Horizon Zero Dawn Catch-All

Dying brings you back to your last save (auto or manual) that’s why the loot and whatnot is gone.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I hadn't realized that it was meant to be set in and around the part of Colorado where I live, so it's been fun to spot the things they got right and the things they got hilariously wrong. I know there are... reasons... why the Colorado they're depicting in the game's timeline doesn't necessarily look like the Colorado of ours, but there are still differences that are funny.

I had the same thing, a year after moving here and picking up a collectible between some iconic landmarks, and having the thought, "Hang on didn't I bike to this exact spot a few weeks ago?" Extra rewarding cause the miniboss guarding the collectible was almost as challenging as getting my real life weak ass up some moderate elevation.

I would recommend others play open world games surreptitiously set in a locale they'd recognize, except that's kind of a challenging setup. I don't know how you prompt the suggestion without giving it away.

"Steam's algorithm recommends Tom Clancy's Booty Call: Tactical Revenant because you also, uh, look the algorithm said not to say why because it was a surprise!"

How does H0D's Colorado compare to Fallout 76's take on West Virginia*?

*The terrain is the right sort of terrain and a bunch of town names are the same, but they sure as heck didn't sweat the specifics. For example, the landmark bridge sure as heck isn't over the New River Gorge and the Ohio River isn't in the right spot either.

Unless you're at a handful of extremely specific landmarks, you'd never know you're in Colorado. The game's area also covers places outside of Colorado as you head west. They made no real effort to make the landscape familiar to someone from the area, and in fact it was a little entertaining at times to see a European studio's take on American landscapes. Some of the differences can be explained by spoilery story reasons, but most of it is simply "because video games" from what I could tell.

I didn't realize I was supposed to be in Colorado until I found a vantage point for literally where I live. Once I realized it, as beanman said, I could spot some very specific landmarks, but I could tell that a lot of it was made from photographs. For instance, there's a mountain in the game that looks identical to Pike's Peak but only when viewed from one side; it looks totally off from other angles. Part of the map (the vertical red rock formations near the first Cauldron) is a pretty passing representation of a landscape similar to the area around where I live, but the developers also seem to think that forests in the Rockies look a lot like the Pacific Northwest, and they really, really don't.

(This was a problem in The Last of Us, as well. There's a section of that game set in the Rockies [I think Colorado specifically] that looks virtually nothing like the Rockies. They didn't get the wildlife right, either.)

Sounds like it's almost the opposite of FO76 then. There the named landmarks are mostly wrong but any given area feels like it could be a place in WV. It helps that the Appalachians have a crazy amount of biodiversity so it's not hard for developers to find trees and such that could plausibly be here.

Just thought I'd mention that the PC version seems to be quite playable now. I've had very little trouble with version 1.04 (and now 1.05), on a GTX 970 at 1080p. I've seen it stutter, like, twice in ~80 hours, and I saw a couple graphical glitches in 1.05 today that resolved shortly afterward. (Aloy's hair was messed up a little in one scene, and her head kind of rendered as a big helmet in a second scene, but both cleared up within a few seconds.) It's been a fun time so far. I'm on the very last fight, I think, and my hands were cramping, so I figured it was time to take a break.

I really enjoy postapoc fiction in general, and this has been a very solid story, albeit one with a few fridge moments. I'd have preferred the ruins to be a little less ruined, though. The sealed areas should have been almost intact, and 350 years is only enough time to grow stalagmites about 1.75 inches. Most of those ruins would have taken like 25,000 years to get the way they appeared in-game. (and I'm sure the steel would have failed long before that.) One of the fun things from postapoc games is being able to find powerful weapons and gadgets from The Ancients, and that hardly happened at all here. I can only think of two items.... one near the start of the game, and one near the end.

For those who haven't played it, it's sort of a cross between Fallout 3 and Dragon's Dogma, and they steal at least one mechanic from The Witcher 3, tracking targets through the wilderness. It also echoes Assassin's Creed: Odyssey in terms of minute-to-minute play, although with mostly ranged weapons, and far fewer makework quests. All the side quests are carefully crafted and interesting, not throwaway errand-running. The voice acting is generally quite good... there's the occasional slightly rough line, but not many.

