Horizon Zero Dawn critique
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 มี.ค. 2020
- Kat from Pixel a Day comprehensively details all the reasons she didn't like Horizon Zero Dawn very much. Video contains spoilers.
All HZD footage capped by me
Patreon: patreon.com/pixeladay
Twitter: @pixel_a_day
Transcript: bit.ly/pixeladay-horizonzerodawn
Special thanks to:
Batman Arkham Videos for Batman footage
Joker Junior for Ass Creed footage
Video Games Source for The Witcher 3 footage
Gamer’s Little Playground for May Payne 3 and Uncharted 4 footage
RabidRetrospectGames for Red Dead Redemption 2 footage
Izuniy for God of War footage
Full Playthroughs for the Killzone 3 footage
Noclip for the developer interview footage (and for making awesome game documentaries generally)
bolkmar for the film crackle used at the beginning
Videezy for the old timey film effect used in the intro
ScreamStudio, RutgerMuller and Timbre at Freesound.org for sound effects - เกม
Apologies for the awkward cut at 16:16 where the best part of the video used to be (a montage of Aloy kicking butt to Shania Twain's 'Man! I Feel Like a Woman'). I had to cut it to stop it from being blocked in like, half the world. This is what you get when you start a TH-cam channel and throw music in your videos because you're entirely clueless about things like copyright checks. Anyway, go watch my newer stuff instead of this broken old-ass video. 🙏
Had the exact same issue with my HZD video and playing Rocky montage music…
I think the "well yeah it's just a mindless open world game" defense would be a lot more appropriate if it didn't set itself up as being story-driven for the first few hours.
It really feels like it's putting its best foot forward to define itself, and then after a few hours it's like "Oh you're still here? Uh go gather some flowers on the other side of this valley or something".
Whats really fucking worse and kills your sense of wonder is they make you go so far so early I did 3 story mission and half the map was unlocked with all these objectives and locations you automatically dont want to do all that shit
amazing comment
@@firstsonofthesea7938 That's on you. If you mainline the story and progress into the world and don't do anything else, but then complain there are too many landmarks that's your fault. You can't have it both ways. You can't rush through and then complain you unlocked new areas too fast. They also don't "make you" go so far so fast. Going to Meridian is fairly early, but there are like 3-4 towns on the way with side quests, bandit strongholds, at least 2 hunter trials and 2-3 cauldrons. Play the game how you want, but don't be a fool and then complain about features or content you skipped over in the process.
@@georgen5882 Its not too many landmarks I find it cool but its just too much so soon Im used too it now
So true. Good way of putting it!
Great video! I enjoyed the game a lot for its creature design, environment, character design, and especially combat-- but was incredibly disappointed with Aloy's characterization and the sometimes shockingly poor dialogue/voice acting. I felt like Aloy, considering the outcast way she was raised, needed to feel more like a wild-woman-someone who doesn't speak much and has trouble connecting with others. Maybe have her form close bonds with animals or robots more than people. IDK, I think her character had a ton of missed potential to be more unique and interesting.
Thanks for your comment! I fully agree! She’s entirely too well-adjusted for an outcast 😅
Dude she's the reincarnation of the world's best engineer she's meant to have high IQ plus her tech device taught her everything
On the other hand she had a good father figure and immediately becomes a seeker. So her social skills aren't under heavy stress in the story of zero dawn. She is not really integrated into any society but a vagabond.
@@dennisbeier4011Not that either of the previous comments are wrong, but I think there is one point the original comment is missing: that despite how she was raised and treated, she still wants to help people and heal what's broken. I feel like the game did a good job in not making her feel like part of something because almost every quest was just her, and when she came into new places people were like "it's you, the red haired Nora hunter". Some of the NPCs weren't exactly welcoming, either. She goes around to new places, but she's almost always constantly alone and then moves on when the help is done. She's a nomad in the game, but with a purpose.
For her to have a better bond with machines would also not make sense narratively. They would have had to give her a machine friend as a child for that to even make sense, but even then it would be weird. Machines are hostile, and how would they fit random friendly machines into the existing plot without having it be weird? She doesn't get the override part for a little while, and that's after they established hostile and unfriendly machines at best. But like the other person said, she also had a great mentor in Rost. It was basically his last wish for her to not just be part of the Nora, but to help them. To help anyone because she is the only one who can at times.
i tried so damn hard to love this game, started and left several times, felt like i'm missing something since the game is mostly praised by others. but at some point while i was looking at the map full of markers, i accepted that the game was not for me. i can't pinpoint it exactly but something feels so crowded, huddled and chaotically colorful. i guess i started to like everything more plain and simple as i age.
damn! same thoughts here
the fact that i even got the game for free.i just havent found any appreciation and it felt laborious
Well ... people tend to like shit nowaday
Don't listen to what random people say about a game in social media , watch some content first , try to find 1 or 2 guy who know what they're talking about and have mostly the same taste as you
And don't forget, almost all the open world sucks because they're empty and procedural
I can't find myself in any open world for now ( except xenoblade if we consider xenoblade an open world )
I don't like the botw formula ( explore and find what ? Sanctuary and korogu thats all) and elden ring even tho i'm a zelda/souls fan
@@ElyakelI always thought the same thing the last 10 years or so,, and not just games, series, movies, music, clothes and many other things are just so bad these days, not all of course, but the majority. It says it all, the fact that many of the games worth playing are remakes and remasters.
And this game!! Ugh, the story is lame, the combat is dull, the aiming is shite, characters are bland.. I can't believe that the people who made Killzone, made this garbage,, but then again, the people who made Killzone (1,2,3) made shadow fall
The game looks so fkn gorgeous, it's colorful,,, but colorless
I'm the same way! It looks aesthetically pleasing and fun to explore into. But once I started playing, it felt too on the nose to lecture me how to play the game and not all fun to explore. Breathe of the Wild made me fell in love with open world games which I haven't felt in a long time. I guess I'm burned out by open world games that lecture me where to go instead of having me explore on my own.
Well i spent 40 hours playing the game doing ton of side quests and let me tell you the world is haunted dead the NPCs are useless just filling spaces and even the story its so basic nothing special about it its actually boring for me
I just wonder how this was about to take the 2017 game award if zelda wasnt at that year i still didnt finish the game i have 4 main quests to go and i will finish it just i have wasted 42 hours at it another 3 hours wont harm
My Recomandation
JUST DONT PLAY THE GAME
The odd dialogue and the non-stop talking of the protagonist was a big annoyance for me in this game and I feel like not enough people talk about that. We need more critical takes on games, this is great! I still enjoyed my time with HZD, but I don't think it lives up to it's hype. and yes, that guy looks a lot like Gary Oldman lmao Great work, hope to see more from you :)
Thanks for the kind words and particularly the Gary Oldman thing, I feel very vindicated rn.
I’m actually at the beach filming footage for my next vid! I reckon it’ll be up within the week so stay tuned!
My favourite part is a mission where you have to track a missing person, you can clearly see a cartoonishly big trail of blood that goes up to a a mountain, you follow it and nothing happens when the trail stops. The thing was that you have to use the "detective vision" at the start of the trail for Aloy to notice it, she must be blind, and then you can follow the trail, enemies now attack you at the end of the trail.
After watching your Dear Esther video and now this, I've realized how eerily similar my opinion about these games is to yours. I would never be able to articulate my feelings as well as you though. It's a really weird feeling when you watch someone talk about something and your mind goes "Yeah THAT!!! EXACTLY THAT!! That's what I felt as well". Really glad I discovered your channel through that Errant Signal tweet.
Keep up the good work!
Thank you! It's an amazing feeling to hear someone exactly articulate feelings you didn't know you had, I live for those moments on TH-cam. It's why I love watching video essays. What a huge compliment to hear I did that for you!
That's exactly what I felt when watching this video, just now. Such a great analysis.
My main issue with the game besides of "open world game nr 9024" is that after 10 hours i didn't even remotely cared about anything or anyone in the world. The way everyone acted didn't make any sense to me. I played until the first big city. It feels like sony gone Ubisoft
I felt like this after the first 3 hours
The biggest issues is paid shills love making people feel like crap and making them feel like something's weird with them if they don't like their game
I remember thinking, "nah, I'll stop playing this," right before the lockdown went into effect, and suddenly HZD became the first game I played just to fill time. And yeah, perfect for that, just this constant stream of missions and content, but none of it really resonated with me- same feeling you had, I think. I did find the core premise of Caveman vs. Robot-Dinosaur, pretty good, and I think the game is best when it has you dismantling some mechanical behemoth with like, a sling and a particularly mean spear.
