Horizon Zero Dawn Catch-All

So I beat Horizon tonight, and I'm gonna admit, the last few missions were really good. The story revealed its most interesting elements, and I liked how they structured the final missions. Concluding a game can be really tough, but they did a pretty good job.

I've begun reflecting on my response to this game, and I've come to the conclusion that it's a bit of both me and the game itself. Talking with Clock a bit in Slack, who also had issue with so many skills locked behind skill tree progression, I think reflecting on the simplicity of Breath of the Wild has brought to light a lot of what makes a game like Horizon so easy to play incorrectly.

You can only equip four types of weapons, and each of those weapons has different sub-types themselves. At different points of the game I used the sling for explosives, and then I switched to elemental bombs because I found them more useful. The truth is both types are valuable, but one ultimately has to negate the other if the player is going to want to try and be as efficient as possible without devoting a lot of time to experimentation and the specificity of best use-case scenarios. Same goes with the different types of bows. I ended up using the Precision arrows because they had a stronger base strength, meaning modifications guaranteed they'd deal the most damage. In addition, trap-blast arrows were great in removing components. Battle with a Thunderjaw? I can have those disc launchers removed in seconds, which then allows me to patiently wait and aim the discs myself so that I hit its face consistently and remove the guns attached to its maw. From there its a matter of fire bombs and ropecaster to slow it down so I can shoot those big tube-like things on its haunches, or shoot its "eye" when it's about to blast the multi-laser.

But not all battles seemed to work so well for me, with some foes being a greater pain than others. And while I might have been able to have an easier time with some other bows, I even found using bows with a +40-some % elemental coil barely helped in terms of impact of the element itself. This meant I'd rather use bombs.

This means, while some gear might have specific and ideal uses, there's simply too damn much.

Breath of the Wild has a more simple system. You have classes of weapons that deal different damage, yet encounters still feel varied with the tools available. In fact, it simplifies everything to categories. Cooking? you're either using food ingredients with specific traits or monster items for potions. While cooking food is more complicated as some dishes make awful things, you can get away with something basic. "I'll use three things of meat and a salt to make a dish restoring a ton of health". Meanwhile, my inventory is stacked with different items used to craft all kinds of different ammo, and all I know is they don't provide enough wire for someone that mains ropecaster and precision arrows.

I'm not saying Breath of the Wild's combat is better, but the simplicity works in its favor. It is classic Nintendo "simple to learn, hard to master". With Horizon, it's hard to learn because it's easier to feel like you're doing it wrong and out of your depth.

Still, even as someone that's not super efficient with the combat, fighting monsters and machines was easily a lot of fun and the best part of the game.

...fighting humans was not. At least, not during story missions. Bandit camps were awesome because they were open-ended stealth missions, and stealth is the only time melee isn't sh*t. But story missions? Good gravy, and the last battle against human enemies was a f*cking disaster for me because I had to keep running and therefore couldn't get a good look at my surroundings. In such close quarters with such hasty and intent foes, melee is usually the "best" option since aiming an arrow is usually tougher.

But enemies are close enough that any critical hit ends with absorbing damage yourself, and if you just try to wail on a guy – and this is true throughout the entire game – it seems that after two or three hits you just miss the enemy no matter what.

There's just too many small things in the game that keep it from being great for me, and while the story is interesting and clearly has themes of life, nurturing, and motherhood, it feels like a meandering game until you've cleared out all the side quests and can just mainline the last handful. At which point a lot of story is delivered in lengthy audio or text diaries.

However, a lot of my negativity towards the game was purely based on wanting to complete it as soon as possible, a pressure that a game like Breath of the Wild or Nier Automata did not feel. That's all on me, and something I need to work on.

LarryC wrote:

But I loved the combat in this game. That's what elevates it for me. It's just so crunchy.

Same. Larry, have you played Monster Hunter? The combat in Horizon takes a lot of influence from it. There's another free beta coming for Monster Hunter World on PS4 next week. You should check it out if you haven't.