It's got a terrible Steam rep because of the initial issues, but I've had an almost flawless time with it. If I didn't know the game originally had such severe problems, I probably wouldn't have even thought to mention the few niggles I've seen. It certainly seems to me that it deserves a ~90% rating, instead of the fairly abysmal one it has now, currently 68% positive.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I didn't realize I was supposed to be in Colorado until I found a vantage point for literally where I live.

I saw an early reference to Salt Lake City, which clued me in to Utah, and then when I realized that it was also including Yellowstone within about 5 kilometers, I realized that it was a Disneyfied American West. It reminds me a little of Fallout:New Vegas' Disneyfied southern Nevada, but it's much less accurate. NV more or less took the real landscape and shrunk it down by maybe, I dunno, 50 times? It felt like Guerrilla was tossing in random geography and calling it states.

I'm unclear on whether the far north was supposed to be Montana, or if Montana Recreations was actually in some other state. If it was the state, that just adds to the Disney effect.

I picked this up when it released on PC but couldn't play until just recently. I've had zero problems playing this week and I'm loving the game so far. Mass Effect was the first action-y type game I ever played all the way through (played mostly 4x games before that) and I have very fond memories of the being awed by the story. So ME (and honestly, ME2 as well) is the benchmark games like this have to overcome for me to keep playing, and HZD is giving me major ME vibes and I love it.

Nevermind that the world is gorgeous and huge. I often find myself just wandering around and looking at things. Still haven't left the Nora area and am at about level 15ish now. I kinda don't want to progress cause I don't want to hasten the end...but I also want to find out what's going on in this world.

The only downside is that I absolutely suck at shooting mechanics in games like this; even the FPS-lite that this and ME are. I'm playing with a controller and I played the ME series with keyboard/mouse, so maybe I need to switch, but over the years after being solely a keyboard/mouse PC player I've gotten more used to the xbox controller I have plugged into my PC.

Anyway, yeah, this game is really really good and now I'm thinking that I might have to get a PS5 when the new Horizon is released cause I don't think I can wait the 3 years for it to come to PC.

I just beat HZD Complete Edition last night, and I had less trouble with the Hades fight than I did with the various Fireclaw fights, earlier in the game. I was running with the Shield Weaver armor, so I was pretty tanky. Looking forward to the Forbidden West content, which I am sure I will get to sometime after Biomutant.

Agathos wrote:

https://blog.playstation.com/2021/05...

This Thursday, May 27.

I was so hoping this was a release date. I know it is not how it works but wouldn't that just be a wonderful surprise?

farley3k wrote:
Agathos wrote:

https://blog.playstation.com/2021/05...

This Thursday, May 27.

I was so hoping this was a release date. I know it is not how it works but wouldn't that just be a wonderful surprise?

Since PS5 does not currently exist, it wouldn't really matter anyway

As for the State of Play. Hype intensifies!

Shadout wrote:

Since PS5 does not currently exist, it wouldn't really matter anyway :(

I know you're joking, but isn't Horizon 2 a cross-generational game? So even when it releases people who haven't yet gotten a PS5* should still be able to play it on their PS4s.

*and, according to everyone who bases their forecasts on reality rather than wishful thinking, that will still be a substantial number of people who would happily buy a PS5 if they could.

I assumed it was PS5 only, but if not, then yeah, release it next week!
Edit; yeah, it is both PS4 and PS5. I had forgotten all about that.

Hot takes re: the preview

Spoiler:

Aloy you are as chatty as ever.

Traversal looks notably improved. Looks like she can parkour up shoulder-high obstacles at will, similar to Ghost of Tsushima. For higher scaling you may still be looking for those yellow-highlighted handholds.

Hookshot bow! Also might be keyed to certain terrain markers.

Hang glider! Clearly stolen from Genshin Impact, which invented it :p

Melee combat in the original was pretty forgettable outside of ambushes and finishing blows. They've clearly tweaked it and added some sort of combo system, including a spear/bow combo. Will it stand up in comparison to purely ranged combat and gadgets? Time will tell.

