Horizon: Zero Dawn Game Analysis

Overview

Horizon: Zero Dawn is an open world action RPG game developed by Guerrilla Games and published in 2017.

Formal Elements

Players

Horizon: Zero Dawn is a single player game in which you take control of Aloy, an exile from a tribe of people called the Nora. They live a primitive existence, mostly hunting and farming. Soon, it becomes apparent that this place is Earth in the future, and some catastrophe has reduced humans to this level, while sentient, and sometimes aggressive, machines have replaced most of the large fauna. As you play, you will quickly discover that something has gone wrong with the machines in the last 15-20 years, and you will start a game-long quest to find out what happened and how to fix it.

Rules

Combat and Movement

Movement works similarly to many third-person games nowadays. You use the left analog stick on the controller to move around, and the right analog stick to rotate the camera and aim. You can run, jump, swim and dive through the environment; and after reaching a particular moment in the story, you gain the ability to take control of certain types of machines, some of which work as mounts to carry you across the huge map. Following the conventions of other adventure games, such as the God of War series, Uncharted series and others, there are numerous areas in the world for you to climb on. These enable to you scale vertical walls, cross over gaps, slide down zip lines, and rappel from huge heights.

Combat is a mixed bag. Your primary enemies fall into two broad groups: humans and machines. Humans are the least interesting to attack. You can enter melee combat and use a mixture of light and heavy attacks to kill them, but they will enter an invulnerable state if you just spam the light attack button. This state is communicated by a "ting" noise when your attack lands, but not by any change in their or your animation. Animations are somewhat varied, but melee combat does not provide much strategy besides using one or two light attacks followed by a roll or a heavy attack. Further, there is only one melee weapon in the whole game: a spear. Ranged combat gives the player much more options. Your earliest weapon will be a bow, but you will gain access to a sling to launch bombs, a high-power bow that takes time to fully draw, and several other weapons. Almost all ranged weapons can use a variety of different ammo types, from piercing arrows which do more damage, fire arrows, shock arrows, ice bombs, etc. Unfortunately, this variety does not really matter when dealing with humans. Fire attacks eat away at their health over time, while shock attacks put them in stunned state, and ice attacks increase their vulnerability to other attacks, but these reactions are the same for every human, so you can follow the same basic strategy all the time. Human enemies have access to similar weapons as you, with the exception of heavies, which will often use a gun or grenade launcher taken from a machine. As heavies do in all games, they can soak up more damage before dying, and they move much slower.

Luckily, you will spend a lot of time dealing with machines, which are much more interesting than humans. Although there are some packs of roaming human enemies, most of the environmental danger will be different kinds of machines. As detailed in a GDC talk, the developers tried to give each machine a unique personality, with special sounds, and distinct movements and attacks. Each machine has appropriately designed and placed devices and armoring on its body, and these points are all weak to different combinations of elements. For example, the stalker is a combat-class machine that resembles a cross between a leopard and a scorpion: although basically leopard-like, the tail has been elongated and is used in melee combat to whip you. The stalker specializes in stealth and ambushes: it has a cloaking device similar to the predator's, which produces a slight shimmering effect around its body. This makes it difficult to spot unless you know what to look for. It also places mines around its territory, which blow up when you stumble upon them. It's main weapon, however, is a dart gun that it will fire at you from a distance. This deals a large amount of damage, and can one-hit kill you at lower levels. Both the mine launcher and the dart gun are components that you can specifically target and destroy to remove them as threats. If you use an arrow that does high "tear" damage, for example the tear-blast arrow, you can remove the dart gun and prevent the stalker from sniping at you. You could also target the stealth generator to remove its cloaking ability and make it easier to spot. As another strategy, the body of the stalker is exceptionally weak to shock damage, so if you use shock bombs, shock traps, or shock trip wires you can put it in a stunned state and deal a critical melee attack while it is down.

Although you could discover these facts by trial and error, the developers produced a scene during Aloy's childhood where she stumbles on an ancient device called a "focus," which is a kind of wearable smart device that can be used for communication, analyzing the environment, and scanning machines to determine what kind of machine it is, what it is weak to, etc. When you encounter a machine or a group of machines, it often pays to use the focus to remind yourself which components to remove and in what way. The focus conveniently highlights the components for you, so they stand out from the body better.

