Horizon Zero Dawn: Technical Analysis

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JustBeingReal said:

GribbleGrunger said:

Nintyfan90 said:

Robot monsters is good narrative? Ok lol. Maybe I asked that question because I can't see any way at all about how robot monsters could pose a good story. It just plain comes off as corny to me.

No, the fact that you seem to think 'not knowing' is a bad thing. GOOD narrative thrives on questions and here we have one hell of a question: 'what happened to the world and why did machines take over?'

You're not supposed to know. That's the point.

I don't know if that's necesarily the case, I think it's more a matter of the world is back in balance, like the Human race were the top dog, now we're just one of many species trying to survive.

The machines don't seem like a massively dominant species or group of species, dangerous sure, but the landscape isn't littered with them, nor do we see Humans or other animals being attacked on sight by all of the machines.

I agree with your points on this narrative causing people to think and that makes it great IMO too.

 

I can't agree with the assertion that these machine have the potential to be dangerous automatically makes them the most dominant species, especially when Aloy can still take on the most dangerous one we've seen out of the bunch and win using her skills.

Aloy can quite literally defeat a full herd if she uses her wits and plans out her moves to do so, using The Machine's strengths against them.

I think the most telling aspect of the narrative is how she takes out that scouting bot and the harvesting of the resource cannisters. She respects the scouting bot as if it was a living creature and that "killing" it is an unfortunate necessity. She's also looking to dislodge the green cannisters rather than "kill" the harvester bot. Ergo she (and her tribe) seem to see themselves living in a balanced coexistence with the bots. It's not a terminator rise of the machines situation whereby the machines are truying to exterminate humanity. Hopefully as we go through the game we'll find out what happened to civilisation but it's far from certain that the bots turned against humanity. Indeed the overthrow of humanity by a malevolent AI seems like a bit of cliche considering Terminator, Mass Effect, The Matrix and probably a few other stories have mined that fear.

Also of the bots are the top "life forms" and they all operate in a cooperative manner, whay is it necessary to make those massive T-Rex bots? Is it just to guard against human predation, or are there other threats that caused the bots to put major resources into T-Rex bots. Are there different tribes of bots and different bot tribes come into conflict? Scavanger bots that don't have resource collecting herds of their own but which raid herds as their means of collecting resources.

There's a lot of potential for this world. The big question is wheter that potential gets realised. It's good to keep people guessing, but people also need to see tangeable depth not just potential depth. We all got a bit sucked in by The Order and while many people (including me) liked it, it didn't live up to its potential. So I am wary and hopeful with Horizon...but please let Zero Dawn be a working title. Unless there is a really neat explanation for the title it simply does not make sense. Horizon is a great franchise name, but they'll need to come up with less WTF sounding names for each game.