Dyni wrote:
LarryC wrote:

But I loved the combat in this game. That's what elevates it for me. It's just so crunchy.

Same. Larry, have you played Monster Hunter? The combat in Horizon takes a lot of influence from it. There's another free beta coming for Monster Hunter World on PS4 next week. You should check it out if you haven't.

To be frank, I'm constantly afraid that Monster Hunter will suck me in like Starcraft did back in 1998 and I did nothing but Starcraft for the better part of a year. That said, I will be getting Monster Hunter World once it releases. I'm not interested in the beta. I'm definitely getting it.

Impressive stuff, Larry, and thanks for the testing. Right now, I'm pretty sure I need to fill out my arsenal--other than the tripcaster you buy early on and the starter sling, I've only got the various bows.

I'm also really struggling with blaze canisters. Either they're just hard to hit, or I don't get it. I can nail shock elements like I'm the goddamn Green Arrow, but trying to hit blaze usually ends up with the target burning to death before it blows up.

ccesarano wrote:

I'm not saying Breath of the Wild's combat is better, but the simplicity works in its favor. It is classic Nintendo "simple to learn, hard to master". With Horizon, it's hard to learn because it's easier to feel like you're doing it wrong and out of your depth.

Please bear in mind that I have not played BotW and I do not mean anything negative personally towards you. We like what we like and that's a great thing.

I concur that I can't say that combat is better in Zelda games and in BotW, but it is definitely simpler, so there's really not that much to master. They're generally not hard to master at all, specifically the ones in WindWaker and Twilight Princess, which I played the most of all the Zeldas.

That simplicity means that there's usually a best way to tackle an enemy and not that much variety in doing it. Shooting out the Cold Sac out of a Snapmaw is definitely quick, but it's not the absolutely easiest way to do it, and there's a whole bunch of other ways to deal with Snapmaws efficiently.

Most of the machines are like this. You could break off a Thunderjaw's disc launchers and destroy it that way. That's definitely fun. Or you can peel off exactly one piece of armor, freeze it, and then destroy it in two shots right to the heart. Gone in 11 seconds. It doesn't even get a shot off. It depends on what you're going for. I've even seen a 15 second take down of a Rockbreaker, though I highly prefer sneaking around and laughing at it while it lunges and spews rocks at no one in particular.

The complex physicality of Zelda's exploration contrasts to Zero Dawn's simple environment, that's mainly designed to be a hunting and combat arena. But Zero Dawn's detailed and highlyy textured combat contrasts with Zelda's simpler one, designed primarily as an adjunct to an exploration game.

I think it also bears mentioning something a lot more subtle. Zero Dawn's machines pause in combat and telegraph their attacks. On the surface, this seems like it's for one-on-one hunting, but I've come to realize that it's because Zero Dawn's machines are designed to snap onto each other like LEGO bricks. So if you consider an encounter as a whole process, each machine's attacks and weaknesses can be accounted for in specific ways with respect to the whole encounter, and you are allowed specific responses in specific ways to maximize.

As a specific example, a Longlegs is vulnerable to Shock Element. A Shell-Walker is a Shock-element machine that's resistant to Shock, but also explodes with Shock when you destroy or detach an underside element. So you can destroy that as an opener, stunning the Longlegs right in front of it, and then shoot off both Power Coils with Shock Arrows, which destroys the Longlegs basically without a fight, also damages the still-stunned Shell-Walker. This will also stun the other Shell-Walker, despite its Shock resistance. Since you don't need a lot of Shock element at all to trigger Power Coils, you can just use a Freeze-maxed bow which you then use to freeze and then bomb the Shell-Walkers. Don't forget to detach their shield-arms while they're stunned.

It's extremely rewarding to think through this as a plan before executing it, and getting it off even semi-perfectly is amazing.

Or you can Corrupt the Shell-Walker to have it use its Shock-attack against the Longlegs to stun and damage it, which you then destroy by exploding the Power Coils.

