Not a Review: Horizon Zero Dawn

Promotional poster for Horizon Zero Dawn, Guerrilla Games

A series of reflections inspired by and about Guerrilla Games' 2017 creation.

Immersion-breaking dialogs

I remember playing the Mass Effect series many years ago and thinking that the possibility to choose how to respond in a conversation is the best thing ever. Did I ignore the clumsiness of switching topics from deeply emotional to practical subjects without any effect on the state of mind of my character? Or was it simply executed better than in Horizon Zero Dawn?

Horizon Zero Dawn could have been a linear game with no dialog options and it would have been a better game. Less useless dialogs, more quality animation, and more emotional impact. By the second part of the game, I was skipping most of the optional dialog in side quests and a significant part in the main story as well. Sylens was the only character I was interested in enough to go through all the dialog options to see if it reveals something new about him. Not that I found much.

Overall, emotionally inconsistent dialogs not only had me pushing the "x" button during cut-scenes more often than I would have liked, but it also prevented me from connecting to any character in the game. Not even Aloy, if I have to be honest.

Demanding combat

All the above being said, I still spent a considerable amount of time playing Horizon Zero Dawn without feeling bored. One of the main reasons was the combat system. It invites the player to consider various strategies when approaching enemy machines. There's a number of different weapons, traps, and skills one can use. Each type of machine has its own weaknesses and strengths as well as attacking styles. And if you have the necessary codes, you can also hack a machine and make it fight along your side or even instead of you.

Here it should be said that I played on the suggested normal difficulty level, so the following may not be as relevant for those playing on harder difficulties. At first, I was mostly ignorant of the different combat mechanics. On normal you can beat machines up to level 13 or even 15, if there's not too many of them, only with spear-attacks and by actively moving around. It was only after I encountered my first Thunderjaw and Rockbreaker that I realized that you need to be smart about how you approach them. This might have been the moment when Horizon Zero Dawn became genuinely interesting to me. Since then my accuracy with the bow has improved significantly, I began to pay attention to which ammo to use, where to stand, where to aim and which machine to take down first.

Now I feel that if I ever decide to have another playthrough of Horizon Zero Dawn, it will be because of the combat and the challenge of trying out the ultra-hard difficulty.

Greek mythology

Slightly above entry-level use of greek mythos in the worldbuilding of Horizon Zero Dawn was much appreciated. Yes, gods from different generations were all mixed together. Still, the symbolic representation of each of the subordinate functions was more or less on point, Hades probably being the biggest stretch of them all. Although, if you think about life as a cycle of death and rebirth (as Greeks did), you can begin to recognize the logic behind the name of this particular subordinate function too. It was not about destroying life. Rather about continuing the cycle. Destroy to allow another rebirth.

Calling the AI that was supposed to give birth to all future life Gaia hardly constitutes subtle symbolism. Yet sometimes the simplest solutions are the best ones. Overcomplicated structures of meanings and symbols often conceal an actual lack of understanding and insight. In my opinion, Gaia is the perfect name for such an AI. Her human representation feels deeply fitting as well, considering that Africa is commonly recognized as the cradle of life.

Also, I like the implication of Gaia giving life to the future human race by the means of ideas rather than genes. A curious way to mix idealism with materialism.

Deletion of Apollo

One of the subordinate functions of Gaia was called Apollo. It was supposed to store knowledge about the achievements of our civilization for the future inhabitants of Earth. Yet in the last days of the old civilization one of the members of the team working on the project deleted Apollo.

Was Ted Faro indeed mad for doing that? Or is there in fact sense in trying to avoid passing on our own knowledge, values, and biases that may inevitably be attached to them to future generations that will be completely unaware of the context of our reality?

Would the world of Horizon Zero Dawn have turn out better with the knowledge about engineering, medicine, arts, and philosophy of another time? Or would they just create a copy of us, and therefore, accelerate yet another deterioration of Earth's resources?

I can't help but recall Star Trek's Prime Directive. Of course, it's arguable whether normal cultural evolution is a term that's applicable in this particular case. Still, I would have been hesitant about the necessity of Apollo in the first place, were I a part of the Project Zero Dawn team.

The chosen one trope

Playing Horizon Zero Dawn, I couldn't help but wonder whether Aloy being the exact genetic copy of Elisabet Sobeck added anything particular to the story? Whether her being an outcast for the most part of her life did? My frustration was slowly building up. Did Aloy need to be as superior as she was?

For most of my playthrough, I paid no particular attention to the fact that Aloy was exceptionally good at all the things she attempted to do and admired by every person that mattered in the game. She was witty, mostly kind to those that deserved it, she looked like a girl and not like a fantasy. I liked her. Still, something wasn't clicking. I liked her, but I wasn't invested in her. I didn't care about her. I somewhat cared about the Sun-King and a bit about Erend. They both had a resemblance of personality. Aloy, though, felt more like the vehicle for my spear than a character I related to.

By the second part of the story, I began to feel uncomfortable by the lack of Aloy's personal struggle. Traditionally this is the moment in a story where the protagonist needs to overcome a challenge of some kind. Yet no challenge was coming for Aloy. Just more and more casual reassurances. That one quest in The Frozen Wilds where Aloy becomes the leader of a Baruk tribe was the last straw. She could have admirably lost, and the chief impressed by her skill and determination could have granted her the passage she required. Yet Aloy doesn't lose.

I persistently refused to see a number of elements of the narrative in Horizon Zero Dawn as feminist tropes. No romance options - great, it should help to focus on Aloy's personal growth, and also sends a message that relationships shouldn't be taken so casually. A number of women war-chiefs - why not, fighting against machines requires more brain than muscle, so I can buy that. No traditionally strong male warrior character - even better, let's explore new ways to write compelling men that also feel real rather than ideal. These all could be defined as exterior, though, as it's about the world and not the protagonist. The biggest one and the one I fail to justify to myself is the fact that Aloy is so fucking perfect! She feels like Star Wars' Rey of her own universe. Even their supposed-to-be struggle is the same - lack of family. Yet it's so poorly addressed in the story that it remains only on paper.

Honestly, I'm tired of this kind of the chosen one trope.

If you really need your character to be the chosen one, at least make them Harry Potter kind - with an actual personality and a substantial list of flaws.