I asked to be left alone for Mother’s Day weekend, and I spent that time wisely. Wisely as in finished Horizon Zero Dawn, the first of the Not a Challenge Backlog Challenge from the guys at Nerds Gone Platinum.
I loved everything about HZD. I understand fully why it received so many GOTY awards, and it certainly deserved them and every nomination. One thing I really don’t like in fantasy stories is this idea of an ancient civilization having so much more knowledge than the present. I’ve read this trope in so many fantasy novels, where wizards from thousands of years ago were more powerful than they are now. Looking at games, it’s in both Mass Effect and Halo; two civilizations far more technologically advanced than the present day existed thousands of years prior. HZD had the perfect setup for such a story, especially since it’s a post-apocalyptic future. In any post-apocalyptic future, the past society will be more advanced than the present. That’s just the nature of it. However, HZD was able to take this tired trope and build something else out of it.
The tribespeople always speak of the Old Ones and their meddling with machines that made the world it is today. While that is true, and all of this knowledge is lost, there’s more to it than that. It’s not simply an apocalyptic event that destroyed the knowledge. It’s not a story of “they just disappeared,” like you have with wizards of old, Protheans, or Forerunners. In fact, I was shocked to the point of gasping out loud when I learned why their plans to build a future for the planet died.
The story ended with a few questions still open, but the developers made sure you knew they didn’t forget to answer them. Instead, they created the perfect setup for a sequel, one I cannot wait to play.
The gameplay was just as enjoyable as the story. I spent countless hours hunting machines, completing side quests, gathering collectibles, and crafting everything. The grind was never tedious because I never noticed it.
But I do have a couple of gripes with game. The first one has to do with climbing, and a lot of that has to do with finishing Assassin’s Creed Odyssey right before starting HZD. You can’t take me from a world where I climb anything, anywhere, at any time, and then force me to look for designated climb spots. I felt like I regressed in gameplay, and it frustrated me at nearly every turn when I had to climb a cliff.
My other gripe was the death scenes. It never stopped being funny that a character would live long enough to tell me something crucial and then die immediately thereafter. Also, when Aloy kills the Big Bad of the Eclipse? Could it have been a more awkward-looking stab into the chest?
But those are minor compared to the 56 hours of overall enjoyment I had. I was actually a bit sad that it was over, but never fear, Twitter is here to tell me to buy the Frozen Wilds DLC. Which I did. And it’s amazing too. That’s gonna put off playing NieR:Automata for a little while.
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