I think your point about Aloy's character was especially telling. Before watching the video I probably would have called her a good character, but now I realize she really just an inoffensive one- someone who I liked, but couldn't tell you anything about. I imagine you have some videos already planned and in production, but I'd love to see you cover some examples of well-written women in games or what sorts of characters writers could draw from to make more complex leads.
Thanks for the comments John, glad you felt the same way! I say it all the time but Hellblade came out in the same year as HZD and has one of the best female leads in a game.
Very few TH-camrs I've watched analyse gameplay, world building, and writing like you do
Love your content!
Thank you, so glad you’re enjoying it 😊
I remember playing the game for the first time, being excited for the adventure ahead, and then hearing those awful lines of dialogue in the opening scene. I pressed on however... only to realise it did not get any better. But the dialogue and gameplay are only part of the problem: for some reason, the open world did not tickle my exploration bone... at all. I would look at some distant hill and shrug. Also: terrible, tasteless music.
Yeah, I heard better writing in "Goede tijden, slechte Tijden"
I agree
thought i was insane for not liking this after everyone i know absolutely loved it. refreshing to hear im not the only one
hm, but u may still be insane
@@SuperOvidiuMihai no, they're def not insane. This game is a snoozefest with boring borrowed mechanics
Actually played this game not so long ago, is really one of the worst game I played in my whole life
I agree. I sunk 7hrs into the game and I will not wait to get to “the good parts” 15 hours or whatever in. I fr wish I could get into it but it just didn’t grip me
@@Bruno-fw6nw Then what is a good game? Call of Duty? Get out of here with that comment. You don't like the game or genre, and that's fine, but it's not even on the same planet as the worst games ever. So this is on par with Aliens: Colonial Marines? Come on man, use your brain more and be less dramatic. No one cares if you didn't like it but don't be idiotic.
me as a dude working for a moving company would say fuck you if you wanted me to carry that pallet with smithing materials down or upstairs
Crazy to think that in 10 or 20 years time people will be saying "Flawed characters are boring and cliché. We need more genuine heroes"
What?
@lawrenceragnarok1186 today every loves anti heros and flawed characters and think genuine heroes are boring (superman for example, heroes who aren't flawed). The reason is fatigue so soon they'll be tired of all these edgy broken characters that are now considered unique will soon be considered cliché
Damn. I actually expected this to be a bit on the Ameteur side of things with the editing and sound quality of the review, but this is a great video! You deserve more views. Keep it up!
My newer videos are tons better in every way! This was my second ever video and I did not have a clue what I was doing.
I was looking for critical analysis of this game to help understand why I've played 26 hours and have been bored the entire time. This is exactly the sort of analysis I look for in games and wish there was more of this rather than reviews where someone tells me if they liked something. Looking forward to checking out more of your content.
Thanks, I hope you’ll stick around on the channel! 😊
I'm in the exactly the same camp. 20h in and thoroughly bored. Been scouring the internet to see if I'm missing something. I was under the impression this was a GOTY contender when it came it. To me it's just utter mediocrity. I like the overarching plot. But after 20h the game has spend about 15mins on that... Thanks for the video. I'm going to go ahead and quit while I'm ahead. Sunk cost fallacy be damned!
23:20 Absolutely on-point. I think the saddest thing about Guerilla Games is that both Horizon and Killzone feel like they're clinging to industry trends rather than responding to them. Killzone was clearly trying to outdo Halo, but who's still playing Killzone 2?
I love HZD, it's one of my favourite gaming experiences, but I also agree with your critiques.
I will definitely play Forbidden West (and I expect to love it too), but I will be approaching it with the hope that Aloy will be more fleshed out as a character, and that we get to make tough choices that matter.
This is the kind of response I love!
Since this video's getting some traction, I feel obliged to say that this is the 2nd video I ever made and all my newer stuff is FAR better! So please don't let this video be the only thing of mine you watch! I actually mostly make positive, philosophical content and spicy takedowns aren't hugely my thing, so head over to my channel page and check out what I've got to offer.
I think you helped me put what I didn’t like about the game into words-especially the final section. I felt like the story was weak when everyone heralds how incredible it is. I don’t care about the characters at all-they kill a character in the second game and my first thought was “no, that’s the only character I really liked!” Realising that the rest of them I either hated or were ‘fine’ with.
I thought I was just getting old that games are getting boring! What relief to have stumbled upon this video. Thank you!
Thank you for watching! I mean we are getting old and AAA games are boring, that is also true lol
I've just finished your section on quest design. I'm so very interested in your take on elden ring's what design and over all lack of trackers pointing on things. It'd be awesome to have a video essay on it. Back to the video
I rather liked HZD in spite of its obvious flaws. It's so exceptionally rare for a game to get everything right (especially between the often juxtaposed "story vs gameplay") that I almost prefer when a game unapologetically leans into one or the other. What's curious to me about HZD is that both of these areas have triumphs and flaws. The plot and world-building were great, IMO, but the dialog was trash, the characters were flat (not you, Petra), and the VA was super hit-or-miss. For gameplay, while I found the combat and power curve super engaging, HZD falls into the same HUD traps that leave me feeling like a cat chasing a laser pointer. Thing is, though... they TRIED. Like, they actually TRIED to do both great, and for that I give them a lot of credit. That gives me a lot of hope for HFW. Great video, good points, many laughs.
Completely agree.
+ The facial expressions are so weird! But I heard they fixed that in Horizon part 2. I wonder what else they fixed... (Idea for another video? Although you'd have to play through another similar game..)
In the end this ended up being a game I sometimes come back to for a few quests, until I get tired again if the fetch quests etc, and put it back down again. No, I have not finished the game yet.
I disagree that it has a good story. It has an ok _backstory_ . Which is a problem for me. I want to be engaged in the present by active drama and character, not just wandering around lost slowly hearing lore to explain the world and who I am like I’m reading the writers’ room notes.
It’s typical of mediocre writing that thinks it’s good writing. It’s much easier to come up with lots of backstory and ideas to explain things, and much harder to then take that information and craft a compelling narrative. The game flunks the latter and end up as a lecture series, relying on fighting robosaurs to keep you engaged in the present. If you like fighting robosaurs and the other gameplay elements then the game can work for you.
That’s why you see a lot of reviews saying “I didn’t love it at first but by the end the story was great”. Because by the end you know what the story is actually about, and if you’ve found the gameplay ok you stuck around to hear it. But don’t tell me that’s good writing. A good story has you engaged throughout.
for your point of aloy i would love to see your view on horizan forbidden west did u see her change ?
I agree with 80% of this. You are spot on regarding Aloy’s character…. same thing in the sequel
I agree it's a difficult game to criticise when some of the attention to detail is so good, particularly with the animations. But overall a lot of things bothered me that I couldn't quite explain. This video is great and manages to articulate most of my feelings towards this game!
That’s great to hear! Thanks 😊
100% agree with you. You need to make more videos. This is good content. You are well spoken and back up your points.
Very late to the party! But I enjoyed your thoughtful analysis even though I see Horizon a bit differently! Horizon aligns more with the mythic saga tradition, like Lord of the Rings, than the postmodern style of Game of Thrones common in modern media.
This Tolkien-esque approach to narrative prioritizes rich world-building over morally ambiguous, flawed characters. Characters serve as cultural conduits and are often aspirational, thus maybe appearing less complex. Take Aragorn, something of a 'Mary Sue' yet still an enduring icon. In games, playing as a virtuous character like can also be compelling (although I also enjoy a grey hero). Because we project ourselves onto them, embodying someone admirable can be rewarding. However, I do think Aloy has more nuance than she's credited - while noble-hearted she's socially awkward, skeptical of received wisdom, and struggles to form bonds.
Befitting the Tolkienesque 'saga' approach, the depth of Horizon lies in its cultures like the Nora, Carja, Oseram - and their detailed histories and cultures that weave an immersive, vibrant world. And I love that Horizon's 'post post-apocalyptic' setting presents a thriving world instead of a desolate wasteland, an approach I haven't seen in other post-apocalypse media. Horizon might not fit the postmodern mold, but it shines with its own narrative depth.
Thanks for watching and for sharing your thoughts! On the point of "green post-post apocalypses" and how other games hadn't done it, you may be interested to hear about a game called Enslaved that did it 7 years before HZD.
What a great critique, well cut, funny, with a lot of good arguments. Keep going.
