The writing up to the proving is atrocious and repetitive and the facial animations are sub par for what I would expect out of a 2017 release. Maybe the writing gets better but when one character says something and the person they are talking to repeats it verbatim then that is poor writing in my opinion.
^ Maybe I just missed this as I was playing, but where in the game does this happen? I can see it in maybe the occasional odd conversation, but the writing overall has been pretty stellar, as is the SF worldbuilding.
AI agree with Tzu here. I wish I could say that the writing in the beginning of the game is anywhere near as good as it is once the story gets rolling, but it isn’t. The biggest problem I had with it was that it was way too “on the nose.”
Here’s a definition that is much better than anything I could put into words for those who aren’t familiar with the term:
“Writing on the nose is a screenwriting term that refers to dialogue or action in which the character’s innermost thoughts and feelings are fully expressed by what the character is saying or doing. There is no nuance, mystery, ambiguity or surprise (as there is in real life). The subtext has been written directly into the text” (source).
I wish I could say the writing gets better after the proving, but in my experience it didn’t improve until I made it to the city of Meridian. After that the writing gets much less on the nose and a lot better, though I will say that I still sometimes encounter bad dialog in the side quests.
It’s been a few days since I put this down but if I recall correctly the first guy you meet with a Focus they basically repeat the dialogue back to each other. I want to say the Matron who defies the rest of the Matrons and her interactions with Rost, and Aloy immediately post-Proving, were very repetitive. The side-quest for retrieving the daughter and her mother’s spear and the side-quest for the crazy brother were both sub-par too.
It is entirely possible I am confusing my dislike for the voice acting and the lack of facial musculature with bad writing but I do recall nearly every conversation/cut-scene up to the point of the cave post-proving(where I ended my play) to be stagnant. The story is one thing, which I found somewhat engaging. The actual dialogue kept snapping me out of wanting to know more.
ASo I finally finished this and really found the game fun and the story is pretty good, but this game also leaves me with the feeling like it’s really good, but not quite great. That’s not to say that I don’t fully recommend everyone play it, but I feel like Horizon’s sequel will achieve the greatness that Horizon Zero Dawn just barely falls short of. I can’t really point to anything specific other than playing this game reminded me of how I felt playing the first Uncharted. Like the first Uncharted game, Horizon Zero Dawn feels like it’s just a warmup for the next game coming from its developer.
Also I can already guess at least one of the DLC quests for this game will be…
[SPOILER=Warning: Spoiler!]Looking through Elizabet Sobek’s reconstructed journal entries, she mentions that a really early form of GAIA’s history teaching program, APOLLO, was sent out on the Odyssey spacecraft, the same program that was then later deleted by Ted Faro (because he didn’t want to go down in history as the man who destroyed the world). I know through bits and pieces of the data points that I gathered that the Odyssey spacecraft failed, but I don’t know if it failed after it entered space or failed on its launch. So I think Aloy will be sent on a journey to find the Odyssey and recover APOLLO from its wreck (if it crashed) or from its ghost ship (if it’s in orbit). [/SPOILER]
According to one record that you recover in the game,
the Odyssey spacecraft is evidently still in a parking-orbit around the Earth, not having broken away on its intended course after it launched. The sequel-premise does indeed sound promising, and yep – Ted Faro was a fucking douchebag.
Really cool article that breaks down where all of Horizon’s major locations can found in the real world, and how to plan an actual road-trip to see them:
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/a…-trip.aspx
They even include an actual Google Maps-map that shows how to drive from one end of the Horizon map to the other in real life, taking in most of the game’s discoverable Vantage Points:
I really need to get back to this. Zelda has just completely taken over all my gaming.
I’ve totally ignored the main story for a while and pootled about exploring the world, rounding up crooks, exploring cauldrons, etc. Last night I got back on track and got a big infodump at a massive skyscraper in the north. I was all set to leave when I noticed a ledge just by the exit so I jumped up, found more things to climb until I was right at the top and found another power cell - man, it would have sucked if I hadn’t seen it and had to scale the darn thing all over again, proper blink and you’ll miss it type stuff.
Finished this also finally. Didn’t go for the All Allies in the end, was reaching the stage where everything was becoming a bit of a chore. No threat left in the robots or humans, so just ploughed through. My own fault for maxing out early on instead of just playing through.
Very good game though, cracking finale. Will keep hold of it and keep an eye out for the DLC.
ASpeaking of DLC, Guerrilla Games has finally issued a press release that there will be DLC. They also said that Horizon Zero Dawn has already set a record of being the PS4’s best selling First Party IP launch, exceeding 2.6 million copies sold in the first two weeks. I’m glad to hear that even though Legend of Zelda: BotW may have stolen the game industry’s news headlines away from Horizon, Horizon still sold well and will most likely be getting a sequel.