Or you can detach the Power Coils at a specific location with Tearblast Arrows. Then detonate the detached Power Coils (now immobile and really easy to hit) with Shock Arrows.

Now, it seems as if I'm really in the outlier set here in that I grokked Guerilla Games' intentions right away. I don't want to make anyone else feel bad about it, but I am genuinely curious as to how this could be designed better.

Spoiler:

The first two tactical things they teach you in the game are:

Shoot vulnerable areas with the correct element (damage, fire, shock, etc).
Entire machines can be vulnerable to elemental effects.

In addition, scanning with your Focus allows you to read the Notebook, which pretty much puts big glowy bits on the machines saying "shoot your Freeze arrow here."

The two quick takedown videos I posted were based solely on applying these very simple instructions. I'm not sure why these might be viewed as being hard to learn.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:

Impressive stuff, Larry, and thanks for the testing. Right now, I'm pretty sure I need to fill out my arsenal--other than the tripcaster you buy early on and the starter sling, I've only got the various bows.

I'm also really struggling with blaze canisters. Either they're just hard to hit, or I don't get it. I can nail shock elements like I'm the goddamn Green Arrow, but trying to hit blaze usually ends up with the target burning to death before it blows up.

I like that you're having a great experience!

For what it's worth, I generally don't go for Blaze Cannisters, either, because they're usually a lot smaller and harder to hit. I go for the Blaze cannisters on Grazer herds when I can get the drop on them. I can usually set off two or three on different machines if I can line up the shots to be close to each other and I can nail the first one before I pop Concentration. Great for harvest hunts because it's really fast.

You can hit the ones on top of a Snapmaw's head easily at the start if you open with it and if they haven't yet adapted to get armor on their cannisters. Once they're armored, there's a small non-recurrent window of time between your initial Tearblast Arrows and when they start blasting you with Cold element at which point the cannisters become very difficult to hit.

There's a bunch of Blaze cannisters - an entire bloc - right on top of a Thunderjaw near the radar module. If you stun one or knock one down, it can be worthwhile to go for it. Or if you have height advantage, that's doable as well.

I'm quite proud of myself. I killed some glinthawks by stringing up high trip wires between a rock face and the top of a pole and then firing at them until they swooped in.

My personal experience is that the game can feel underwhelming until you start encountering more challenging enemies and you learn enough of your arsenal to be able to think, 'I need a trap or a trip wire now or X arrow or I need to take out this weapon the creature is attacking with,' on the fly. Once you get to that stage the combat becomes incredibly varied and exciting.

Dyni wrote:
LarryC wrote:

But I loved the combat in this game. That's what elevates it for me. It's just so crunchy.

Same...

And, on the other hand, I don't really enjoy combat in any game, but I still had an outstanding time in Horizon. For me, it was the world, the characters, the story (both backstory of how the world came to be and Aloy's story in the present), and the environments. Easily one of my favorite gaming experiences, hands down. The fact that Guerilla managed to appeal so strongly to different groups of gamers, in genre they've never attempted before, is really impressive.

When I first encountered Glinthawks I was afraid of them, by end of the game they ended up being cannon fodder.

Well, finally diving into this game. I don’t use my PS4 much, mostly an Xbox guy but man this game is something at least so far. It is gorgeous and liking the combat and world. It really makes the Xbox lack of quality first party titles glaring. But that’s a topic for a different thread.....

I finished up the main story part of the DLC. Definitely a great additive to the overall story. Now I need to go after those Fireclaws and finish up some collectible stuff.

Docjoe wrote:

Well, finally diving into this game. I don’t use my PS4 much, mostly an Xbox guy but man this game is something at least so far. It is gorgeous and liking the combat and world. It really makes the Xbox lack of quality first party titles glaring. But that’s a topic for a different thread.....

I've already posted up a bunch of hopefully helpful things and videos, but I'll post a few more somethings here that come up repeatedly as a possible issue for new players. Nothing spoilery, I'll assure you.