Thank you, that's lovely to hear! May I suggest watching one of my more recent videos, I feel like I've really improved a lot since this one :)
"The other nominees were..... "
Lost it there 😂
He he I do feel a bit mean towards those other games but
@@PixelaDay well tbh 2017 wasn't exactly overflowing with story-driven games, so it didn't really come as a surprise
Simon His You’re not wrong! But hey, Hellblade and What Remains of Edith Finch were right there!
@@PixelaDay yes exactly, which reflects the still sorry state of mainstream game award ceremonies: indie games or more generally hidden gems are overlooked in favor of properly labelled AAA titles.
@@PixelaDay I think Hellblade is extremely overrated but I agree with Edith Finch. One of my favourite games ever.
Finally a review that perfectly articulates every issue I had w this game. It suffers from identity crisis, takes a elements of several other games but none of them are done as well. It’s pretty to look at but characters are lifeless, story is generic & gameplay repetitive & mediocre. Never understood all the praise. Thanks for this honest review.
You’re welcome! ☺️ I hope you’ll stick around on the channel, my newer videos are way better than this one!
@@PixelaDay Absolutely! Just subbed.
20:42 seeing a female protagonist that behaves as chaotic, ruthless, and gray as kratos would be revolutionary. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that done before. It’s probably happened but I’ve never heard of it.
Xenoblade Chronicles X has the plot twist you were looking for.
I love HZD and this is legit.
Thank you! :)
Do you also announce you enjoy eating shit in other public places? Because the game is atrociously badly designed. It is frustrating and boring.
Must be nice, just stomping about and being wrong all the time.
@@Furore2323 Wrong? You just said you love a boring, uninspired trash game. The only thing is has is solid story, a nice setting and a pretty world. Everything else is done miles better everywhere ELSE.
@@Kserijaro Calm down, dude. Jeez...
You've put my every thought into words. I could never dream to articulate my thoughts as well as you have. Loved the video. Subbed. Side note, I'm actually shocked and almost appauled that you don't have more subscribers. The way you explain things, your witty sense of humor, and your ability to really articulate EXACTLY what you're thinking is sublime. I honestly really hope you make a video for Horizon 2. I heard it's better than the first after all.
Wow, thank you! Glad you liked the video!
Ooh, this video is already a notch improved from the last one! And after watching that one, and its focus on how Joel's humanity coming out is hand in hand with the exposure of his darkest self, I can absolutely see how Aloy's too-perfect character falls short in comparision. And yes, while more recent years may have gotten a *smidge* better at flawed female character representation in games, it's still an area that feels pretty starved of that.
I've only watched a single LP of HZD myself, and my opinions pretty much match, especially with your explaination of those aspects I didn't know how to mentally clarify for myself - when I think about this game, I think about how cool the robot fights and imagery looked, along with the relative mechanical complexity involved in actually fighting the robot enemies with their varied weak points affecting the dino in different ways and the like. But not much of the actual story or characters come to mind at all really. In any case, another good video! :D
Thank you! 🥰 I really appreciate you leaving your comments! Also, I've said it before and I'll say it til I die - Senua from Hellblade (released in the same year as HZD) is a thousand times better protagonist than Aloy!
@@PixelaDay I agree wholeheartedly and I look forward to watching your Senua video soon too!
@@subprogram32 You will enjoy my fourth video then ;)
@@PixelaDay (oh yes that was what I meant, I knew it already existed I just hadn't made time to watch it yet! XD)
As someone that was similarly lukewarm towards Horizon Zero Dawn, I mostly agree with this video but not entirely. I think you get needlessly nitpicky at points, especially when it came to the supply boxes. Yes, they're a bit silly, but I don't think it's a flaw truly worth mentioning, on top of that, accusing the devs of being lazy for this I think is highly unnecessary and more than likely completely divorced from reality. Most of flaws of this nature are almost never the result of pure laziness, but rather some sort of constraint, be it time, budget or tech, but more than that, with all these horror stories that have been revealed over the years about how overworked developers are, I think the onus is on us as critics to be mindful of the things we say and not make assumptions about the creators. Their work is fair game of course, but I think it's important to refrain from baseless accusations.
On a personal note, I also strongly dislike the notion that a game needs to "push the medium forward", not every game is trying to do that and I don't think HZD was either. With the exception of the premise, nothing in the game is especially unique and I don't think that's an inherent flaw.
Other than that though I enjoyed the video and found myself agreeing with most of it as I said before, I especially liked the part where you talked about Aloy, you did a great balancing act in appealing to those that enjoy her character while being fair with your criticisms. I look forward to seeing more of your videos!
Daniel Santos: Analytical Editorials thank you! Hey I’ll take mostly agree as a pretty good result!
I actually agree that I may have been too harsh with the “lazy” comment, the devs seem to have had lofty goals and a lot of things can curtail that. I’m trying to educate myself on how it is that we are getting so many “great graphics/combat, lackluster everything else” games these days so that I can make more nuanced critiques in the future.
I also 100% agree that not every game has to push the medium forward and HZD wasn’t trying to do that. When I see 5-star reviews though, I expect something unique and remarkable. So that was more a criticism of the high scores it didn’t quite deserve.
I hope you can stick around and check out my other vids! Thanks again for your very fair criticisms!
@@PixelaDay I will definitely stick around. 👍
Completely agree, I would also add the emptiness of the world in which there's nothing to do or to explore aside from the main quest because precisely, all the (few) necessary and sufficient content you need to understand the game is telegraphed in the main quest. I would also add the poverty of the gameplay loop, all the possibilities of interaction available to the player were just thought for the fun they could bring to the game, which prevented the devs from implementing any that could have brought the player closer to Aloy, allowed them to dive into the tradition's of the world or just have pushed them to feel how dangerous and imposing the wild was supposed to be.
I would also point how all the quests in the game are just: "follow a markor on the world, kill a bunch of guys that were placed here without any scenaristic justifications, look to a cutscene, go", all of them follow the exact same structure regardless of the evolution of the story, which makes it really artificial. Out of that, none of the gameplay sequences are thought to bring life to this world or to make you feel like Aloy, 95% of your in-game actions are never referred to in the story because they don't matter to its development, which leads to a story that the game tells in 60 hours whereas there would at best be content for 8 in a series.
We would also need to underline that even if the world is well imagined, well justified and original (clearly the best aspect of the game to me), the story is bland. All the side-characters are empty shells that are only here to be quicked away, to call Aloy for help, to be saved by her and to praise her as a result, Aloy is the typical super-heroin, as you said, and in the end, if you transpose the exact same story in a classical fantasy world, you obtain a generic and uninspired story for teenagers. It's not terrible in this category, just completely forgettable.
I don't dispise the fans of this game by any means, but no, it's clearly not a good one, thanks for being vocal about that.
Almost every point you made has either a counterpoint or a subjective statement, so that negates most of what you just said. I honestly question whether you really played the game or even like this genre, because it sounds like you went into it knowing you won't like and(shockingly)didn't like it. I'll address a few: empty open world first. I don't even know how to respond to this, since it's a post apocalyptic world with minimal humans and settlements. The machines are the most prevalent, and they are....literally all over the place. There are patches without them, but it's not like it's miles. I can tell you also did either none of the side quests that help with world building, or again decided on the self-fulfilling prophecy route of "well, I know I don't like this so I won't like it". A lot of the side quests are fun and also give you a glimpse into the world. Not sure how you missed that.
What else could they have done gameplay wise to bring the player closer to Aloy? She is, at this point, the only person who can override machines for one. She is one of the only ones with a focus and ability to study machines, helping with her ability to take them down. The wild is also very dangerous if you turn the difficulty up. Sounds like a you problem on this one. As far as the quests go, it also sounds like you either didn't play, didn't pay attention, or missed what the quest was about. There were reasons for her to do everything she did, and when there were enemies there, they were there for the same reason she was usually. It was part of the main story(that you somehow missed entirely)that a group of people was vying to gain control of Hephaestus while Aloy was trying to stop it. So, yes. Lots of crossover there you didn't seem to see at all.
Your comment about side characters is also consistent with the rest of what you said, which is to say it doesn't make sense. Again, did you play ANY of the side quests? Erend, who you meet early on, is not just a throwaway character. Like, at all. You do quests for him and help him find out his sister was killed by bandits or someone else(I forget which, it's been a while), and he is also a direct link to the sun king. There are other examples of this, but to expect every single NPC to have impact is not realistic. Even her quest with the hunting lodge is more than what you say. She becomes a thrush to a hunter who then eventually becomes the leader of the lodge. You actively participate in a group and the outcome is that someone dies and another takes their place, which has of course been done before but it doesn't change the fact that completing the quest changed something in the world.