There’s certainly plenty of things left open to explore. As was said above, the Odyssey and recovery of Apollo is a possibility. I’d be keen to play out what happened to Rost as well, the motivations of the twelve outlanders was never really explained and hunting them down is perfect DLC fodder.
The bigger questions, like the source of the signal that woke up Hades and attacked Gaia is probably sequel fodder. My money is on Faro involved, somehow. That strikes me as too big a character to leave unconcluded like they did.
Finished it last night, loved it to bits, and must confess I kinda loathe Ted Faro more than any asshole in the history of fiction. Like, when even the likes of Palpatine come across as less terrible, you know you’re frickin’ human garbage who deserves all the punishments the most sadistic mind can muster.
The egotistical sack of shit didn’t even have the decency to allow Zero Dawn to go through as planned, he had to sabotage it almost certainly for the sake of ensuring future generations wouldn’t know he was the greedy fuckwit responsible for the near total destruction of Earth.
Holy shit, you guys, I really came away hating that son of a bitch. I only wish he were still alive so I can put a few dozen arrows in his groin. So yeah, the writers did a stellar job in coming up with some so utterly awful.
A[quote name=“flint” url=“/community/t/159145/horizon-zero-dawn/50#post_4254389”]
The bigger questions, like the source of the signal that woke up Hades and attacked Gaia is probably sequel fodder. My money is on Faro involved, somehow. That strikes me as too big a character to leave unconcluded like they did.
[/quote]
[SPOILER=Warning: Spoiler!] I agree that the source of the signal will be the focus of the sequel, but I don’t think Ted Faro is to blame for it. If I recall correctly it was a rogue signal that first caused the Faro Robots to go haywire in the first place. So in the game’s world the same event has happened twice now, a rogue signal interfered with an AI’s programming causing it to attack its creator/leader and make it try to eliminate all life. [/spoiler]
I think there’s some kind of extraterrestrial influence going on here, it could be aliens or it could be something more like an alien created AI (though I suppose it could also be a human created AI on a satellite made by some nutjob who wanted to end all life).
Maybe the news about the failed extraplanetary voyage was false - say they made it to Sirius, have been living there for a few hundred years and have returned to take back their ‘home’ and decide to use GAIA’s sub-components to get rid of these pesky primitives infesting the place. HADES kicks off the extinction protocol, GAIA combats it via the self-destruct, HADES looks for an alternative solution years later when Sylens finds it by dragging the old Faro Plague bots out of their graves. HADES is eventually thwarted, the people up above have to find another way to remove the infestation.
Bring on the haves in their ivory space stations versus the have nots huddled round fires and living in caves and ruins below.
All that said, from what little was alluded to in the various conversations, it sounds like heading out west could prove very interesting/creepy. Just what did become of California et al…
Also, it’s hinted at that Ted Faro was
growing a clone of himself in his lavish Thebes-bunker – in one of Elisabet Sobeck’s holo-records, she basically says something like, “At least I won’t have to watch him raising his own clone,” or words to that effect. Makes you wonder if, like Sobeck and her Aloy-clone, we’re gonna be looking at a clone of Faro emerging as a potential villain in a future sequel (alongside Lance Reddick?). He didn’t joint Elysium or the Alphas, which was telling.
Another interesting bit about Ted Faro I didn’t pick up on my first time playing: “…[Ted] is buried in his pyramid with the holo-girls and Pantah Antimod cuckoos…” So he was locked away with people who very well might have been anti-technology, in a way, converting him to their beliefs. On top of not wanting to repeat his previous mistakes, being locked away with Pantah Antimods probably played a big part in his psyche.
Correct – the countermeasure was
GAIA cracking the Faro robots’ security to develop the deactivation codes around half a century after the world ended (on “Zero Day”). This code was transmitted using the the spire that can be found near Meridian. HADES provided the option of wiping the slate clean, in case GAIA got it wrong. The world after the Faro Plague is barren with an inhospitable environment (the planetary atmosphere completely gone) – if GAIA got it wrong and made it worse or not-quite-right, they’d need a way to start again. Think of HADES like a homicidal eraser.
What if Ted Faro made a copy of APOLLO before deleting it, and cloned himself over the centuries, and it was him (or multiple clones of him) sending the signal that interfered with the HADES failsafe-subroutines? Ted was the richest man alive, ever. Him having an APOLLO backup just for his own pleasure wouldn’t surprise me at all. I still think the biggest hint we have is the group of strangers that came into the Nora-lands, took hostages, and did something that produced “strange noises” and then left, a bit before the AI programs were severed from GAIA (resulting in the “Derangement”).
