ATTENTION: It’s worth pointing out right away that this text is an opinion and not a review of H: ZD and H: ZD – The Frozen Wilds, t.e. there will be no general information about the plot of the game and its main mechanics (and the author is a newcomer who has not written adequate texts before). We can say, to a greater extent, this text is aimed at those who have completed the game, who want to hear someone else’s point of view.
At the most, you will read an interesting look at the game, at a minimum, admire the beautiful landscapes and, perhaps, find some wallpaper for your desktop.
Opinion in VK (some aspects of formatting in VK turned out better)
Happy reading!
It’s time to describe your impressions of Horizon: Zero Dawn and the expansion The Frozen Wilds (and, of course, share cool views along with a platinum trophy, this is the goal of any achievement lover).
Horizon: Zero Dawn
The most important thing to say is that the world of Horizon: ZD is a clear advantage of the game, and it’s not just about the fact that the designers were able to achieve the feeling that every piece of it feels unique, and not only about the technological superiority of the game over most open worlds.
The point is that the backstory of the game turned out to be very rich, unusual for the post-apocalypse genre (for video games for sure). It’s nice that the writers didn’t feed the player a teaspoon of information about the world every hour, but revealed all the fundamental foundations of the world right away in the first game (but they also saved a number of intrigues for the sequel).
But here’s the history of the current world (the lives of people in the revived world itself)… Here everything in the game is rather weak, t.To. local tribes cannot boast of anything interesting, there are no religions with a diverse pantheon of Gods, nor any intricate economic or political intricacies in the way of life of communities. This is not even close here. The local states also do not have any long history (there is only one bloody war, which is exploited throughout the game). Personally, this all made me bored after playing role-playing games like The Witcher, Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny and Dragon Age. It’s clear that this is an action game and not an RPG, but in my opinion, the history of the tribes was not successful. Or, we can say that the game needs them only for contrast in comparison with the advanced technologies of the old ones, so that the society of the past arouses even more interest and attention to itself.
One of the key advantages of the game is the combat system, in which primary place is given to the heroine’s opponents – robotic beasts. And, most importantly, many of the creatures’ body parts are functional components, and therefore their separation is a necessary part of tactics in battles. For example, tearing out a cannon, which you can then use yourself, or shooting off the legs of a creature crawling underground so that it becomes less mobile and can no longer burrow. Not only that, there are also quite a few types of robots themselves. This all creates great variety in battles.
However, this variety is only enough for 60% of the game if you clear the entire open world (it took me 106.5 hours with the expansion on Ultra Hard, excluding deaths and test restarts).
Unfortunately, the variety of types and options of equipment at one point begins to be significantly lacking, and against most enemies only one tactic is developed with freezing them or using bombs (the latter have an obscenely high damage, annihilating all living things in the way).
Electricity is simply useless for most of the game, and fire arrows help either against small winged ones (and there are few of them in the game), or against the very obvious explosion of canisters with flammable liquid (large monsters either do not have such weak points, or hits on them do not cause significant damage), and the burning of the monster itself causes very tiny damage. Exotics in the form of arrows of “infection” were also not used for the vast majority of the timing, because.To. infected opponents (namely, they are the most powerful and evil) are invulnerable to their influence.
Overall, the problem is similar to https://casinomax.uk/login/ Divinity: Original Sin (2014), where there is an interesting framework with unusual and/or well-executed ideas, but the variety and additional types of enemies, gadgets or simply unique situations are desperately lacking to keep the player interested throughout the game. We can say that this is a problem with many first parts of even the most successful franchises.
Regarding quests and additional stories, everything is quite sparse with them. There is absolutely no gray morality in the tasks (if a person is labeled as scum, then he really is), nothing unpredictable in this regard ever happens, the same applies to the events of the main plot, which, frankly speaking, is depressing.
Only in one single task somewhere at the beginning of the game (which I already missed and completed for one of the achievements) is there a situation where the bandits can be acquitted, but.To. Horizon: Zero Dawn is only an action game with small role-playing elements, the game does not give any choice, and Aloy herself is too easily and naturally eager to help all the poor and disadvantaged, never having any doubts about what she is doing. This problem is connected precisely with the fact that even if the bandits stole something, they did it in such a gentle way and they themselves are such good people that a normal gray situation where a character could be gnawing something from the inside is simply not created even at a basic level (the game even of the victim, in the end, makes it look like scum, it is clear that they tried to play it up with the character of this minor character and the customs of the tribe, but Aloy has not the slightest remorse for this does not count, because the screenwriter himself believes that the player will completely sympathize with the thieves).
But, despite a number of problems, most tasks are based on investigation, so, occasionally, something interesting can happen. This is, after all, a proven scheme that works well.