Honestly I don't even know what else to say. I like the game, but I can be realistic about its shortcomings. It just sounds like Horizon and third person action games aren't for you in the end, which wouldn't surprise me based on what you said. They are not always the best or most well thought out games, but the large majority has the complete opposite opinion you do. Not to mention games can be extremely subjective. Just because you didn't like it doesn't make it bad. Any more than me liking it doesn't make it good. But the aggregate tells a completely different story.
Well, it’s been a while since I didn’t get into a game design discussion on TH-cam. I still took the time to answer you (and thanks for argumenting rather than just saying my comment was non-sensical, I appreciate, even if we disagree), but careful, there are many points that can be discussed to elaborate on what I had said 2 years ago and to answer your points, so it got very long, and I had to split it in different comments, happened to me a couple of times already. I had fun taking a few hours of my time writing this, see whether you are motivated to go through all that on your side. In case you are, I leave you a little structure here to help you navigate that monster of a comment, take this as a TL:DR.
I- clarification, I feel like you came up with wrong ideas on what I was criticizing and where I came from, and this isn’t good if we want to understand each other.
II- the whole thing about empty world. I think each of us has their definition of the term, so I explain a little more detail what I meant by this and why I maintain my criticism, despite your points.
III- the side characters not impacting the story and the side quests issue. Here some development on why I find them underwhelming, the fact that there is content in the side quests doesn’t make it adapted to the game or beyond criticism.
IV- to answer you specifically on the question “what could the gameplay have done to bring the player closer to Aloy?”. I think there are many more things to say about it than what can be in a TH-cam conversation, but I can drop of few ideas. They may be very distant from the kind of design we players are used to find in AAA narrative titles, so you might find them wild. But you shouldn’t dismiss them from the start, there are many things to be discussed, which I think tell many things on what narrative games could be. A little sample of my thoughts in my answer, see if that interests you.
V- Both a summary of the overarching problem I have with H:ZD and its type of design and an answer to the criticism you may come up with if you find me crazy in IV-. Half of the few times I had this type of conversation with gamers, it was interesting; and half of the time, people reacted a bit violently with an argument I find off-target. The last section is partly to spare us getting lost in it.
I-To clarify a few points, after this time.
Looking back at it now, the tone of my comment was tough, even if I had taken the time to say that it wasn’t directed on the game’s fans, which was true. Let’s say it clearly: I am by no means saying that you are not entitled to like H:ZD, or less justified to do so than I am disliking it. As you said, this is mostly subjective, and the point has never been to contest this. This being said, going too far on this road amounts to say that it is impossible to identify any objective way a piece of medium could be criticized or improved, which isn’t satisfying either. I am not entitled to judge what you like or dislike, and I have absolutely no intention to do so. But I am still allowed to underline creative shortcomings that imo make a game less capable of doing what it is trying to do, and my comment was not an insult to H:ZD fans (or people who just liked it).
Apart from this, you had the feeling that I was in the mood “I don’t want to like this game → so I invent any bad faith reason not to like it without even playing or paying attention → I spit on it on forums just to convince myself more”. Believing this surely justifies to answer a bit roughly, but be careful not to lock yourself into a false opinion of my feelings on the game and to evaluate all my arguments through its lenses without judging them for what they are. Making you an opinion on my gamer profile based on what I said is fine, but dismissing all my speech based on an easy idea of why I disliked H:ZD is making the same mistake you thought I made with my assumed self-imposed hatred. In fact, H:ZD is the first game I played when I got back into video games after a few years of studies interruption, and at the time, I really liked it. Nothing will ever change that, but the more games I experienced after it, the more lucid I grew toward its shortcomings, and the more critical I got. This didn’t come before I played the game, not after, and if you are not ready to believe this, then it may not be worth it to pursue this conversation since you will just dismiss all my arguments based on the false idea that they are hypocritical and rooted in the stone, which they are not. I am not angry about your comment, but if you want us to talk, remain open-minded and consider that I am honest, as I have no doubts you are. And don’t worry, I am well aware of what the story is (even though it’s been a while for me too), and I did almost all the side quests, this isn’t the issue. Well, if you are interested in getting more of my non-sense, there is a big sample coming after this.
@@georgen5882 II- H:ZD’s world is empty.
As I said, I think there was a clash in the definition that prevented us from understanding each other here. When I say that the world is empty, it has to be taken in the sense that there is nothing to discover in it. To my eyes, there are no differences between an open-world filled with generic content that is not renewed after 5 hours into the game and a no-content open-world (which for what I get is your definition of an empty world). The fact that there are machines all over the place in H:ZD and that there is a narrative justification for it is not the point here: when I try to explore an open-world and am just met with cities or bandit camps that are filled with mobs that I fight just the same everywhere in the main quest, whose aesthetics don’t differ from what is seen in the main campaign, and that don’t give me any narrative event to change my perspective on the game’s story, I call it empty. If side content doesn’t bring new gameplay situations, new perspective on the story or remarkable environments to discover, I don’t call it a discovery, and an open-world filled with this is empty to my eyes. You might find a few instances here and there in H:ZD that bring one of these elements (the few side-quests that do depict important events in the game are among this, more on that below), and I won’t take the time to enumerate all the in which they are absent. But I stick to the fact that such interesting elements are absent from the majority of the locations that can be discovered by exploring the open-world, and this is a big shortcoming H:ZD has compared to big open worlds like, say, Elden Ring, Breath of the Wild or the open areas in Metro:Exodus.
@@georgen5882 III- Side activities and characters don’t bring much to the story.
I said this, and I stick to it. First criterium about the impact of the side characters in the game: let’s talk about the screen time they are given. Let’s take Erend’s example, it’s an important one. For wha I remember, he is involved 3 times in the game. First, he has a conversation with Aloy before her competition in the Nora city at the beginning, but doesn’t get involved in any of the upcoming events. Then, main contribution, he intervenes in the series of side quests with the Oseram insurrection. This is one of the only ones I would call quite good in the whole game; yes, seeing the Oseram leader trying to get his unfair revenge on the Carja King and killing Erend’s sister in the process (it was him, not bandits) fleshes out important aspects of the story, the scars of the civil war that happened before the game and the antagonism between the different tribes. This is definitely a good thing, but that shouldn’t make us blind on everything we could have expected from a great side quests which is not present in the game. Regardless of the interest of the content shown here, it remains a series of quests that takes 2 hours to complete, that doesn’t impact on the story later on, that is never referred by the characters after it is finished, and that can be missed out entirely without any consequence. You may tell me that these criticisms are inherent to side content, but I would answer you that first, it is not true, see for instance the Witcher 3; and second, this wouldn’t make me wrong even if it was. If the way of implementing content is flawed in the traditional way of making side quests, then the developers should have imagined another way to include this content (e.g the quest design in Pathologic 2 and Disco Elysium without any strong distinction between main and side), and making quests like this would remain something to criticize. Coming back to Erend, after the quest, he only has a few dialogs and a gameplay sequence in the last battle, and that’s all. Put together, it amounts to 3, 4 hours of screen time at the very best, on a 60-hours long game, I don’t call that a significant involvement.
But the screen time is not really the point here, you may tell me that when you pile up all the time Aloy is accompanied by one of the side character, the hour count gets honorable (but still less than half the game I think, expect if you include Sylens’ dialogs). That’s true, but beyond their screen time, we have to discuss what those characters actually bring to the story in the end. When do the side characters make Aloy change her mind in the story? When do they take an initiative that actually changes the situation without her doing the dirty work on her own? When does any of them put Aloy back to her place and make her evolve as a person instead of voicing their admiration to her? When does any of them win over her, or deflect her from her road? You might find a few situations where the action of one side character distantly relates to one of these, I won’t take 3 pages describing all the key situations in which they don’t, and I am not saying that my few questions cover everything we can expect from side characters in a good story. But side characters still need to be impactful in some way to be noticed, and the fact remains that most of H:ZD is heroin Aloy kicking the bad guys’ ass or discovering the truth on the world without anybody else, and in the end winning the final battle against the Hades, Helis and their troops on her own.
So far this is the best "review" of HZD I've watched. It matches my experience with the game and adds some clever analysis.
Love your take on the game! i would love to hear your take on disco elysium, or some narrative game that you like, keep it up!!