That said, I hope at least one DLC is based on Rost. His backstory seems quite tragic, but it would make a good gaming-scenario. I’d give a kidney for this. Rost was so fucking cool; shame we get so little of him. Dude’s a BAMF. Tracking and murdering all the fuckers that killed his family would be awesome and, as an added bonus, we’d get the first few glimpses of what the Forbidden West looks like.
Oh, and has everyone picked up on the Egyptian themes with Faro Automated Solutions in this game?
Ted Faro - Pharaoh
Elisabet Sobeck - Sobek (fertility-god also worshipped to ward off evil)
Chariot (FAS line of “peacekeeping” war-machines)
Scarab (Corrupters)
Khopesh (Deathbringers) - sword commonly associated with Egypt
Horus (Metal Devils) - God of Sun and Moon
Miriam Systems - led women out of slavery in ancient Egypt; sister of Moses
(And, of course, Ted Faro getting “buried” in a “pyramid.”)
AI think we’ve gone beyond spoiler tags here, if anyone wants to play Horizon Zero Dawn and is still reading this thread then consider everything posted from here on out to be spoilers!
[quote name=“Sentinel Red” url=“/community/t/159145/horizon-zero-dawn/50#post_4254673”]Maybe the news about the failed extraplanetary voyage was false - say they made it to Sirius, have been living there for a few hundred years and have returned to take back their ‘home’ and decide to use GAIA’s sub-components to get rid of these pesky primitives infesting the place. HADES kicks off the extinction protocol, GAIA combats it via the self-destruct, HADES looks for an alternative solution years later when Sylens finds it by dragging the old Faro Plague bots out of their graves. HADES is eventually thwarted, the people up above have to find another way to remove the infestation.
Bring on the haves in their ivory space stations versus the have nots huddled round fires and living in caves and ruins below.
All that said, from what little was alluded to in the various conversations, it sounds like heading out west could prove very interesting/creepy. Just what did become of California et al…
[/quote]
I think you’re both overlooking the fact that a rogue signal is what hijacked the Faro Robots to begin with and is largely the reason why the world ended. Then the same thing happened a thousand or more years later and hijacked all of GAIA’s subprograms including HADES. This repeated hijacking strongly suggest that there is an outside force meddling with the AIs of Earth.
^ Yep, which is one reason why I was speculating that it might be a renegade clone of Ted Faro behind things, given several of the hints in the game. Regarding the signal that screwed the GAIA-network up, it could originate from APOLLO Prime, the one that was being sent away via spaceship. Elisabet mentioned that, due to time-constraints, the APOLLO sent on the Odyssey had no checks/restraints in place. If it survived the ship’s destruction, who knows what it would do.
The biggest thing I’m curious about is who the hell would be controlling HADES, because its entire goal was restarting the Faro Plague and once more destroying the planet. That seems like a huge amount of power and influence to control one of the main AIs behind the re-terraforming of Earth after the apocalypse. Moreso than I think any random tribesman or even entire tribe would have, as even the Eclipse were basically a thing because Sylens and HADES had set it all up themselves.
Not only that, but HADES’ goal being the reactivation of the Faro-machines en masse to once more consume the world is not a goal I can see any “normal” and sane human would want to be doing. I actually thought that the AI behind the Faro Plague would be the one pulling the strings and setting all this stuff into motion, but I’m not so sure anymore, especially when the term “masters” was being used.
It might be a bit too obvious, but I think it could be someone like Ted Faro. Either in the form of an AI left after his death, or he somehow found a way to expand his life to last till Aloy’s time, either through cryo-storage or something else (which actually gets discussed at one point during the game). That, or perhaps Ted intiated the “Lighthouse Keeper” program, and it’s one of a long line of Ted-clones that are still pushing his will onto the world long after the original died out.
On another note, I have to say, I love the techno-naturalism running throughout the game. Even simple things like the mechanical flowers writing poetry about their surroundings, and GAIA and the other “gods” being AI that run the re-terraforming of Earth, and all the tasks needed for that. It’s similar to what other games and forms of SF have attempted, but I think H:ZD pulled it off far better than a lot of others.
(Also, I’d totally be down for an “Enduring Victory” DLC that’s kinda like Uncharted 4: Lost Legacy. Which, to my recollection is a more than a typical DLC, but not really a full game like U4.)
If this ever came to pc (ha! not likely), I’d certainly give it a crack. Im not completely sick of open world games, just the Ubi-styled ones (and even then I have a masochistic need to keep an eye on Far Cry 4 dropping below ten bucks on sale). This sounds like it does just enough either differently or really well, that yeah, it looks pretty good.