Horizon game series — a review
I played Horizon Zero Dawn (HZD) the first time sometime around April 2021. While I struggled a bit with it’s gameplay back then, what blew me away was the story of the main quest. I’ve played my share of video games and I’ll continue to play them, but I doubt I’ll ever play a game where the main storyline will fill me with the kind of awe HZD managed to do.
The game is set in a post apocalyptic earth, where humanity is made up of relatively primitive tribes. Cohabiting the world are machines of unknown origin, coming in forms of various animals. The machines were benign, but recently they’ve been unusually aggressive towards humankind and more dangerous kinds keep appearing. To add to this, there are ruins of “old ones”, basically humankind of the previous age scattered all over the world, filled with insanely advanced technology. What happened to humankind of the previous age isn’t known to the people of this era.
We play the game as “Aloy”, a baby born into a tribe called Nora, set somewhere in the Mountain states of USA. Aloy is born as an outcast of this tribe which is governed by lots of regulations. She is raised by a fellow outcast Rost, who becomes her father in all but blood. Aloy is told that she’ll be accepted into the tribe and told of her origins if she wins the “proving”, the tribe’s coming of age ritual for its youngsters. Aloy finds a “focus”, a technological relic of the lost age which gives her augmented perception of her surroundings (it also serves important gameplay functions). Aloy grows up to finally participate in the proving and the real game begins. After the proving, Aloy goes on a journey to explore her origins and simultaneously uncovers what happened to the old ones, discovering that the story of the old ones, her origins and the fate of humanity are all linked. Beyond this, I consider anything as spoiler and better found out by playing the game (or the upcoming Netflix show, assuming it works well). The main questline itself makes this game worth playing in my opinion.
The game is set as an open world role-playing game, with exploration the focus. There’s a decent amount of side quests in the game and some other fun activities. However, in terms of the quantity of stuff to do, the game is small, when compared to entries like The Elder Scross V: Skyrim which are absolute time sinks. The combat offers some variety, but it could have used more work in making something other than shooting arrows from bows more appealing. However, one interesting innovation is the use of the “focus” to help in combat and make it less of a mad shootout. The way Horizon series narrates the lore of the universe to the player through holograms, audio recordings and occasional text, all “scanned” through the focus is a nice innovation to engage the player into the series’ lore.
A word of appreciation to the developers of the game for making a post apocalyptic world which is slowly limping back to life look utterly gorgeous. I mean, take a look at this:
In open world RPGs, side characters are important in making the game more appealing. This is an aspect the game lacks in compared to entries like Skyrim, as most characters aren’t memorable. One exception, in no small part thanks to it’s voice actor and character model is Sylens, a mysterious person who is very learned in old world technology and is Aloy’s key frenemy in the series. Lance Reddick (of The Wire fame), who provided the voice and likeness for Sylens did one hell of a job to make this character truly memorable. He manages to get under the skin of Aloy and the player with ease, which speaks to Reddick’s prowess with his voice (reminds me of Morgan Freeman). The unfortunate passing of Lance before the next instalment of the game comes out is a loss to the series which can’t be compensated. I am unsure how the makers will fill that void for such a memorable character (generative AI might be the best bet). Ashly Burch, who plays Aloy also does a fine job in voicing the character, making Aloy relatable. Erend, another key ally of Aloy is one more memorable character, with his straightforward attitude and bluntness, while showing a level of vulnerability beneath his boisterous nature.
HZD got a DLC add-on called “Frozen Wilds”. The story and characters aren’t much to write home about, however the DLC adds stuff to the overall lore of the universe.
As HZD became a pretty big success, expectations surrounding it’s sequel went up. Horizon Forbidden West (HFW), the sequel came out in 2022, doing many things better but also missing the mark on a few.