Well I do have a video on Dear Esther... 😉
Disco Elysium represents pretty much the exact opposite of all the flaws listed in this video. It's a game that prioritizes being incredibly deep and meaningful over flashy combat and mindless escapism.
I really did like the game but I never got around to actually finishing it. Didn't captivate me enough, I guess. But I do think it would be fun to return to it one day. The cities did seem kind of weird past the introduction because it just didn't make any sense, as you said
Loved the video, even 15 year old me couldn't take the patronising dialogue. Now, several years later, im trying the game again, and I feel like my humanity is eroded every time I play it. Video games have so much potential; it's a shame, harldy anyone can see it.
You nailed it, kudos for having the guts to review it honestly. I bought the game on PC after several recommendations and I really expected some good AAA title. The game is mediocre at best, you nailed the points that bothered me the most. Good job.
Lovely review, and honestly hard to find on TH-cam underneath all the empty praise?! Also that music bit killed me 😂
Omg I thought I was insane THANK YOU. There were so many amazing ideas, and I actually thought the twist with the purpose of the robots was neat, and I did like the connection between Aloy and Elisabet, but everything else was so...blah. There was no point at all to explore the world. Kind of crazy to think about how this and breath of the wild came out the same month. BOTW probably had 1/6th of the processing power and graphical finesse but its game design fixed all the problems that HZD and games like it had which is why it's lived on.
"Show dont tell" I also agree with it. This game plagues with. And AAA gaming in general nowadays. They are spending so much money so they want to reach out for all the age groups and all the people possible, without overwhelming them. We are seeing this trend now. But some very cool indie games and very few AAA games are not following this.
Totally agree with you on all points!
Just found your channel and immediately subscribed. Great content, congrats. (I completely agree re HZD)
Good to have you! 😊
Yes, to the Gary Oldman question. Also, I really appreciate your analysis here.
I agree with most of what you said, despite liking the game. For me, I got a lot of enjoyment out of the robot killing. That’s probably why I was able to forgive several of the other flaws. I also found the plot engaging enough to the point where I could ignore the other issues with the writing. Characters talking to themselves has been a big thing since Uncharted got released, so Horizon is definitely not alone regarding that stuff. Regarding Aloy, I did actually like her at the time of the game’s release, but less so now. I found some of her dialogue witty, but she definitely could have done with having more flaws. Being “strong and independent” on its own doesn’t really mean anything. No mention of Sylens, though. I thought he was the best character in the game.
This is awesome, thanks for commenting. I originally wrote a line in the script about how sad it was that the supporting characters (like Sylens and Erend) were more interesting than Aloy, but I didn't have the guts to keep it in. It just felt a bit too harsh. It's what I think though!
Pixel A Day Well at least you didn’t say Aloy was as bad as Rey ;)
Sometimes all I want is cool robot fights, and fun combat. The worst thing the game did was the same thing every open world game does, stuff itself with 40 hours of senseless repetitive side quests in order to achieve platinum.
I agree with all your points about character. Watching your video on tragedy next as I found myself thinking about Hellblade + TLOU2 in comparison.
Apart from my other comment, I wanted to say you did a solid critique!
I have other criticisms with Horizon (like it trying to be an RPG despite offering very little choice, even in the combat,) but I think you did a great job articulating soem issues that I myself have with the game.
New subscriber here. Great content! I'm amazed at how similar our experiences were with Horizon. Similarly to you, I even played it a few years late during the middle of my master's degree. I too didn't understand all the unabashed praise it received. Ultimately, I think I came away from it a little more positively than you did, and I give Guerilla a little credit for branching out and doing something totally different than what they were used to. Ultimately, I came away with it being a very bog standard open world game with cool enemy designs and encounters.
I made some choices to try and improve the experience. I played it on the hardest difficulty possible which made the first few hours genuinely nerve wracking and challenging. I also turned off a lot of the HUD elements which kinda forced me to pay more attention to what I was doing (although the game doesn't really account for this which meant there was lots of information that I couldn't gain naturally through play).
I also noticed when I played it on New Game+ that almost all of the mandatory story missions to advance the plot are basically the same walk through of ancient bunkers to get tidbits on the backstory (which I thought was actually not too bad, but it revealed to me how sparse the actual narrative of the game is without all the side stories to prop it up).
Likewise, I agree that Aloy doesn't really have any character flaws, but to me, what didn't make sense about her character is how the game tells us that she spent her entire life only able to socially interact with like 3 people, one of whom was Rost. Wouldn't she be like the most socially awkward person imaginable? When the game started, I thought it was gonna be a huge fish out of water experience where she tries to learn how to engage with all of the different tribal politics and cultures, starting off really naive and then coming into her own by the end of the story. But she is always the smartest, most knowledgeable, morally reasonable, and capable person in the room. How? Shouldn't most of this stuff fly over head for a big chunk of the game? It could have been this really fun romp as you try to pick the least embarrassing dialogue prompts to navigate the conversations until she finds the wisdom to be the leader she needs to become. But she's always right, no matter what. Not exactly riveting.
Finally, playing the game on the hardest difficulty forced me to optimize and min-max my combat options in order to survive, and while the first 10 hours were genuinely tense and interesting, as soon I was able to reliably and consistently craft freezing weapons, the game becomes trivial. Even enemies not weak to frozen status just fold under the 2x damage modifier and complete armor negation. I basically didn't have to play the game the way Guerilla designed it anymore. I don't know what they were thinking (also, why does Aloy need to unlock the ability to stab someone from a ledge hang? The rpg systems were definitely underbaked).
All in all, I would give it a solid 6.5 or 7 out of 10. To me it's a really strong proof of concept from Guerilla and has some really fun combat (when it doesn't undermine itself). I award them some kudos for coming up with a brand new IP and trying something really new, and I was hoping that Forbidden West would be a bit more daring. I haven't played it yet, but from what I've been able to see, I don't think they've made the big gameplay and narrative jumps I'm hoping for.
I'd much rather have played your imagined version, congrats for your inventiveness! I fully agree and I'm glad we're in accord :)
@@PixelaDay got a bunch of your vids on my watch later playlist. Looking forward to the new content!
This made me laugh so much and put my thoughts into words better than I ever could!
So good to hear! 😊
wow this was such a great video! Thanks you for it! You literally put into words all the problems I have with this game!! Its a beautiful and mechanically fun game but it feels incredibly shallow and soul-less. Ive tried getting into it multiple times and it just never sticks.
Yay, glad you liked it 🙂 Hope you’ll stick around on the channel! (my newer videos are way better than this one)
theoretically she was perfect with nothing in need to change (practically she didn't need to mature she was mature from the beginning)
THANK YOU for making this video, it was cathartic. After finally playing this game, I cannot believe the review scores given how boring, bland and generic it is.
You really put into words exactly what is was feeling but couldn’t really pinpoint. Subbed!
Thanks for subbing :) I hope you enjoy the other videos on my channel, they're much better than this one!
20:13 you can’t use Optimus Prime as an Example, he’s got a Huge Backstory from when he was Orion Pax that we Don’t see in the Movies that basically leads to him Becoming The Ultra Wise and Stoic Leader he is. Besides, he does have Flaws in those Movies. DO NOT DISRESPECT OPTIMUS PRIME.
Sorry Optimus! 🙏
Great critique ! I love it ;)
Would love to see a video on forbidden west, haven't had the guts to buy it yet because of zero dawn
A wonderful video! I do agree with just about all of what you said to! I guess the vacuous nature of the game didn't bother me so much since I tend to play multiple games at a time. I think at the same time i was playing this i was also playing 2 or so shorter narratively complex games that scratched my itch. I don't think games that are gameplay focused are a bad thing, but I do wish that a setting like horizon's maybe was a bit more flushed out. But just like a slasher flic or a superhero movie isn't meant to have the same depth as like the shining, i do think there's room for games like horizon. the open world here world didn't do what i wanted to story wise, but it did stop the combat from ever getting stale by allowing me to mix up my paths and approach. I just think it's stuck in an uncomfortable middle
Just had a whole ass conversation against a friend about how boring this game actually was. I thought I was being contrarian for a second. Thanks for reassuring me on my judgement lol
You're very welcome
I actually liked Zero Dawn for being a bit retro. It was the perfection of an old formula, like very good Pasta.
Sure it is nothing new and pretty common, but god damn adding hazelnuts was a good idea.
Focusing on those strong points made the game a success, it does the fights really well. It is essentially a bit of a proof of concept.