1. Aloy's short range combat arsenal isn't expansive, but it's not bad. For short range Tear, the Tearblaster is fantastic. Both Slings are also amazing short range because they're always 100% accurate and going for short range means the draw time is minuscule. Finally, the Rattler does an absolute ton of damage at close range, especially to unarmored squishies like humans. Mixing in melee attacks in between these weapons makes for very dynamic and exciting close range battle.

2. Scrappers and Glinthawks scrap other machines into Processed Metal Blocks. You can destroy them stealthily, then let them scavange each other for a lot of those. Each Processed Metal Block can be exchanged for animal parts, typically 5-7 of a meat variety and sometimes uncommon and rare parts as well. The Greatsun Hunting Grounds doubles as an easy location to farm Processed Metal Blocks, since the machines respawn fast and the Glinthawks there reliably scavenge the Tramplers you destroy.

3. Upgrading your weapon increases the ammo types you can use. Upgrading the mods you have in them improves their performance. Without mods, even the most advanced bow will not perform that much better than a starter bow, other than offering more element ammo. The armors operate on the same principle.

4. If you don't like gathering herbs, purchasing potions and resistance potions outright can be sensible, even up to Very Hard. You can make up the shard difference by using Harvest Arrows on downed machines. Harvest Arrows will boost your resource output by up to 500% (one Blaze become 6). Harvest Arrows are the highest ammo type for Sharpshot Bows.

I finished this over the weekend. I started it back in August but fizzled on it after a few weeks, but finally finished it over the last month or two by dropping down to the super easy difficulty. I like the world and the character design and I liked a lot of the thinking behind the combat, but in practice the combat didn't quite work for me. I found it frustrating that I'd want to go from Point A to Point B, but inevitably I'd pass some robots and be unable to sneak past them and suddenly it was a big fight that I didn't feel like having. Everything felt like it was way too difficult for me to kill, and it made it feel like a chore. Maybe there were some key concepts I just wasn't getting, maybe I was just bad at it, I don't know. Dropping to the super easy difficulty made that less frustrating, because I could pretty much one-shot everything. I liked the story and its reveals quite a bit, although I wish they had a better way for conveying some of the story that would have avoided making the last 3-4 hours of the game being me just exploring caves to find emails and voice logs that would tell me the story. I wonder how much more I would've liked this if 2017 hadn't been a year in which I was constantly feeling pressure to move on to the next thing.

I ended up fighting two Stormbirds last night--not at the same time, thank God, the one just past Daytower, and the one at the end of the sidequest way up north--and can now attest, yes, pay attention to elements and do not sleep on the rope caster, that things saved my ass.

Also, a point the game was subtly making about "tribes" occurred to me--basically, there's no racial component to the tribes of the game. Everyone knows Aloy is "Nora" on sight. What exactly the specific point is, I'll have to tease out, but it's interesting and heartening.

This is a fantastic look at the creation of the game.

I finally got around pulling some pictures from my adventures, I'm not as good as you guys at the photomode thing, but here couple of my fav.
IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/4rBpzmk.jpg)
IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/jHOJHxn.jpg)
I put the rest in here
https://fastmav347.imgur.com/

I've not popped into this thread for maybe four months...

... never mind ...

Also I love that you're still in here Larry C dishing out the solid gold advice

The PS4 says I'm only 10% done with the game, probably because I take my time looking at things, picking up resources, etc... First, I like the game quite a bit, mostly because of Aloy, the story, how beautiful the world is, and that the combat is pretty good.

Like most (maybe all) open world games, I wish it didn't rely on following map icons. I turned off the breadcrumb trail that leads to quest objectives, but the game still requires a lot of opening the map, looking to see where the active quest is and then adjusting course. I wish games would rely more on environmental cues to navigate. Based on some of the quest dialog, I thought HZD was going to but I don't really see how to navigate other than the icons.

I think I may have made a mistake too in buying some maps as now I have more icons on the map. At least these usually just highlight and area and I still need to poke around. It would be great if the search area was larger and the map icon gave some clue as to how to find the item of interest - like this metal flower likes to grow at the base of a large tree (or something like that).