Character-wise, the situation is puzzling. There are simply none, except for one single plot character, who is precisely opposed to the main character. This character is quite cynical and doesn’t mince words; it’s interesting to listen to him, thereby diluting the poorly functioning drama in the game. All other characters are quite unambiguous, do not have any special negative sides (except for some little things, but they have terribly little significance within the framework of the created storyline and secondary stories).
Regarding the main character Aloy, the situation is twofold.
On the one hand, she is excellently voiced (thanks to actress Ashly Burch), always sounds lively and often responds with sarcasm and barbs. Therefore, during ordinary dialogues, it is interesting to listen to her and there is no feeling of boredom.
But on the other hand, she is a blank sheet, t.e. she has no life baggage that the player would be interested in revealing (the heroine’s entire life can be observed in the game from infancy, she has no secrets for the player), and what’s more, she has turned herself into the savior of the whole world (not for the tasks she performs or for personal reasons, because.e. at ease, namely according to its actual behavior and purpose, built in the scenario). Because of this, she simply lacks human negative sides, but at the same time she also has no attachment to the characters living here now (except for one, but we can’t talk about him, because it’s a spoiler, but he still doesn’t have enough time).
The writers themselves created a situation where it’s hard to sympathize with the character because she is an unattainable ideal, and it’s also hard to sympathize with him because the character doesn’t have any habits of ordinary people or relatives. Because of such miscalculations by the scriptwriters, during moments of drama, Aloy is very boring and either simply worries about everyone and is almost ready to shed a tear, or, in fact, worries about those who are ALREADY alive.
T.e. the heroine does not feel in danger for those who are dear to her, because such people simply do not exist in the game (she does not even have a tame animal or a small robotic animal to which she could become attached, by analogy with BD-1 from Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order).
There is no situation where she would have to make a sacrifice for the common good, thereby it would be possible to competently create drama and reveal the core of the character in those situations that depend entirely on him. There is no situation where helping other people leaves her loved ones unprotected.
She never even threatens the lives of ordinary people, because.To. the secret enemy is not chasing some secret goal of his, namely power over everyone or the destruction of all the rebellious, because of this, the game is not able to create a situation where the heroine’s desire to unearth all the secrets (i.e.e. personal selfish interest) lead to unexpected and terrible consequences. This is not the case and it’s very sad..
To sum it up, the game does not create a situation where the heroine is revealed through her emotions, worries about loved ones. Most of us are afraid not for ourselves, but for those who are sincerely dear to us, so often people even commit negative actions out of this fear. In Horizon: Zero Dawn, the heroine constantly climbs into the thick of things, but does not risk anyone but herself.
And the problems of animation (facial expressions and gestures) in additional tasks (and in the usual dialogues of the main tasks) are enormous, they do not allow you to see the conveyed emotions of the characters and kill the pleasure of the already rather banal stories in quests. It was very upsetting.
And the content of the open world itself is extremely faded and inexpressive: there are no reward-worthy visuals or stories told through collectibles. The game also has terrible problems with collecting heals and crafting items, due to the local economic system, buying anything is simply incredibly expensive. But it takes a long time and a lot to collect, and it’s very tiring.
Basically, this is a problem only for treatment plants, fortunately, in addition, this problem was corrected by the fact that there are more plants in the game, giving an increase in the amount of treatment no longer by 9 and 18%, but by 18 and 36%, which significantly reduces the time for grinding.
The Frozen Wilds
There is now much more interesting storytelling and staged scenes in additional tasks; tasks have appeared, the essence of which is to tell a story or reveal well-played characters, and not in battles with enemies. Even in local notes they were able to reveal the history of the characters (there will even be a small surprise at the end). In general, the tasks have become better and the animations have been significantly updated, which is very pleasing; finally, excellent acting matches the facial expressions and gestures of the characters in the game.
The main storyline also reveals more about the history of the world, the characters in the main storyline of the expansion, although they remained simple, are better remembered and their personal tragedy works much better than in the main game (largely due to the fact that the characters are constantly in front of the player’s eyes, which makes it impossible to forget about them).
Also, which was very nice and important, the open world activities were also slightly improved. T.e. their general content remained the same, the developers did not do anything radically new, but they were able to greatly improve the quality of execution of what had already been created. The rewards for collectibles are now meaningful, they provide visible visual rewards, and also include some special scenes that relate to either collecting each individual item or a final scene after collecting all the items (this was not the case in the main game at all, which was just terrible). For the new tower we created a small task and provided a small action scene, the same goes for the local bandit camp. In general, improvements are visible everywhere; as a result, the open world of the add-on, due to its compactness, was much more pleasant to directly study than that of the main game, but the wonderful landscapes have not gone away.
The bad thing: they added only two new cars, that is, they decided to leave the development of the ideas of the combat system and fights with robots for the second part. And the new weapons are quite useless, they don’t provide anything useful in battle except a freezing gun, but only the attack from the improved version is useful, and shots from the alternative fire are too expensive in terms of resources. These are the main disadvantages of the add-on