You know, probably no one will look at this comment, but You are right, I was watching this video while I was beating the last mission, since Meridian I wasn't expecting anything, it was alright I think, but it was not at all what I was expecting, the lore was really good if I'm honest and maybe the ibly reason I completed the game, but from the 10 first hours off the game I sense that this wasn't gonna be a game I would remember dearly, ir was just so... Alright, nothing feels janky or bad, the gameplay was solid but the game is just...plain, is weird seeing a lot of effort put un some áreas whereas the overall experiencia feels dull, I'm glad I could beat it so I can't feel that pain of me not being able to beat a game, but I don't think I can beat it again and I wantes yo beat it since in the ps+ catalogue is now the Horizon: Fordibben west game, I was si excited but I don't think it's worth My time, I think I have experienced that game with the first one, that's how plain it feels
This game is very dear to me and I love it, partly because it was my first ever open world game and I have fond memories of those times when I played it, but I don't think anyone else in the world criticizes (and despises the characterization of Aloy tbh lol) it as much as I do lmao
I very much felt the same way about this game. It wasn't bad, just... disappointing. Pretty but pointless.
I never got past Aloy's childhood flashback. I tried 3 times. She did my head it haha
This game is a mess on so many levels and has so much wasted potential... but I really like it, despite all the flaws- bad dailogue, tracking based combat, terrible climbing, Mary Sue protagonist and supply crates in ancient, unexplored ruins that hold "fresh meat" represented with a chicken thigh. You'd think it'd spoil or something. Oh, also, the story is kinda good, but a bit stupid and silly when one thinks about it. Just one example- apocalypse robots built other apocalypse robots via to "eating" biomass with a magical fog thing or something. How can they produce a massive, metal, rocket firing killbot from processed trees and algae? Dunno. Oh, and giving player dialogue options without them having any influence over story is what I'd expect form an evil person. Despite all that, I still liked the game for what it was- easy, escapist entertainment, albeit it required turning my brain to snooze mode.
I tried HZD sequel just recently and oh boy, it was too much. It cranked all the bad things to 12/10, especially cringe, obnoxious characters, quadrupled crafting material amounts and added ridiculous amounts of stupid busy work. Despite the sequel being beautiful and having some nice stuff (like the glider), after 22hrs with it, I stopped playing and feel burnt out. Maybe You could make a critique of the sequel in some time? That would be lit
You've made some great points that explain my feelings exactly. But I want to praise your editing. Your jokes/memes are well timed and so funny. Great job!
Lol i totally thought the people were meant to be AI as well, especially at the beginning when they talk about Aloy’s “corruption” needing to be healed before she could get in All Mother.
Anyway, awesome critique, articulating every niggling doubt I had! Also good call waiting til after your phd. It’s unclear i’ll finish mine thanks to HZD..
Has it destroyed that many of your brain cells? 😅 jk!
Brilliant review.....when I saw the map, HUD and stealth grass in this game I knew something was not right with all those raving reviews
Very well said! I completely agree that the combat and artwork are the strengths of this game, by far. The storytelling, and IMO the story too, are really lackluster. So many possibilities for narrative turns that just never happened. I felt like I was assumed to be a 12 year old, which doesn't fit the tone of the combat's intensity nor the core bleakness of the story.
i liked bc it was hzd slander, i subbed for a good analysis
This is exactly why I couldn't get into this game. The voice acting and dialogue were subpar. They just didn't feel right at all to the point that it took me out of the experience. It completely took away the immersion for me that I didn't feel like playing it anymore. I'm also glad that you mentioned that Aloy talks too much. This also took me out of the experience because it just didn't feel natural. I saw the gameplay for Forbidden West (which looks amazing to say the least in my opinion). But it seems that it will have the same issues. The words that come out of some characters' mouth are just super lame and same goes with some of the voice acting. Aloy is also still talking to herself too much. A game this beautiful needs to keep me immersed, but with poor dialogue, voice acting, bland characters, etc., I just can't properly enjoy it.
21:19, the answer is to sell PS4s. Great review otherwise, I tried the definitive edition and couldn't play more than 3 hours. It's like this game is a caricature of what a game should be.
Well thank you, I'm glad we're in agreement! :)
11:00
For someone who has been playing TTRPGs for almost over a decade now, it absolutely blows my mind how easy it is to just... accept it in video games.
When you start to create your own campaigns, all the knowledge of video games is almost completely useless. You have to ask yourself: "Why is this chest right here, with that loot? Who put it there, etc." If you can't do that and just place random boxes/chests everywhere... it just feels wrong.
I like me some random treasure chests with exciting loot in them when I am rewarded for exploring a world. But if you start to play any TTRPG... these flaws will strike you again and again.
im going to say my favorite things in the game are the combat, machines, and the graphical fidelity. but i just wish with sucha beautiful large world they could have deviated from the trappings of all the tropes of sandbox games i.e. assassin's creed/far cry syndrome where its littered with objective markers and shit. i think open world games like zelda and unexpectedly subnautica, and the forest, and even dark souls do it perfectly in that exploration feels good. you aren't really "exploring" in horizon. one thing i enjoyed alot was running into a cauldron by chance...but its really the only thing in the game that checks the box of exploration and discovery properly. in those games more specifically the latter 3, there is an emphasis on having the player figure things out and progress through discovery. there is none of that in horizon, what with Aloy spoon feeding the story and gameplay solutions but its also mired in way point markers, and objective lists. the huge positive for me is the combat alone.that is the only aspect of the game i feel challenged in and have to use my noggin abit to find ways to kill these robots faster. thats why ive taken a liking to survival games recently because they are all about giving enough info but not holding your hand at all and give you this giant playground to adventure through..And with regards to the story, i havent gotten through all of it i will say there are some moments i did tear up but overall i thought there was no subtlety in it.
edit: not to mention the stealth is very basic as mentioned in this video. playing dishonored and the recent deus ex games, makes the interactions in stealth here so bland.
so overall id say my driving force of fun is that i really like the combat with the machines. it kinda sorta scratches that same monster hunter itch even if monster hunter is different in many ways. im not entirely invested in any of the characters really. its saying a lot when a game like yakuza like a dragon with a band of middle aged people doing mundane things like trying to make money by taking odd jobs from old bar owner ladies is so much more resonating than this supposed grand adventure of this future machine world juxtaposed with ancient tribal civilization.
I totally agree! Thanks for your comment!
Aloy was, for me, just a vehicle to experience the world.
It didn't matter much that she's a 1-dimensional character, because she didn't matter.
Will someone please make an open world game with reeeal dinosaurs? Also cool vid
Fantastic review!
i like your sense of humor to casually critique a game that needed critiquing.
(if you dont want to read my whole comment, i understand because it is very long. if you want to find my MOST IMPORTANT POINT, then it is marked with❗ )
i played this game in the State of Play because it was free and i was curious to know why so many people had been (and apparently still are) raving about this game. so much of the game felt like it was a chore to play rather than engaging. (apart from the Project Zero Dawn) dialogue is so hard to listen to and, as you said, Aloy's constant monologue is, indeed, annoying.
music is great, but its not very diverse throughout the game. i swear, i felt like i was hearing the same calming tribal hum track everywhere. whenever you were in stealth/hiding, there is only one track that plays every single time (lol i still remember it, that's how many times i heard it). when you are discovered in combat, i believe there are only two tracks that play. i feel like this limited soundtrack reminds me of the soundtrack that plays instantly when Spider-man web-swings, except that I also know that Insomniac had a diverse, heroic, and engaging soundtrack throughout the game and, during different moments of the story, the web-swinging soundtrack will change. for example, in the early acts of the game (when the state of the city is calm and usual), the usual heroic web swinging theme will play. when the plot picks up and the mystery around Martin Lee, the Demons, and Devil's Breath thickens, the web-swinging track changes to something tense and mysterious. when Devil's Breath is released, the villains are making moves, and the state of the city is chaos, the web-swinging track changes to something chaotic and urgent. i didn't really feel that with Horizon's soundtrack. it rarely, if not never, changes.
i was most bored by the traversal and kept thinking to myself, "in an open-world game as large as an ocean, why is moving around so mind-numbing that i keep thinking, 'i'd rather web-swing in Spider-man'?". a good rule of thumb i learned about open-world games: if you are spending more time fast traveling than traversing/exploring the world, then thats a red flag. Horizon Zero Dawn was that game where i fast travelled more than i explored (maybe if they allowed me to fly glinthawks, that might've changed. but running for hours and riding robot horses that ride less authentically than horses in Red Dead Redemption 2 gets boring really fast). for Spider-man and Red Dead Redemption 2 however, i never used fast travel because traversal was either very fun or the open-world was so rich, dynamic, and detailed that it was worth exploring.