Did I miss something and is there a way to play using more exploration, or is it pretty much requires to follow map icons to progress in the game? Also, is it a mistake to use those tall necked guys to scan the area and put more icons on the map, or is it a necessary evil?

robc wrote:

Did I miss something and is there a way to play using more exploration,

Yeah, you can toggle ALL categories of icons in the map menu. Turn everything off and see what you miss and slowly re-enable. I didn't mind most of the icon spam except for the machine icons; they were completely excessive and I gladly disabled them.

Also, you can make your HUD dynamically display in combat and hidden while exploring (it look me about 50 hours to figure out I could lightly tap the touch pad to show the HUD out of combat). It's magical and makes traversal through the environment even more immersive.

robc wrote:

The PS4 says I'm only 10% done with the game, probably because I take my time looking at things, picking up resources, etc... First, I like the game quite a bit, mostly because of Aloy, the story, how beautiful the world is, and that the combat is pretty good.

Like most (maybe all) open world games, I wish it didn't rely on following map icons. I turned off the breadcrumb trail that leads to quest objectives, but the game still requires a lot of opening the map, looking to see where the active quest is and then adjusting course. I wish games would rely more on environmental cues to navigate. Based on some of the quest dialog, I thought HZD was going to but I don't really see how to navigate other than the icons.

I think I may have made a mistake too in buying some maps as now I have more icons on the map. At least these usually just highlight and area and I still need to poke around. It would be great if the search area was larger and the map icon gave some clue as to how to find the item of interest - like this metal flower likes to grow at the base of a large tree (or something like that).

Did I miss something and is there a way to play using more exploration, or is it pretty much requires to follow map icons to progress in the game? Also, is it a mistake to use those tall necked guys to scan the area and put more icons on the map, or is it a necessary evil?

You can toggle off as much of the HUD and as much of the iconography as you like. I just left the machine icons on because I like hunting machines and I adjust my loadout based on which machines are in an area. The locations are all based on real world locations, so they're actually fairly distinctive. I can tell almost exactly where I am on the overland map based on what I see around me. Even the coloration of the dirt gives you clues.

If they tell you to go to Mother's Crown, you can get there without icons, if you already knew where it was. If you didn't, you can just go down the road and follow the signs. There are actual road signs.

I don't really bring up the map all that often. Once you toggle on an objective, you can ask your Focus to give you both context and directional cues simultaneously, so it'll tell you the road to your objective as well as the direction to your objective as the crow flies. I'm a cyclist so I know how to use this information to plot where I am, but perhaps this isn't natural for everyone?

The start of this video sees me viewing the map. I don't need it. I already know what I'm doing here and where "here" is. That's more for viewers. Once the map is dismissed, you can see an icon telling me the direction to my objective via road, as well as a compass at the top of the screen telling me the compass direction to my objective. Since I don't want to use the road, I use both information to imagine where I am on the map and then angle my approach to my objective so that I hit the Trampler herd at just the right angle.

TrashiDawa wrote:
robc wrote:

Did I miss something and is there a way to play using more exploration,

Yeah, you can toggle ALL categories of icons in the map menu. Turn everything off and see what you miss and slowly re-enable. I didn't mind most of the icon spam except for the machine icons; they were completely excessive and I gladly disabled them.

Also, you can make your HUD dynamically display in combat and hidden while exploring (it look me about 50 hours to figure out I could lightly tap the touch pad to show the HUD out of combat). It's magical and makes traversal through the environment even more immersive.

Thanks. I'm not sure how I missed the map filters, but I did. I do use the dynamic hud and it is pretty good.

Discovering the meaning behind the metal flowers gave me all the feels.

LarryC wrote:

I don't really bring up the map all that often. Once you toggle on an objective, you can ask your Focus to give you both context and directional cues simultaneously, so it'll tell you the road to your objective as well as the direction to your objective as the crow flies. I'm a cyclist so I know how to use this information to plot where I am, but perhaps this isn't natural for everyone?

