I don’t really want to go on and on forever about this game, and yet it’s pretty much the only thing I’ve been playing lately so that’s what you’re going to get. I’m more than 60 hours deep into this game and much farther along in the story now, so there will be spoilers in this post. Consider yourself warned.
Horizon continues to hit a lot of perfect notes for me. This far in, I’ve gotten most of the available upgraded weapons except the last 2 hunter lodge ones. Combat has become about getting better at killing machines with the tools I have, instead of learning the strengths and weaknesses of the different kinds of weapons. Now that I have more health, I’ve switched from favoring laying out elaborate trap mazes ahead of time to either just letting machines kill each other with corruption arrows, or tearing off a few key components from a distance and then running in with the blast sling. The exception is with Deathbringers, which even fully kitted out at level 50 require some smart use of elemental attacks and precision hits to do real damage. I really enjoyed the challenge.
Progressing the story has been fun, even though it feels like a slightly different game when you’re exploring ancient ruins and getting saturated with lore instead of hunting down machines in the open world. I have been pleasantly surprised that the story, while improbable, isn’t completely stupid. I’ve also been pleasantly surprised that so much of the story of the world is laid out pretty clearly for you as you progress. I was half expecting some kind of unsatisfying hand wave of “it’s lost to history” but that’s not what we get. So far I’ve seen exactly what happened to the world in the 2060s and what project Zero Dawn actually was. I’m excited to see how the last bit plays out and whether Aloy is satisfied with her answers when I get back to the Nora sacred lands.
I have come to absolutely love Aloy, to the point where she is now pretty high on the list of my all-time favorite videogame protagonists. She’s smart and capable and snarky and strong and she suffers no fools. Initially I expected that there would be some type of romance, either optional or forced by the story, but so far there’s no sign of that. Or rather, folks keep hitting on her and she keeps shutting them down. I love this. The best of these was when the sun-king found out his lover had died, and then immediately started hitting on Aloy. You get a couple response options here, and in the one I chose she basically says “do you hear yourself right now? I don’t think you’re actually interested in me.” The reason why I know this is a game and not the real world is because instead of freaking out or getting angry the sun king basically says “oh shit you’re right I’m sorry” and moves on to other things. I love this whole exchange because Aloy has plenty of empathy but doesn’t get mired down in anyone else’s emotional issues.
Anyway I said I didn’t want to ramble a ton more about this game and yet here we are another 500+ words later. I can see the finish line on this game looming pretty close now and I honestly don’t want it to end. I’m sure I’ll write even more about it here when I do though.