characters are also so forgettable and lifeless. hard to believe that someone so important to Aloy (Rost) is a character that gets dropped like a hot potato and i, the player, dont care about his death and felt as if Aloy quickly forgot too. even the plot against the Shadow Carja is so uninspired that i felt as if i would've been more invested it was ONLY Aloy vs. HADES. now THAT was cool. but the Shadow Carja? Helis? lame. they felt like a cult that was used as filler, making the game weaker.
ik some people say they liked the combat. i'm not saying you have to believe me, but i wasn't a fan of it. there were many times where my dodge/roll would not register or i would still take damage even though i'd burst out loud, "What? I totally dodged that!". weapons are not very diverse, because, at the end of the day, all of them deal damage in three ways: throw some form of projectile, cause elemental damage, or melee/stealth (albeit limited opportunities). most combat systems do that anyway, but i've known other games that use those systems in more unique and diverse ways. when i played with Horizon's combat, i felt like i was always fighting enemies the same way i had been fighting since the start of the game and didnt really get chances to change things up and create interesting combos. the upgrade system did not help me in significant or competent ways either (i am not, of course, referring to the weapon upgrades, but rather Aloy's character upgrades). i remember i thought the slide/jump slow-mo while aiming upgrade would be really useful, but when you are being bombarded by 5-10 ferocious robot animals that surround you and tear you apart if you're not spamming dodge/roll, i found very few safe opportunities to use that slow-mo upgrade, let alone in a rewarding way.
❗i felt like the only things that kept me motivated to finish the game were: my curiosity to discover what the majority find so special and unique about the game, the beauty of the environment, my overall boredom with being quarantined at home and having no other games to play at the moment, and (most of all) the lore/mystery behind humanity's extinction and rebirth. all i cared about was learning what was Project Zero Dawn. it was by far the most intriguing and memorable aspect of the entire game. humanity's reactions to the end of their world are, by far, the best performances delivered in the game. i swear, you can hear more emotion in those logs (such as Ted Faro, Dr. Elizabeth Sobeck, Faro employees, Project Zero Dawn employees, and humanity's last line of defense) than you can observe in Aloy and any other present-day characters combined. sometimes i repeated those logs more often than how many times i wanted Captain Obvious (Aloy) to open her mouth . i still remember this one former Faro employee who was so weighed down by the guilt of the robots he created that he genuinely believed he deserved to die. when he was hired for Project Zero Dawn, he was so astonished that he said , "I never imagined there could be... atonement." and those audio logs still haunt corners of my mind.❗
when i FINALLY made it to the ending, i was like, "Wow. That's it? Why did I get a game about this? Why couldn't I get a game where you play as Dr. Elizabeth Sobeck who is trying to fight the apocalypse against the corrupted Faro machines? Why can't I play a game where we are experiencing, in real-time, the consequences of the Ted Faro's greedy mistakes? It's nice to see that this present world is the aftermath of his mistakes, but couldn't we have gotten THAT as our sequel instead of Forbidden West? Or couldn't we have a Red Dead Redemption 2 moment and make Dr. Elizabeth Sobeck's story a prequel game instead of Forbidden West? Now THAT would be actually interesting."
i agree with many of your points and im really glad that you decided to speak up. thank you for making me feel like i'm not a weirdo for being in the minority who disagreed with this game.
GIRLLLL !!! You just say what I really have in mind for this game. And these critics come from a female gamer, to a game that has a female protagonist, the least that people can expect these days. I really don't know why people praise this game too much, or they are just too afraid of a fearsome feminist movement to give an honest review. I really hate when the protagonist is too perfect or too OP at the beginning, even now I don't like playing Mass Effect because Shepherd is just too heroic, it's the same as Alloy here. But at least Mass Effect has a good RPG system that I very enjoy, but Horizon open world is just too lame and too Ubisoft style, with lifeless conversation and dumb quest marker. Killing robot is just not enough to save this game thou. Bad game is a bad game, I just don't care what the gender of the main character is, just like those Hollywood film these days, but that is another story.
Horizon just fit to play when you're too bored and don't have any games to have fun with. Like me, I'm playing it three times now and probably not gonna finish it. But I'm very bored after finally beating Elden Ring and waiting for my PS5 next month.
A very cool point of view of one the most hyped games ever :)
I just finished it and enjoyed like hell. Why? Because I just wanted a light entertainment which I got for over 100hrs. It's really full of clichés and besides the technique of the combat there isn't any fundamentally new stuff that other studios haven't invented yet: the gamewheel, the loot system, the quest tree, the android-like NPCs, stealth, climbing and a lot more. What I think makes this game a success that they combined these ordinary techniques very well.
The story is quite grabbing (reading it as a book it won't make any success, of course) - I never read those little things (data points) in other games, but here I collected them all because they add to the story. Yeah, the storytelling has some problems but we're different: after spending quite some time finding out how to solve puzzles with Lara in Tomb Raider series silently it annoyed me sometimes why Aloy gave me hints before I could find out, but this overexplanation wasn't that disturbing to me. I really enjoyed side-quests, too (no magic after AC Odyssey...) :)
Actually I don't have much openworld games to compare to but recently played AC Origins/Odyssey (plus RDR1/2) and they had serious flaws as well: they get incredibly boring after a while causing me to ignore side-quests or even pause for a while - which HZD tried to eliminate. With more or less success, though it worked for me.
This game is a like a Hollywood blockbuster movie. It needs to deliver the investment therefore no experimenting is allowed. Until everyone gets bored these kind of games will fit for the overage casual player like me who's sometimes just walking around in a forest or looking down from a cliff for a couple of minutes wondering how long was the road from PacMan to this magic :D
I never looked (as a man) at the gender-question in games in such a way, thanks for highlighting us this side of the story.
Good review this game i typical of the crap we get thee days all looks and very little else.
Horizon feels like proof of what Sony has always viewed Guerilla Games as. A company that imitates whatever the big trend is from their rivals.
Killzone was specifically marketed as a Halo Killer back in the day. Then Horizon was specifically compared to BoTW even before both games released (both having giant robots as part of their reveal trailers/teasers.)
Horizon is obviously trying to be like Witcher 3 and Assassin's Creed. With Horizon Forbidden West trying to include more climbing and a glider it is no surprise that Guerilla never left the shadow of their contemporaries, especially Breath of The Wild. They are the team that Sony tells to imitate whatever is popular within the hardcore gaming market.
I would like to see Guerilla Games grow from the Horizon and Killzone series, however I feel like they will never be allowed to. That said, they clearly have their fans. If this strategy works for them then I am fine with them keeping to it. It would just be nice if they tried being more original for once.
Interestingly they had the idea for Horizon back in the late 00’s, but canned it b/c Enslaved was coming out and it looked too similar. Maybe if they’d been able to release it then it wouldn’t have been so derivative…but who knows. As it stands I agree, I’m not sure they’ve produced anything (yet) that doesn’t feel really derivative.
What happened with that Phd? Great review!
It did get completed eventually!
(minor spoilers ahead)
Hey, great video! This game series is my absolute favourite in terms of combat and lore/story, but I love watching a fresh (3 years ago anyway) and critical perspective on things that I love.
Most "critique" videos on this series are outright toxic, and just get me in a shitty mood after watching. I get the feeling of "how can you not see what I see". Well, this video is not like most videos. An excellent and honest critical look at a game you clearly also like (and don't just hate for hate's sake). Brilliant!
One point I disagree with you on is the "this game has nothing to say" line. I think the themes and story (even if not original) give a great outlook on the dangers of technology on the wrong, greedy hands. I also think there's a message about human nature to fall into tribalism and want to wage war on eachother. People aren't born different; it's when people see and interpret things in a different way, they start to become different people. This naturally creates a divide, and the gap only widens as time goes on. And this is told in the game through the lore, how the first people interpreted the machines and nature differently and thus created the different tribes, even if everyone was born in the same cradle facility.
Most other points you made in the video I agree with. It's just simply true that Aloy talks too much, lmao. During my experience with the game (and the series so far) I was enjoying the combat, lore and story so much I was willing to forgive and look past these flaws. This was a huge leap of faith for the company and so far they have made a great success with it.
I know the video is 3 years old, but it was really a fantastic critique! I will definitely check out your other videos as well, cheers!
ps. I would love to hear your thoughts on Forbidden West (if you played it). They really improved a lot of stuff for the second installment. All the best!