Stealth

Stealth plays a large role in Horizon: Zero Dawn. Aloy may crouch when moving around in the world, which of course lowers her stance, reduces her visibility, and allows her to hide in specially colored grass as can be found in the Assassin's Creed franchise or the Middle Earth: Shadow series. Stealth is useful both when dealing with human and machine enemies. When clearing out an enemy camp, it helps to approach by stealth, tag enemies with your focus, and silently take them out one by one. Of course, this often fails miserably, forcing you to "go loud," but this can also be fun and thanks to the stealth mechanics, it is possible to rinse and repeat this if you prefer the quiet approach.

For machines, as mentioned before, it is best to scan them before you charge in and start thrusting with your spear or peppering them with arrows. A position of stealth is perfect for this, and if you have the override codes for any of the machines, you can override one of them from stealth either gaining a mount or a potential ally for Aloy in combat. As an interesting twist, some machines have a scanner which can locate you even in hiding. This scanner, of course, can be targeted and removed by using a weapon with an appropriate damage type.

Inventory

Inventory is differentiated into different categories, such as weapons, armor, potions, resources, etc. Although not visible on Aloy's character model, these categories apparently each has a different satchel, which can be upgraded using items you collect in the world. Inventory space in each satchel is initially quite limited, but if you have a few upgraded satchels, this will make it easier to move around the world. You cannot carry more than you are allowed, so you won't suffer from slow walking, rolling, or other issues you might experience in the Dark Souls series or the Elder Scrolls series. When you reach max capacity for a category, you could disassemble the item (provided that you have the skill unlocked), or you just drop an item to make room. Fortunately, many items stack, so if you have five watcher lenses, these will stack to only take up one inventory slot in your resource satchel instead of five.

In terms of equipable items, you can have four weapons equipped at the same time, no matter how many you carry. Armor functions as a complete set, so you cannot mix and match different boots, pants, jackets, gloves, etc. One small annoyance is that all your potential quick items are equipped all the time. So, if you have three different kinds of traps, and six potions, you will need to scroll through all of them to find the one you want. The up button on the d-pad is a hot button for using whatever medicinal herbs you've gathered. These fill a bar below your health bar, and the number of bars you get increases if you unlock certain skills.

Skills

Horizon: Zero Dawn has three built-in skill trees, with the expansion, The Frozen Wilds, adding a fourth. These trees focus on different aspects of gameplay: Prowler focuses on stealth, Brave improves and unlocks combat abilities, and Forager is a grab-bag of health improvements, resource gathering, and ease-of-use improvements. The Frozen Wilds adds Traveler, which focuses on passive abilities that improve resource-gathering/use and your mount.

As you unlock skills in each tree, skills lower down become available. Although initial skills cost only one skill point, the lower skills increase by tier to two, three, and three skill points each. Luckily, the game designers have been quite generous with skill points. Although you cannot quite unlock every skill in the game, you will be awarded a skill point for every level up, and also for completing particular quests.

Crafting

There are many items in the game that you will find useful to have. Although you do not have to eat to stay healthy, because the world map is so large you might want to fast travel between different locations. To do this, you need to purchase or craft Travel Rations. The same goes for all your ammo for your different weapons, potions, and traps. Although you can buy them from vendors, it is often easier to simply carry sufficient resources for your needs around, then craft them as needed.
The devs have included a handy "Create job" feature, which allows you to create a mini-quest or task based on the missing crafting ingredients for an item you want.

Procedures

Defeating a boss

Throughout the game, you will encounter several boss level enemies. These provide you with a challenge over and above the typical battle. Although the human bosses suffer from the same lack of variety as the other human enemies, they exacerbate them to some extent, as they have much more health than a typical human enemy.