HFW is a massive improvement on HZD in terms of gameplay and the open world. There are some more weapon options, more types of enemies, more types of elemental ammunition. The gear upgrade system is moved to a “workbench” and if you have excessive loot, it’s moved to a “stash”, which is accessible in plenty of points all around the map. As someone who suffered the infamous “you’re carrying more than your capacity” meme of Skyrim, the stash mechanic was a true godsend.
HFW is more expansive in terms of the map and the amount of side quests and fun activities. I sunk a lot more time into this game and the DLC than into HZD and it’s DLC thanks to the sheer size. I did enjoy the variety of stuff to do and the new kinds of machines that were introduced. The game’s overall environment and vibe felt very similar to HZD. The developers did a good job in keeping the core gameplay and open world mechanics of HZD and improving upon it significantly. However, two things I didn’t like much were the mechanics of flying on a machine, which felt clumsy and the inability to do underwater combat.
Now to the slightly problematic part of HFW, which was the strength of HZD — the story of the main questline. HFW’s main quest is a direct sequel of HZD, taking place with a small time gap after the climax of HZD’s main questline. As I didn’t spoil HZD’s story, I’ll not spoil the story of HFW. I’ll just say that Aloy works towards fulfilling the purpose she was born, while facing new enemies and villains and making new allies in the process. We meet new human tribes and see their strange customs and ways. The prologue is rather tedious and feels unnecessarily long if you’ve played HZD before, acting as an extended tutorial section. Then the story settles down into a decent pace with good plot twists, some cringe and some touching moments and some stuff that could have been handled better, but nonetheless mostly enjoyable. The major side characters Varl, Erend, Zo, Beta, Kotallo all gel nicely into the main storyline and are well portrayed. Sylens, the smug a-hole portrayed masterfully by Lance Reddick plays a pivotal and chaotic role in the main story’s events even with a short screentime.
Then there’s the ending of the main questline. It does setup the next game by finally introducing the series’ ultimate big bad, however this is done rather unconvincingly and at the game’s very end with almost no foreshadowing. In HZD, we interacted with the game’s villain in the game sporadically, knowing what to expect and it neatly foreshadowed the next game’s story. In HFW, the game’s villains are not well developed and I was left rather unhappy that we didn’t get to know more of their motivations or their history. The one twist leading to the final boss battle also left me a bit underwhelmed, even if the battle itself is interesting. All I want to say is, the writers dropped the ball when it came to developing the villains of HFW and setting up the villain of the next game in a convincing fashion. I hope this issue is fixed in the ostensible final instalment that’s coming up, else we’ll be Lost in the abyss of disappointment (if you get the reference, good).
HFW got a DLC called “Burning Shores”, which adds a bit more to what we can expect from the next game’s storyline, an interesting choice seeing how HZD’s “Frozen Wilds” DLC was developed. Burning Shores, except for the aforementioned plot point, doesn’t add a whole lot more to the already expansive base game. The story didn’t impress me much, except for the final boss battle which drove me crazy and I felt was well executed.
A word about the main character, Aloy. Video games with established female lead characters are less in number. The makers of Horizon didn’t fall into the trap of sexualizing Aloy, which I’m thankful for. Another note is, there’s been some commentary about how the series promotes “woke” agenda by putting down men. While overall, the series does have a shade more negative portrayal of men, the overall critique of men being shown negatively and as weaklings always is easily refutable by characters like Sylens, Erend, Varl who go through their own arcs and emerge as strong characters in their own right. Even as someone who doesn’t adhere to the far left agenda, I didn’t find the game’s character interactions and portrayal to be particularly political and ideological. Could some things have been tuned better? Yes. Does it make the overall storyline and characters too explicitly political towards one end of a spectrum? Hell no.
Final words — I’m a fan of fantasy in general, and I love to see how different universes are developed and interpreted by their creators, be it literature or video games. Horizon game series overall has shown the potential to become a strong video game centric fantasy/fiction world, something like the Elder Scrolls series which probably has the most fascinating fantasy universe across video games. Horizon is a series I highly recommend as being worth playing.
