Horizon Zero Dawn

Aloy using her spear against a Watcher.

Horizon Zero Dawn is an action role-playing game played from a third-person view.^[5][6] Players take control of Aloy, a hunter who ventures through a post-apocalyptic land ruled by robotic creatures.^[7][8] Aloy can kill enemies in a variety of ways – shooting them with arrows,^[9] setting traps such as tripwires using the Tripcaster,^[10][11] using explosives,^[12] and a spear.^[13] Machine components, including electricity and the metal they are composed of, are vital to Aloy's survival; she can loot their remains for crafting resources.^[9][14] Ammo, resource satchels, pouches, quivers, resistance, antidotes, health potions, and traps can all be crafted.^[15] Weapons have modification slots for dealing more damage.^[16] Aloy wears a Focus, a small head piece that scans machines to determine their susceptibilities,^[17] identify their location, their level, and the nature of loot they will drop.^[8] One machine, the Stalker, can enable cloaking technology to avert the gaze of Aloy's Focus scan.^[18] Machines attack with defensive and offensive measures, and in either case react to a perceived threat by charging at it with brute force or projectiles. Exhibiting the behaviour of wild animals, some machines are inclined to move in herds, and others, with the ability to fly, do so in flocks. Unless hacked with the Override Tool, or sufficiently hit with corruption arrows, machines do not exert aggressive force against each other.^[11] Aloy also engages in battle with human enemies, such as bandits and the Eclipse cult.^[11][19]

Aloy can dodge, sprint, slide, or roll to evade her enemies' advances.^[20] Hiding in foliage to ambush nearby enemies can ensure immediate takedowns.^[9] Swimming may reach enemies stealthily or places otherwise unreachable on foot.^[11] She is able to hack a selection of machines with the Override Tool, some of which can be turned into makeshift mounts.^[13][21] Explorable ruins called Cauldrons unlock additional machines to override.^[22] Three categories occur in the skill tree: "Prowler" concerns stealth, "Brave" improves combat, and "Forager" increases healing and gathering capabilities.^[23] To level up, Aloy attains experience points from individual kills and completing quests.^[24] Upgrades in each category result in more adept use of the skills learned, with "Prowler" leading to silent takedowns, "Brave" to aiming a bow in slow motion, and "Forager" to an enlarged medicine pouch.^[25][26] The Frozen Wilds added "Traveler", which unlocks the ability to jump off a mount to attack enemies.^[27] The game has a seamless open world with a day-night cycle and dynamic weather system.^[14][28][29]

The map is composed of forest, jungle, desert, and snowy mountain regions.^[30][22] Mountainous terrain is traversed with the employment of parkour,^[31] and aided by the use of zip-lines.^[32] Corrupted Zones constitute areas that heighten difficulty and are populated by corrupted machines that behave with more aggression.^[13] To uncover more of the map, Aloy must scale large giraffe-like machines known as Tallnecks.^[33] Twenty-five robotic creature designs are present in the game.^[34] Save points and fast travel can be accessed by interacting with campfires, once discovered.^[23] The quest structure unfolds to accommodate the exploration of tribes, while the main story covers the entire world.^[35] Side quests involve Aloy completing tasks, like gathering materials, coming to the aid of individuals in danger of being killed, solving mysteries, assuming control of bandit camps, eliminating criminals and more difficult machines, accomplishing various challenges at any of the five Hunting Grounds,^[11][36] and obtaining an ancient armour that makes Aloy almost impervious to damage.^[16] A dialogue wheel is used to communicate with non-player characters.^[17] Collectibles include vantages that offer visual information of the Old World, metal flowers that contain poetry, and old relics, such as ancient mugs and tribal artifacts.^[37]

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Action role-playing game

Action role-playing game

An action role-playing game is a subgenre of video games that combines core elements from both the action game and role-playing genre.

