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Horizon Zero Dawn - hands-on the first few hours!
Red Bull recently went out to Guerrilla Games and took to their new world: Horizon Zero Dawn!
Easily the most impressive thing about Horizon Zero Dawn is the details that will largely go unnoticed. It’s also something Guerrilla Games -- the studio behind the impressive new open-world action-RPG franchise -- isn’t too concerned about, if punters don’t pay attention either. The devil is in the details they say, and in this game’s case, it’s those details that will help bring this fantastical post-apocalyptic world to life, even if you don’t recognise them.
Recently Red Bull was invited -- with other media -- to attend a hands-on preview event of the game out at the studio’s Amsterdam base where, on top of getting to play it, we also spoke with some key devs and even went on an old-school studio tour, which is where our very own appreciation of the aforementioned details stem from. The game’s stars are the animal-like robots that have evolved over 1000 years while humans faced a cataclysmic event that essentially took away all human-controlled and crafted technology. Now, 1000 years on the human race is in a tribal state once again, living on top of, or amongst, the decays of our once great civilization while this robot ecology rules the landscape.
Horizon Zero Dawn Long Necks Inbound.jpg
© Sony Computer Entertainment
During our studio tour we’re shown how something as simple as how a truck uses and delivers fuel or chemicals started as a genesis point for one of the game’s robots which uses fuel to spit fire at its enemies. We’re walked through the entire evolution -- from a design perspective -- on how this particular robot came to its final state, and the steps and minor details involved are both breathtaking and mind-boggling. The team didn’t just make “robot dinosaurs” they meticulously engineered them as believable and functional creatures with almost no portion of their design out of place as far as real-world survivability is concerned -- at least as “real-world” as a post-apocalyptic Earth can get, but even that stage has huge amounts of detail poured into it.
You could be forgiven, too, for thinking Guerrilla Games has compiled a master-list of open-world must-haves in their game, and while game director Mathijs de Jonge isn’t as PR-ready to suggest they weren’t overly inspired by what other developers and releases are doing in space, he’s also willing to admit that as gamers, subconsciously some design would definitely have stemmed from other products.
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© Sony Computer Entertainment
“Not intentionally -- we never did that,” he says when we ask essentially about an open-world ‘design master-list’. “But we do play a lot of games ourselves as well. A lot of us played [The Elder Scrolls V:] Skyrim and were quite impressed with the scale of that game back then, and I think subconsciously some of that inspired this world, you know, the density of content -- that was one of the first things we had to sort out; how often do you come across something, and how many variations do you put into that?
“But I think from a design point of view we also wanted to figure out those things by ourselves.”
The studio firmly tells us also that the game really did start with a demo of the T-Rex-inspired robot and, right from the outset, that if that demo couldn’t be made to work -- if the robot couldn’t essentially be sold as a living, grinding part of a game-world they hadn’t even imagined yet, then they’d scrap the idea and simply move on. And we’re certainly glad it worked.
Gorgeous Landscapes.jpg
© Sony Computer Entertainment
Our hands-on covered not much more than the first few hours of the game, most of which we’ll avoid spilling out here for fear of spoilers. But you should just know that it works: open-world robot dinosaur hunting works. As we’ve always wanted it to.
From a control perspective, you take on the role of Aloy -- a young would-be huntress who eventually leaves her village to discover the source of a corruption taking over the robots and making them stronger and more deadly. In some ways, the narrative foundation is a bit like the Studio Ghibli epic Princess Mononoke, but as the game progresses any ties there fade into the background. What you’re eventually left with once you leave your village (which is essentially a Tutorial space, of sorts), is a game-world full of mysterious wonder. With 1000 years of history strewn about the world and no knowledge of your own origins, the game’s drive for answers for the player is very strong, but it’s not entirely forced down your throat.
But you should just know that it works: open-world robot dinosaur hunting works. As we’ve always wanted it to.
“We tried to avoid making a videogame where the experience would be like reading a dictionary,” explains lead writer John Gonzales”when we ask about the human tribal system and the game’s lore. “So we tried to be careful about what we would ‘surface’ in the game, and we wanted to allow ways for people to deepen their experience with the tribe in the interactive dialogue and through some of the supplementary material you can pick up. For example, we don’t have quests designed for you to find out some kind of cultural detail. We tried to make sure that every quest had some kind of dramatic situation and in terms of the way that plays out over the course of the game, there’s no ‘tribal system’ per se, there are tribal groups that are distinct, however.”
Add to this a lush and diverse game-world with a functioning ecosystem that even has the robots reacting differently to confrontation depending on weather or time of day, and you start to see the fruits of Guerrilla’s labour.
I Saw You Sawtooth.jpg
© Sony Computer Entertainment
The final piece of the puzzle, however, is in the game’s combat and while the robots are absolutely the stars, Aloy’s finesse with ranged weapons in her hands is masterfully crafted from the developer and stands as an equal pillar to the overall world created here. It’s arguably the most visceral combat I’ve ever played with, and makes me long for the full game all the more, especially because the upgrade system is not too dissimilar to that found in the more recent Far Cry games where ability trees and skillsets are concerned (actually that’s not the only place a bit of Far Cry inspiration will sneak into your experience, but it’s a great series for the team to have drawn from, even it wasn’t intentional).
Questions will be raised around much of the game’s content, but on the whole it feels full and rewarding. Discovery comes by way of eking out the past (built from a fictional future, mind. The game’s cataclysmic event happens in the 2060s), but more importantly by learning what it is the robots (and machines) are trying to achieve -- is their a sentient design in play, or has humanity and machine simply come together in some fantastical way? The options from a narrative point of view or seemingly limitless, and let’s not forget that ultimately story here is a bonus because at its core Horizon Zero Dawn is just a kid’s fantasy finally come to life -- we’re hunting robot dinosaurs with a bow and arrow. C’mon. You know you want it in your life ;)