Thanks for the great comment! I hope you stick around on the channel :)
At first, mostly due to the worldbuilding and design, I thought HZD was saving my love for AAA open world games.
Halfway through, all the issues you mentioned and more made my enjoyment fall flat so hard that it was made even worse because I liked it at first. I almost felt deceived.
Great video, sadly it seems Forbidden West has all the same issues.
This is what I’m told 😢 Glad you liked the vid!
Great take on the game.
I've attempted to get into this game once previously and wasn't motivated to keep going.
Thought I'd give it another try now because I'd like to play forbidden west, I've progress further than I did previously (a bit past reaching meridian) but I am really struggling to find something to like other than the beautiful world and fun fighting dinosaurs.
I have stopped doing any side quests because they are trash and am trying to bee line the main story.
The story is... I can't tell? I feel like there's potentially a good story here, but honestly I feel like Aloy is a good human being but an insufferably boring protagonist, all the other side characters in the main story so far are not engaging at all. I am struggling to find motivation to continue with the story and if forbidden west hasn't improved on these aspects I might just save the time and money.
And even the combat suffers from the rest of the game's design. If you bother in doing all the side quests you will end up sick and tired of the combat as well. I ended up so over-leveled that unless it was part of a main quest, I just kept bashing everything with my spear to get done with most fights that weren't a thunderjaw, the giant lightning bird or the mole thing.
You should try to play anything above very easy difficulty.
Nice! I agree 100% with you. Horizon is a very soulles game.
So far, I've played through some of the early parts of the PC version. I like the overall concept and setting, but the hand-holding is a bit much. Aloy's constant chattering gives me the impression that the writers weren't confident in the story they were trying to tell, so they had to over-explain everything, as inexperienced writers tend to do. Lackluster writing is a common problem in open world RPGs, so I wouldn't ding this game too hard over it when other games have comparable shortcomings. I've played many over the years, and I have encountered very few that have truly well written narratives and quests. Some have well constructed worlds that feel like real places and are a joy to explore. Elder Scrolls games (Morrowind and later), Fallout games, and Ultima (especially VI, VII and the Worlds of Ultima spin-offs) excel here, but only a few of these games have quality narratives. Skyrim, for example, is a great setting in which to play a fantasy life-sim, but the stories in the major quest lines are serviceable at best (i.e. Dawnguard DLC) and boring at their worst (the main quest and the civil war), whereas Worlds of Ultima: Martian Dreams (from way back in 1991) weaves a wonderful and bizarre science fiction story in its fantastical 19th-century-inspired Mars setting. If a game provides a great world to explore and at least a passable narrative, I'll be reasonably satisfied, but when an open world game actually bothers to tell a story in a competent and engaging manner, then it is truly memorable.
One may notice that I haven't mentioned combat yet. I never have particularly enjoyed combat, and with very few exceptions (murdering deathclaws at a distance with a sniper rifle in New Vegas is surprisingly fun), I find it to be a nuisance that gets in the way of other things that I enjoy. Naturally, I always play at the easiest possible difficulty level so that I can get the fights over with as quickly as possible. If an RPG provides little beyond combat, I'll likely get bored and frustrated with it. I have to wonder if I will finish Horizon Zero Dawn. Despite Aloy's chattering, I have found some enjoyment in the parts I have played so far, but if it gets to the point that it offers nothing besides combat, I'll probably not find it compelling enough to play to the end. It might be a while before I get back to it. I'm in a phase right now in which I simply cannot tolerate combat, so I'm mostly playing games that don't have it or have very little.
ok, you must play assassin's creed odyssey on legendary difficulty then.
Skyrim was designed to win awards and sell as much as possible so its no surprise it was rather generic . The previous games were fantastic
I really enjoyed this game, but I totally agree with you about Aloy talking too much and outright telling you what to do.
The new Tomb Raider games are guilty of this as well. You walk into a new area and after a few seconds Lara pipes up with: "Hmm, maybe I could use X to get to Y?"
In the end, I also played through for the plot but got the same points on my list. Except of that and the setting, there is no element that is above average.
I love your critique. Your point about we needing more female characters who are assholes is so true and it's an idea I've been passionate about for a while now. Still very relevant commentary.
i'm currently playing this game, coz i just finished Ghost of Tsushima...
which i regret, because Ghost of Tsushima set the bar too high, now, playing this game is ridiculously clunky and the characters... are lifeless... i like your suggestion that there should be a plot twist in the end, that the people are not people, but androids, because thats how they feel to me, the player...
the graphics and world building is beautiful, but the game play and the exposition dumps are very tiring to play through... :(
You know, this is beautifully written, fantastically argued, and I... completely disagree on the overwhelming majority of points. There are many things to criticize about Horizon's story and gameplay, but what bothered you, I often actually like, and there are many things that you never mention that drive me crazy.
So let's start with the obvious: Aloy herself. She talks to herself when alone, yes. Where you find this annoying, I find it very relatable. She feels driven to do good because she can, to at least some degree. Awesome. Some people do have an overabundance of empathy that makes that sort of thing happen. My gripe, actually, is with the fact that she often almost walks away first, or acts like she doesn't care before turning around and caring. It's as though someone in the writers' room said "hey, she's too perfect, make her a jerk sometimes. More realistic." Except it's not. She also never struck me as being perfect. I mean yes, she has a flat character arc, but that's not in itself a bad thing. She has an ideological conflict, but it's with ideas that are out there in the world, not ideas she has internalized. She was spared from having those ideas forced into her head. Spared... by being considered barely human, if that, by the people pushing the ideology. That rings _painfully_ true, though I suppose most people wouldn't understand. The worst thing about Aloy as a character is, in my opinion, making her very DNA into a macguffin. That all but forces the game to treat her as excessively special. Everything else, though? Love it.
As for the gameplay... I can agree to some extent with the idea that the super senses granted by the focus are a crutch, but they didn't sting as much for me. Maybe because I haven't played a bunch of other games where that's the norm. The fact that you can only climb on specially-marked, color-coded spots, though? I found that absolutely galling. The most fourth-wall-breaking thing in the game, hands down. Perhaps that's also because I haven't played all the games that made that the norm up until now.
The story you uncover throughout the game is... well, it's a very basic tale of capitalistic greed destroying the old world, and of fools who don't know any better recreating the old power structures that killed the world once already in the new one. An excellent premise that needs more play, done... relatively competently. Nothing particularly amazing about the execution, but the foundation is strong enough that it can survive mid-tier execution unharmed. The execution of the worldbuilding, on the other hand, is excellent. There's plenty of rather interesting philosophy that you can get into while reading or listening to the logs from the old world, and plenty more of interest to think about with the characterization of the cultures of the various tribes. That all is interesting enough to think about that I don't really mind the (already very basic, tbh) puzzles being quickly spoiled by Aloy. There were points, IIRC, where things seemed to abruptly swerve away from an interesting topic when it threatened to really make introspection inevitable, and that made me roll my eyes, but overall, it worked well. It's no Disco Elysium, but that's okay. Can't expect every game's writing to measure up to the best written game of all time.
I wouldn't call it the best game around or anything, by any means. There's nothing revolutionary to be found here. There were moments when it could have said something interesting and chose not to, and moments when Aloy seemed to break character to be a jerk in order to make her look more obviously flawed. All in all, though, I think it did a lot more right than wrong. Aloy is a fantastic character in her own right, and the story's pretty good too. And in terms of representation -- at this point, we just need _more_ female protagonists in games. No single character could ever be quality representation on their own. We need a range, and multiple examples of each sort. Aloy is more on the uncomplicatedly heroic and very strong side of things, where a lot of very straightforward protagonists are, but honestly, we need more video game women in that role too.
review
I agree with most of your points! I also feel that the video doesn't understand that the whole story of the game is a tale about caring for the world around us vs reckless, selfish ambition. To hear OP say on a condescending note that the game had nothing to say just because she didn't seem to get it seriously rubbed me the wrong way. I think it's the patronizong tone of the video that makes that sarcasm difficult for me to accept. It's not as if the themes were that hard to understand.
There's this subtext throughout the video that goes and says that HZD is a dumb game for people who wants to turm their brain off and that the story and world is pointless and nonsensical. I find this narrow minded and almost insulting tbh.
@@quentinarrius HZD is a dumb game for people who wants to turm their brain off and that the story and world is pointless and nonsensical.
I'm too dumb to understand this review.
Aloy is also VERY limited on exploration you can't climb on anything that does not have anything yellow on it its very sad how limited exploration is