Aloy

Aloy

Aloy is a fictional character and protagonist of the 2017 video game Horizon Zero Dawn and its sequel Horizon Forbidden West. In the games' post-apocalyptic tribal setting, she is born in 3021, raised as an outcast, and trains as a warrior in order to win a ritual competition to discover her mother's identity. After narrowly evading an assassination attempt, she embarks on a journey to stop a cult that worships an artificial intelligence bent on the world's destruction, while also hunting machines that have grown hostile to humans. She has been critically praised for her design and characterization. She is voiced by American voice actress Ashly Burch and modeled after Dutch actress Hannah Hoekstra.

Quiver

Quiver

A quiver is a container for holding arrows or bolts. It can be carried on an archer's body, the bow, or the ground, depending on the type of shooting and the archer's personal preference. Quivers were traditionally made of leather, wood, furs, and other natural materials, but are now often made of metal or plastic.

Cloaking device

Cloaking device

A cloaking device is a hypothetical or fictional stealth technology that can cause objects, such as spaceships or individuals, to be partially or wholly invisible to parts of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum. Fictional cloaking devices have been used as plot devices in various media for many years.

Herd

Herd

A herd is a social group of certain animals of the same species, either wild or domestic. The form of collective animal behavior associated with this is called herding. These animals are known as gregarious animals.

Flock (birds)

Flock (birds)

A flock is a gathering of individual birds to forage or travel collectively. Avian flocks are typically associated with migration. Flocking also offers foraging benefits and protection from predators, although flocking can have costs for individual members.

Slow motion

Slow motion

Slow motion is an effect in film-making whereby time appears to be slowed down. It was invented by the Austrian priest August Musger in the early 20th century. This can be accomplished through the use of high-speed cameras and then playing the footage produced by such cameras at a normal rate like 30 fps, or in post production through the use of software.

Open world

Open world

In video games, an open world is a virtual world in which the player can approach objectives freely, as opposed to a world with more linear and structured gameplay. While games have used open-world designs since the 1980s, the implementation in Grand Theft Auto III (2001) set a standard for the concept which has been used since.

Parkour

Parkour

Parkour is an athletic training discipline or sport in which practitioners attempt to get from point A to point B in the fastest and most efficient way possible, without assisting equipment and often while performing artistic-gymnastic maneuvers. With roots in military obstacle course training and martial arts, parkour includes running, climbing, swinging, vaulting, jumping, plyometrics, rolling, gymnastics, and quadrupedal movement—whatever is suitable for a given situation. Parkour is an activity that can be practiced alone or with others, and is usually carried out in urban spaces, though it can be done anywhere. It involves seeing one's environment in a new way, and envisioning the potential for navigating it by movement around, across, through, over and under its features.

Fast travel

Fast travel

Fast travel or teleportation is a video game mechanic used in open world titles that allows a player character to instantaneously travel between previously discovered locations without having to traverse that distance in real time. It is a type of warp that is specifically used to traverse the game's world rather than the inside of a level. Sometimes in-game time passes while fast traveling, while in other cases the travel is simply implied or the player is teleported by magical or technological means. While typically used as a means of providing convenience to the player, fast travel has been criticized as detracting from games' design, as some worlds or quests are designed to incorporate it at the expense of depth, memorability or realism.

Non-player character

Non-player character

A non-player character (NPC), or non-playable character, is any character in a game that is not controlled by a player. The term originated in traditional tabletop role-playing games where it applies to characters controlled by the gamemaster or referee rather than by another player. In video games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer that has a predetermined set of behaviors that potentially will impact gameplay, but will not necessarily be the product of true artificial intelligence.

