But today’s post-apocalypses are gardens of Eden reclaiming cities, because today’s apocalypses are collapses instead of fiery holocausts. Post-apocalypses used to be grey cityscapes or blasted outback deserts, because apocalypses used to be nuclear annihilation. But the parts where Horizon segues into another overgrown post-apocalypse, where ruined cities are choked with vines and tall grass. Not the silly caveman stuff, which is even sillier than Far Cry: Primal for how seriously it takes itself. But if your writing is so up in my face and so bad that it makes Lance Reddick sound like a chump, you’ve failed that fundamental rule. The first rule of videogame writing should be “do no harm”. You know what game had good writing? Last year’s Doom. Look, I realize that not every game can be The Last of Us, Bioshock Infinite, or Bastion. Horizon, fraught with turgid exposition dungeons, is both. If there’s one thing worse than being front-loaded with exposition, it’s being back-loaded with exposition. It constantly stops to explain itself, even when it should be winding up. It locks you into rooms to watch purple hologram ghosts having conversations. Horizon plays out extended puppet show conversations as if it were Mass Effect. Godawful dialogue and clumsy cutscenes abound, each worse than the last, each longer than the last. With the help of a Mysterious Stranger, you will discover her Secret Backstory and then her Worldsaving Destiny. The heroine’s Hunger Games get interrupted by some bad guys with an Insidious Agenda that must be Investigated via a string of Story Quests. Their story is cringe worthy for its seriousness, for how it’s oblivious to being awkward, drawn-out, and blatantly derivative. They write as if they were Rockstar, sure that you’ll be fascinated by the awkward exposition for every random stranger who needs you to find his missing sword/wife/jewelry. Now let’s have some open-worlding.īut Guerilla Games will not let up. She finds an iPhone with a Far Cry app that lets you tag enemies, an Arkham Asylum app that lets you play Batman detective sequences, and a System Shock app that lets you see holographic ghost cutscenes. For the tutorial, she almost literally falls down a well. She has been raised by a Viking caveman Joel. A bunch of clumsily earnest cutscenes introduce the latest chick action hero with a bow: Katniss “Brave” Croft will be playing your Ellie in this post-apocalypse. Horizon: Zero Dawn has a terrible who but a promising early where. Assassins Creeds, the latest Far Cries, and the Watch Dogs have terrible characters in settings full of character. Games with a lame who can lean on their where. Make it a blank spot where I can insert a character of my creation. Grand Thefts Auto, Red Dead Redemption, The Witcher 3, Metal Gear Solid V, Xenoblade Chronicles, Arkham Knight. The best of them also have the best whos. The who and the where are fundamental parts of an open-world game. But it’s clear from playing Horizon that Guerilla has done their homework, studying what it takes to make an open-world work.Īnd then they apparently dropped out of class. Hence the long line of Playstation-exclusive Killzones. Previously, Sony has shackled these guys to whatever Playstation is currently missing its Halo. Horizon: Zero Dawn is far better than it should be, given that it’s the developer’s Guerilla Games’ first time making an open-world game.
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