The machine bosses, as in so many other areas, are where Horizon: Zero Dawn shines. You might have to take down a Thunderjaw, for example. Let me describe it briefly. It is the size and rough shape of a T-Rex, so it can charge and bite you, stomp you with its feet, or smack you with its tail. It has two disc or missile launchers on its back, and two machine guns mounted on either side of its jaw. If you remove both the machine guns, it has a beam weapon that rakes the ground in front of it. It also has a scanner to detect you in hiding. The disc launchers are weak to tear damage, and if you remove them you can pick them up and use them against the Thunderjaw. It also has two heavily armored ports on either side of its torso which access a "heart." If you can remove the armor, this heart is easily damaged. One of my early strategies was to remove the disc launchers, then use a ropecaster, which is a kind of weapon that fires a harpoon first into the machine, then into the ground. This can be used to immobilize a machine, but a Thunderjaw requires several ropes to do so. Once it was locked in place, I would try to remove the heart covering, and blast away at the heart. Later on I would use tear-blast arrows to remove the disc launchers, use freeze bombs to increase its sensitivity to damage, then hit it with its own disc launchers.
The machine boss battles force you to think on your feet, observe the machine carefully, watch for its tells, and be aware of what its weaknesses and strengths are so that you can best exploit them.

Leveling up

Each time you level up, your health will increase by 10 points, you will be awarded with a skill point. In the beginning, you could spread these points evenly over the initial tier of skills, as these all cost one point. However, the second tier of skills cost two points, requiring you to think about your investment.

Exploring an area

The world of Horizon: Zero Dawn is large, and varied. You will find grasslands, forests, mountainous tundras, deserts, and jungles. Everywhere you go, you will find different levels of verticality, from small hills, deep canyons, steep mountains, and dark caves. Although not as peppered with places to explore as The Witcher 3 or an Elder Scrolls game, there is still an impressive array of areas.
You will frequently be tasked with going to an area, and finding a particular person or item, or perhaps clearing that area of enemies. The world looks gorgeous and it is fun to move around it, both on foot and using a mount. And although the devs have been inspired by the climbing systems of Uncharted and God of War, the climbing is fast, fluid, and often offers enough interaction and alternative routes to keep you interested.

Crafting

Crafting can be accomplished by two methods. In the first, primarily used for ammo, you just hold the right trigger button, select the weapon and ammo type using the right analog stick, then hold a button to craft a certain amount of ammo. This can be done at anytime, even in the midst of combat. As long as you have the necessary materials, the item will be created.
The second method is to enter the inventory screen, and go to the appropriate tab there. You can also craft ammo here, this method is mostly used for potions, satchel upgrades, and for installing weapon and armor upgrades.

Talking to an NPC

In the beginning, I called Horizon: Zero Dawn an open world action RPG. Part of the RPG categorization comes from the fact that you are playing as a character that you can make act in different ways in dialogue. Your Aloy might be more sarcastic or more sensitive/empathetic than mine or vice versa. As far as I know, there are no consequences for these choices. If you are consistently gruff, for example, people do not react to you differently, you do not lose access to any content or quests, etc. These choices are there simply to give the player something to do in dialogue.

The other choice that you have in dialogue is over the level of detail and background. If you are really into listening to people without much personality or enthusiasm talking, you can listen to the NPCs go on about the different aspects of their religions, political configurations and histories, and the economic woes they are facing because of reasons. The devs have created a lot of optional dialogue for the player so inclined.

Copying gameplay from Batman: Arkham Assylum or The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Besides showing you the level, damagable components, etc for machines, your focus can also be used to enter "detective mode," similarly to the above games. This will be used to highlight the tracks of animals you wish to hunt, the patrol patterns of machines, the route taken by an NPC whose whereabouts you need to tease out, analyzing clues or items to find out more about what went down in an area, etc.

Resources

As is typical with large open world games, there is a plethora of different resources, both physical and intangible.