Setting

The story is set in a post-apocalyptic United States, between the states of Colorado, Wyoming and Utah, in the 31st century. Humans live in scattered, primitive tribes with varying levels of technological development. Their technologically advanced predecessors are remembered as the "Old Ones". Large robotic creatures, known as "machines", dominate the Earth. For the most part, they peacefully coexist with humans, who occasionally hunt them for parts. However, a phenomenon known as the "Derangement" has caused machines to become more aggressive towards humans, and larger and deadlier machines have begun to appear. There are four tribes that are prominently featured: the Nora, the Banuk, the Carja and the Oseram. The Nora are fierce matriarchal hunter-gatherers who live in the mountains and worship their deity, the "All-Mother". The Carja are an empire of desert-dwelling city builders who worship the Sun. The Banuk consist of wandering clans made up of hunters and shamans who live in snowy mountains (Montana's Yellowstone National Park) and worship the "blue light" of the machines. The Oseram are tinkerers and salvagers known for their advanced weapons, metalworking, brewing, and talent as warriors.^[11]

Plot

Aloy (Ashly Burch) is cast out from the Nora tribe at birth and raised by a fellow outcast named Rost (JB Blanc). As a child (Ava Potter), Aloy obtains a Focus, an augmented reality device that gives her special perceptive abilities. Aloy becomes curious about her origins and is told by Rost that if she wins the Proving, a competition to earn the right to become a member of the Nora, the tribe's Matriarchs might concede this information. Aloy spends some years training in combat and survival under Rost's instruction.

After coming of age, Aloy takes part in the Proving; she wins the competition, but the Nora are attacked by masked cultists. Rost sacrifices himself to save Aloy from their leader, Helis (Crispin Freeman). When Aloy awakens, the Matriarchs explain that Aloy was found as an infant before a sealed door within the Nora's sacred mountain, and that these suspicious origins were the reason for being outcast. The Matriarchs name Aloy a "Seeker", allowing her to leave their lands in pursuit of the cultists. Aloy eventually learns that the cultists are part of a splinter Carja faction called the Eclipse, and that Aloy was targeted due to her resemblance to an Old World scientist named Elisabet Sobeck (also voiced by Burch). Aloy locates the ruined corporate campus of Faro Automated Solutions and discovers that the Old World was destroyed nearly a thousand years ago after Faro lost control of its automated peacekeeper military robots. The robots, which could self-replicate and consumed biomass, overran the planet and consumed the biosphere, stripping Earth of life. Zero Dawn, a project spearheaded by Sobeck, was initiated to create an automated terraforming system to deactivate the robots and restore life to Earth.^[11][38]

Aloy is contacted by Sylens (Lance Reddick), a secretive Banuk figure interested in uncovering the fate of the Old Ones. Aloy learns that Sobeck was sent to a decommissioned Orbital Launch Base to complete Zero Dawn, which is located under the Citadel, the centre of Eclipse power. Inside the base, Aloy learns that Zero Dawn was a vast underground system of databases, factories, and cloning facilities controlled by a single artificial intelligence, GAIA (Lesley Ewen) and her subsystems. Once all life had been extinguished, GAIA developed a countermeasure to deactivate the Faro robots and build her own animalistic machines to restore the Earth's biosphere. Once the planet was habitable again, GAIA's next goal was to reseed life on Earth based on stored DNA and teach the first human clones not to repeat their predecessors' mistakes. However, APOLLO, the subsystem designed to teach humanity, was sabotaged by Faro's founder and CEO Theodore Faro in a fit of nihilism, and the new generation of humans were reduced to a tribal, subsistence society. The Eclipse are secretly controlled by HADES (John Gonzalez), another of GAIA's subsystems designed to enact controlled extinction if the outcome of Zero Dawn was not favorable for human existence. Reaching Sobeck's office, Aloy obtains a registry to give her access to the door beneath the Nora's mountain. She is captured by Helis and sentenced to death at the Citadel, but escapes with the help of Sylens. Aloy helps the Nora fight off the Eclipse and unlocks the mountain's door.^[11][38]

