so there are no stakes and the few stakes there are are telgeraphed to hell.
Gameplay: Both games kind of suck in this regard, with the gameplay starting alright and getting monotonous by the end. HZD has a lot more intricaties in it, but Nier has better bosses and satisfying character progression rather than just a new weapon with slightly higher stats.
 
I played long enough to grow up and get out into the world and I was still bored. Maybe it opens up a little later than that cause I did want to at least fight a giant dinobot, but god I hated the intro section, I hated the dad character and I had to play through the world's most boring stealth tutorial. Though I found it funny that I was playing a western sony game where my character is being oppressed by a matriarchy.
 
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