• Health: Health increases as you level up by 10 points. When it drops to zero, you will die and come back at the closest save point. If your health is below 25%, it will regenerate up to 25% over time.
• XP: XP is gathered by killing enemies, animals, and for completing quests.
• Level: Until around level 50, it takes level * 1000 XP to level up. So, if you are on level 1, it will take 1000 XP to reach level two, 2000 XP to go from level two to level three, etc. Each level up gives you skill point to spend.
• Skill Points: These are used to purchase skills. You earn them by leveling up and by completing quests.
• Skills: As mentioned before, there are four skill trees, with the three main ones having 12 skills (3 skills which cost one skill point, 3 skills which cost two skill points, 6 skills which cost three points), while the fourth have 8 skills (2 skills which cost one point, 2 skills which cost two points, and 4 which cost three points).
• Armor and Weapon Upgrades: You will find different "coils" (upgrades for weapons) or "weaves" (upgrades for armor) throughout the game. These might provide better handling, making it easier to move around with heavy weapon, or make it easier to draw, or they might provide extra damage in shock, fire, freezing, or corruption.
• Satchel Upgrades: Although these are probably meant to function the same as the different pouches in the Far Cry series, they don't feel exactly the same. In the Far Cry series, there is a diverse range of different animals, and there is usually a special animal species of each genus which is difficult to find and will give you the max upgrade for one pouch or another. It can be quite challenging to find the territory for this animal, and even more difficult to successfully hunt it. In Horizon: Zero Dawn, satchel upgrade materials are usually a number of skins or bones from different animals, but the process is much more like farming, as certain items have different likelihoods of dropping. You might have to kill 10 or 20 or more rats in order to get that rat skin you needed for a particular upgrade. In any case, there is a story-motivation reason for there being so little diversity in the animal species in the game, so this is more forgivable.
• Armor and Weapons: Armor provides different levels and kinds of protection for the player. Some might protect you better from melee, others from ranged attacks, and still others might provide better resistance from shock, fire, or freezing attacks.
• Resources: Yes, in a list of resources, I have to include an item called resources. Which contains an item called resources, which contains....Sorry. Nobody likes recursive humor...Anyway, resources in Horizon: Zero Dawn are scraps of metal, wood, different herbs, and all the diverse machine parts you can pick up. Some are special items that are vendor trash: 3,000 year old coffee cups or watches, special metal flowers, action figures of animals. Others are extremely useful: metal scraps, for example, are both money and the heads of your arrows. Most shops function on a kind of combination between a barter economy and commodity trading: for each item you will need a certain number of metal scraps, but for many items you will also need specific combinations of other items. For example, to buy a certain weapon, you might need 400 scraps, the lens of a Thunderjaw, and two crystal braidings.
• Potions and Traps: There are two main types of potions: there are three kinds of health potions (regular, full, and resistance), and several different general resistance potions (against fire, corruption, shock, etc). Similarly, there are different elemental traps.
• Money/Metal Scraps: Metal scraps function as the game's money, but are also used in crafting different kinds of ammo, and in many different items.
• Medicinal Herbs: Medicinal herbs are different from the other herbs in that they have a separate pouch, and can be used via a quick slot button at any point. Their main purpose is to provide a way for the player to replenish their health without having to make a health potion, which relies on different kinds of meat that can be hard to have a good supply of.

Conflicts

Leveling

Although is not possible to unlock every skill, but at the same time, you will probably end up with a very similar build of Aloy as everyone else. This is because the skills you unlock do not tie into the specific weapons, with the exception of the bow skills.

Stealth versus "Going loud"

It is possible to focus more on direct conflict or on taking out enemies quietly.

Boundaries

Grappling and Climbing

It is only possible to climb on "yellow" things, items which have been hand placed by devs to allow the player to traverse the levels.

Inventory

As mentioned before, the inventory for each category of equipment is limited, although it may be expanded. This forces you to sell items, disassemble items, or just to get rid of them altogether.

Outcomes

There is only one main outcome for the game: you find out what happened to cause the machine to become more aggressive and you solve the problem.