She finds a recording from GAIA, revealing that a signal of unknown origin caused HADES to activate and seize control of her functions; as a last resort, GAIA self-destructed in order to stop HADES, but sadly failed and lost control of the other subsystems. Without GAIA to maintain the terraforming process, the entire system began to break down, leading to the Derangement. As a contingency plan, GAIA created a clone of Sobeck in the form of Aloy, in the hope that she would find GAIA's message, destroy HADES, and restore GAIA's functions. Aloy learns that Sobeck sacrificed her life to ensure the Faro robots would not find GAIA. Aloy manages to obtain the master override to destroy HADES. Sylens reveals that he was the founder of the Eclipse, originally tempted by HADES' promises of knowledge when he discovered it. They surmise that HADES intends to send a signal to reactivate the Faro robots to extinguish life on Earth. Aloy kills Helis and helps fight off machines, before stabbing HADES and activating the master override, ending the war. She journeys to Sobeck's old home, finding her corpse, and mourns her predecessor. In a post-credits scene, HADES is trapped by Sylens, who intends to interrogate HADES to find out who sent the signal that activated it.^[11]

The Frozen Wilds

Aloy travels to the "Cut", the home of the Banuk tribe, after hearing word of dangerous machines appearing and a mountain belching smoke. She learns from Aratak (Richard Neil), chieftain of the largest Banuk clan, that the Banuk have been attempting to battle a "Daemon" on the mountain, "Thunder's Drum", which has corrupted the machines of the Cut. However, their first attack had been a failure, and their shaman, Ourea, had disappeared afterwards. Aloy searches for Ourea, coming across strange robotic towers which both control and repair the corrupted machines. She finds Ourea (Necar Zadegan) in an Old World facility that had been converted into a Banuk shrine and is housing an artificial intelligence the shaman calls the "Spirit". Aloy is able to make contact with the Spirit, which warns Ourea that the Daemon is blocking its transmissions before being cut off. Aloy and Ourea agree to work together to save the Spirit. Per Ourea's advice, Aloy defeats Aratak in a hunting competition, taking his place as chieftain. She also discovers that Aratak and Ourea are siblings.^[39]

Aloy, Ourea, and Aratak head for Thunder's Drum. They infiltrate the Old World facility built inside the mountain, where Aloy discovers that the Spirit is actually CYAN (Laurel Lefkow), a highly advanced AI designed to prevent the Yellowstone Caldera from erupting. Traveling further inside, they discover that the Daemon has already overtaken much of the facility, but CYAN suggests using lava from the caldera to destroy the infected areas while preserving the facility. It is also revealed that the Daemon is in fact HEPHAESTUS (Stefan Ashton Frank), another of GAIA's subsystems that manufactures machines. The group fights through HEPHAESTUS' defenses and Ourea sacrifices herself to override CYAN's core, allowing it to escape. CYAN transfers its core systems to an auxiliary data center and initiates self-destruction of the facility. Aloy and Aratak narrowly escape. Aloy returns to the Banuk Shrine, where CYAN is waiting; the AI provides additional information about the Old World but warns that HEPHAESTUS is still active somewhere and will continue to build machines designed specifically to kill humans, which is why it tried to seize control of CYAN and its facilities. Returning Aratak to his previous position as Chieftain, Aloy departs the Cut.^[39]

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Colorado

Colorado

Colorado is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains. Colorado is the eighth most extensive and 21st most populous U.S. state. The 2020 United States census enumerated the population of Colorado at 5,773,714, an increase of 14.80% since the 2010 census.

Ashly Burch

Ashly Burch

Ashly Burch is an American voice actress, singer, and television writer. She is known for her roles as Aloy in Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West, Chloe Price in the Life Is Strange series, Mel in The Last of Us Part II, Tiny Tina in the Borderlands series, the web series Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin'?, Enid from OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes, Molly from The Ghost and Molly McGee, and Ash Graven from Final Space.

JB Blanc

JB Blanc

Jean-Benoît Blanc is a French-British actor and director of film and television who has worked on animations and video games in Los Angeles.