The start of this video sees me viewing the map. I don't need it. I already know what I'm doing here and where "here" is. That's more for viewers. Once the map is dismissed, you can see an icon telling me the direction to my objective via road, as well as a compass at the top of the screen telling me the compass direction to my objective. Since I don't want to use the road, I use both information to imagine where I am on the map and then angle my approach to my objective so that I hit the Trampler herd at just the right angle.

I'm not familiar enough with the area to know what's where. Maybe before the end of the game I will be. I don't use the map to set way points because I try to not use the compass much. I look at the map, try to get a feel for what's around it and start heading there. If I see something along the way then I may investigate. I will pop up the map from time to time to make sure I'm on course. I just don't like pointing myself at an icon and making a beeline for it, like in UBiSoft games. But, sometimes it just takes too much effort to fight the system and I just need to play the game as designed.

robc wrote:

I'm not familiar enough with the area to know what's where. Maybe before the end of the game I will be. I don't use the map to set way points because I try to not use the compass much. I look at the map, try to get a feel for what's around it and start heading there. If I see something along the way then I may investigate. I will pop up the map from time to time to make sure I'm on course. I just don't like pointing myself at an icon and making a beeline for it, like in UBiSoft games. But, sometimes it just takes too much effort to fight the system and I just need to play the game as designed.

HZD is based on a real map, so just like a real map, pointing yourself at the compass direction of your objective and making a beeline for it is a VERY bad idea. That's why they instituted a context direction. If you're hunting Grazers and you're low level, beelining through a Thunderjaw is really, really bad.

In the early part of the game, making note of distinctive landmarks will orient you to places you've been very fast. I use the same mental techniques when I'm hiking in RL where I don't have a signal or a map. (Don't do that. Not recommended).

In the initial portion of the game, getting yourself to a road (any road) and heading down it in any direction should take you to a landmark you can easily identify to orient yourself. There are gates and sentinel towers in most areas, and if that doesn't orient you, the machine composition should do it pretty fast.

So just before Christmas, Sony sent me an email with a code for the expansion pack. For Free. Was this some kind of promo or something? Did everyone get it for free?

I've redeemed it of course and now just waiting till I get the desire to jump back in and play.

BlackSabre wrote:

So just before Christmas, Sony sent me an email with a code for the expansion pack. For Free. Was this some kind of promo or something? Did everyone get it for free?

I've redeemed it of course and now just waiting till I get the desire to jump back in and play.

Well that's pretty cool!

TrashiDawa wrote:

...Also, you can make your HUD dynamically display in combat and hidden while exploring (it look me about 50 hours to figure out I could lightly tap the touch pad to show the HUD out of combat). It's magical and makes traversal through the environment even more immersive.

Absolutely - the dynamic HUD is great. I usually find turning off HUD elements more trouble than it's worth, but that struck the perfect balance for me.

robc wrote:
BlackSabre wrote:

So just before Christmas, Sony sent me an email with a code for the expansion pack. For Free. Was this some kind of promo or something? Did everyone get it for free?

I've redeemed it of course and now just waiting till I get the desire to jump back in and play.

Well that's pretty cool!

I'll say. Just trying to work out why i got it...

That motherf*cken Thunderjaw in the Frozen Wilds (who ate all my wire) has got the goddamn second sight. I was wearing I think all the stealth in the game, had stripped him of ever part that could possibly be stripped, and pounded him to hell and back, and he still could sight me in tall grass before I could get close enough to set a tripwire. He's either bugged, or he's got Professor X's brain in there.

So watch out for him, BS.

BlackSabre wrote:
robc wrote:
BlackSabre wrote:

So just before Christmas, Sony sent me an email with a code for the expansion pack. For Free. Was this some kind of promo or something? Did everyone get it for free?

I've redeemed it of course and now just waiting till I get the desire to jump back in and play.

Well that's pretty cool!

I'll say. Just trying to work out why i got it...

I seem to remember, before Christmas something about Sony sending out random codes to people as presents. Sounded like it was US only.