Guerrilla Games, the studio behind the Killzone franchise, has been making first person shooters for over a decade. But at E3 2015 they announced a new IP, an open world game that looked unlike anything we had played before, Horizon Zero Dawn.
It is set many years in the future where mankind has resorted to living as tribes and the land is overrun by machines that resemble robotic dinosaurs. Players control Aloy, an outcast who wants to live among other humans and be treated equally, while simultaneously wanting to find the truth behind the nature of the world.
You will be spending most of your time fighting machines, big or small, that belong to various classes. Aloy has several weapons at her disposal including three types of bows that deal different kinds of damage and Tripcasters that lay wire traps. A ropecaster can be used to tie enemies down to the ground whereas a sling can allow you to throw bombs. Players must carefully utilise their arsenal as enemies are weak to different types of damage such as fire or shock.
All machines have several parts that provide them with various advantages in battle, but a special type of damage, known as tear, can be used to remove these components. This completely changes how the encounters play out and every time you face the same enemies, the flow of the battle changes depending upon which parts you target. Using Tear you can straight up remove weapons from enemies, rendering them useless. The combat which involves humans during the story unfortunately isn’t as enjoyable and feels like a drag.
Being an open world RPG, Horizon Zero Dawn follows the same structure you would find in other games in the genre. There is a beautiful, massive world for you to explore filled with towns, NPCs and wildlife. You will spend a lot of time collecting wood, canisters and other material to make ammo and upgrade your carrying capacity.
It does a good job of labelling what kind of content you are playing as quests are divided into three main categories — main, side and errand. Bandit camps, dungeons and other open world activities all have their own sections. As such, the main story flows at a steady pace and side quests are anything but the usual fetch quests found in other RPGs. Similar to The Witcher 3, the side quests are accompanied with deep and interesting stories. There are multiple layers to each mission in addition to a lot of context given to the player, which gives meaning to your actions.
Horizon Zero Dawn is an amalgamation of several elements found in other open world games but rarely have they all been implemented in such a cohesive manner. It takes the best parts of Witcher 3, Far Cry and Bioware games while adding several twists of its own, resulting in an experience that is the best showcase of open world game design without sacrificing either story or gameplay.