Mounted combat was kind of pointless in the original, but may have more of a purpose here. Circling the big machine reminded me of the final battle in BotW. Once Aloy was dismounted, the battle seemed to borrow a lot of notes from Return of the King's oliphaunts.

That's a lot of explosive glue(?) from two slingshot pulls.

Hopefully underwater movement isn't too slow and awkward.

Absolutely beautiful, especially the underwater area. But that was pretty much expected.

And no, they didn't name a date.

Really hope it gets a PC release sooner this time. I loved the original but there's no way I'm getting a Playstation just to play Forbidden West.

*edit*
Watched it again and liked it much more. I was not comparing it so much to H:ZD and just taking it on its own. Nice and I can't wait to play it.

I know character models change with each game but Alloy just looks odd. She put some weight on in her face which I find distracting

I also didn't feel like the world was as ....alive as the first one. I remember being enchanted by the grass in the first one and in this one it just seems more barren - which makes sense considering it is a coastal area i guess.

Vector wrote:

Really hope it gets a PC release sooner this time. I loved the original but there's no way I'm getting a Playstation just to play Forbidden West.

Yes please. Just finished Zero Dawn on PC last week and loved it. But I suspect they will want to keep this one exclusive for a long time.

The State of Play showed exactly what I wanted to see. The coastal environment looked superb. It has a very different, very fresh feel. The new robotic creatures are exciting. I was hoping they’d do velociraptors. The animation in one cutscene where the raptors neck ‘muscles’ swayed as they moved was stunning. I just adore the detail and intricacy that goes into the creature designs.

I could have lived without human enemies but they at least seem to be making those fights more interesting. The traversal looks miles better and the underwater stuff was gorgeous. How the seaweed and Aloy’s hair moved was so well observed. I love it when a game can capture all the small details and the overall feel of being underwater like that.

Apparently some folks want robot sharks. I’d pay good money to see a robot great white in that design style but I’m not sure I want to fight/be eaten by one.

I tended to only use certain bow based tools and the trip wires when fighting dinos in the first game. Looks like they might have made other tools more useful. The gunk was brilliant. Yes, that was a lot of gunk from a small gunk pellet but that’s video games. On smaller enemies and humans it’ll look right and I bet it’ll be satisfying to gunk up big creatures like that.

I’m excited. Unfortunately, I’m probably going to have to play it on PS5 to do the game justice which means buying a PS5 but I’m pretty sure I’m at the tipping point anyway as regards that particular purchase.

Redherring wrote:

Yes please. Just finished Zero Dawn on PC last week and loved it. But I suspect they will want to keep this one exclusive for a long time.

Yeah, don't hold your breath for that PC release. Sony's still a hardware company, not a software company, and the point of the PC releases is to advertise the content available on the hardware. These games don't come out on the PC until almost all possible sales have been wrung out of the hardware audience.

Redherring wrote:
Vector wrote:

Really hope it gets a PC release sooner this time. I loved the original but there's no way I'm getting a Playstation just to play Forbidden West.

Yes please. Just finished Zero Dawn on PC last week and loved it. But I suspect they will want to keep this one exclusive for a long time.

Yeah, SUPER keen on the game but i'll be waiting for a PC release. Still need to actually play the PC release of HZD though, as well as the DLC which i never grabbed on PS4, so i've still got that to tide me over I guess.

…and some help with his meth addiction.

Got this on steam sale as I just remember being mad at my lack of control of the bow on PS4 compared of other bow games on PC. This is my kind of game. I just do so much better with a mouse. So many headshots.

I first played it on a borrowed ps4 and before i got out of the sacred lands i knew that i had to wait for the pc release. I in no way regret this decision. So much fun and, yeah, mouse and keyboard are so satisfying for taking parts off dinosaurs.

Man I can't think of a more hateable video games character than

Spoiler:

Ted Faro.

There are even Reddit subs dedicated to hating him and I can see why.

Totally.

Truly despicable and they do such a good job of metering that out.