Dynamic Elements

There are many examples of dynamic friction in Horizon: Zero Dawn. I will mention four here. First, the leveling system works by way of dynamic friction. Every time you get a level up, it will take more XP to reach the next level. Second, the number of skill points needed in order to unlock each higher tier skill increases. Third, the amount and rarity of ingredients increases as you upgrade your satchels. Fourth, the enemy difficulty increases as you progress through the story.
A second dynamic element is the use of stopping mechanisms. There are again four that come immediately to mind. First, the spear override, which lets you take over machines, has a cooldown timer, preventing you from spamming it. Second, higher power weapons generally have significantly longer draw times, again preventing you from making too frequent use of them. Third, weapons like the Stormslinger, which shoots electrical bolts, has an "overheat" meter, which fills as you shoot and if maxed out will cause damage to you. Fourth, the limited inventory prevents you from carrying everything you could possibly need in near infinite amounts, forcing you to be more careful and strategic.
The third dynamic element is trade. There are dozens of vendors throughout the game, and it is possible to sell many farmable items to them in exchange for metal scraps, and also to use some of those items to buy new equipment.
The fourth dynamic element is worker placement. Your equipped weapons function somewhat like workers, allowing you to build up different elemental meters on your machine foes.
A fifth dynamic element is playstyle reinforcement. Depending on which skills you unlock, and which equipment you use, you might be better suited for stealth combat or for all out war.

Dramatic Elements

Characters and Story

Horizon: Zero Dawn features a large cast of characters. Most of these have little in the way of real personality or characterization. The main character is of course Aloy, the player. She starts as an outcast of the Nora tribe, raised by another outcast, Rost. It is not exactly clear why Aloy is an outcast at first, but she develops into a headstrong young woman. Most of her scripted dialogue makes her speak like a hyper-aggressive pubescent boy, and even her body language is distinctly masculine. As the story progresses, she learns more and more about the history of her people, the Nora, and the other tribes. Eventually, she begins to discover more about the ancient history of Earth and what happened to produce the world she lives in.

Aloy quickly becomes a member of the Nora through a ritual known as the "Proving." Through this she encounters more people both in her tribe and in other tribes. For example, she meets a man called Erend, who is from a tribe called the Oseram. His tribe was historically persecuted by another tribe called the Carja, but now the Carja have a new king, and Erend is a member of his army, and possibly something of an emissary. Later, Aloy will travel to the Carja lands and assist the people and the king there.

At one point, Aloy will receive assistance from someone else using a focus. With his help, she will discover that a corporation developed a range of autonomous machines which function by absorbing organic matter to repair themselves. In typical SF fashion, the corporation loses control of them, and the only option humans have left is to develop an AI that is deeply buried and sealed in the Earth. After the machines go into hibernation due to absorbing all organic matter, this AI will be responsible for cloning and raising humans and animals stored in DNA banks. You learn that Aloy is actually the clone of one of the scientists who designed the AI. One of this AI's subroutine's, called HADES, gets out of control and causes the AI to self-destruct. HADES has the goal of resurrecting the slumbering machines and returning Earth to a barren wasteland, and of course you must stop him. The AI had you created in the hope that you would grow up, gain access to the AI's data banks, and find a way to stop HADES.

The story of the expansion is similarly connected to this AI. A tribe in the far north worships one of the AI routines as a goddess, but "she" has been taken over by "HEPHAESTUS," another subroutine. You must battle some great machines and find a way to stop HEPHAESTUS from continuing his manufacture of deadly assault machines bent on killing humans.

Conclusion

Horizon: Zero Dawn succeeds on many different levels. It combines stealth, RPG-style leveling, and exploration elements that other franchises have popularized, and creates a fun, in-depth combat system (at least in regard to the machines). The story is original, but the acting and presentation sometimes lack emotion, and at other times are overly dramatic. The Frozen Wilds expansion fixes a lot of the story issues, at least in terms of acting and personality.
The world is beautiful, and well-designed, with distinct areas and truly interesting machines to dispatch.
Much like Darksiders, which combined Bayonetta-style combat with Zelda-inspired level design and items, Horizon: Zero Dawn combines pre-existing elements into a fun experience. To horribly mix metaphors, it is like what writer Neal Stephenson labels the Midwestern predilection for "recombinant food:" foods like rice krispy treats, which take already complete food items (rice krispy cereal and marshmallows), and re-purpose them into a new Franken-food. Horizon: Zero Dawn offers little that is truly original, but what it does offer is well-executed, and well-worth the time it takes to play.