Augmented reality

Augmented reality

Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer-generated content. The content can span multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory and olfactory. AR can be defined as a system that incorporates three basic features: a combination of real and virtual worlds, real-time interaction, and accurate 3D registration of virtual and real objects. The overlaid sensory information can be constructive, or destructive. This experience is seamlessly interwoven with the physical world such that it is perceived as an immersive aspect of the real environment. In this way, augmented reality alters one's ongoing perception of a real-world environment, whereas virtual reality completely replaces the user's real-world environment with a simulated one.

Crispin Freeman

Crispin Freeman

Crispin Freeman is an American voice actor, voice director, and screenwriter who is best known for voicing characters in English-language dubs of Japanese anime, animation, and video games. Some of his prominent anime roles include Zelgadis Graywords in Slayers, Kyon in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Togusa in the Ghost in the Shell franchise, Alucard in Hellsing, Kirei Kotomine in Fate/Zero and Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works, Itachi Uchiha in Naruto, Gyomei Himejima in Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Hagi in Blood+ and Shizuo Heiwajima in Durarara!!

Schism

Schism

A schism is a division between people, usually belonging to an organization, movement, or religious denomination. The word is most frequently applied to a split in what had previously been a single religious body, such as the Great East–West Schism or the Western Schism. It is also used of a split within a non-religious organization or movement or, more broadly, of a separation between two or more people, be it brothers, friends, lovers, etc.

Military robot

Military robot

Military robots are autonomous robots or remote-controlled mobile robots designed for military applications, from transport to search & rescue and attack.

Biomass

Biomass

Biomass is a term used in several contexts: in the context of ecology it means living organisms, and in the context of bioenergy it means matter from recently living organisms. In the latter context, there are variations in how biomass is defined, e.g. only from plants, or from plants and algae, or from plants and animals. The vast majority of biomass used for bioenergy does come from plants. Bioenergy is a type of renewable energy with potential to assist with climate change mitigation.

Lance Reddick

Lance Reddick

Lance Solomon Reddick was an American actor and musician. He was best known for playing Cedric Daniels in The Wire (2002–2008), Phillip Broyles in Fringe (2008–2013), and Chief Irvin Irving in Bosch (2014–2020). In film, he was best known for starring as Charon in the John Wick franchise (2014–2023) and David Gentry in Angel Has Fallen (2019).

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by non-human animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech recognition, computer vision, translation between (natural) languages, as well as other mappings of inputs.

Chief executive officer

Chief executive officer

A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer, chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization – especially an independent legal entity such as a company or nonprofit institution. CEOs find roles in a range of organizations, including public and private corporations, non-profit organizations and even some government organizations. The CEO of a corporation or company typically reports to the board of directors and is charged with maximizing the value of the business, which may include maximizing the share price, market share, revenues or another element. In the non-profit and government sector, CEOs typically aim at achieving outcomes related to the organization's mission, usually provided by legislation. CEOs are also frequently assigned the role of main manager of the organization and the highest-ranking officer in the C-suite.

Necar Zadegan

Necar Zadegan

Necar Zadegan is an American actress. Zadegan made her Broadway debut alongside Robin Williams in the Pulitzer Prize–nominated production Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo in 2011. She is known for playing First Lady Dalia Hassan on the eighth season of 24 then leading in the roles of Delia Banai on Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce and Special Agent Hannah Khoury on NCIS: New Orleans.

Guerrilla Games began developing Horizon Zero Dawn following the release of Killzone 3 in 2011.^[40] When conceiving the idea for a new game, about 40 concepts were pitched. Among these was Horizon Zero Dawn, which game director Mathijs de Jonge considered "the most risky" of the concepts and was pitched in 2010 by art director Jan-Bart van Beek.^[41][42] When this concept was chosen, a team of 10–20 began building prototypes of the game.^[41][42] Approximately 20 different stories were written for the game, exploring varying concepts for the game, such as different player characters. John Gonzalez, who previously acted as lead writer for Fallout: New Vegas (2010), was hired to write the game's story as narrative director, with Ben McCaw as lead writer. The main elements of the story and the character of Aloy remained intact since early development.^[41][42][43] Upon the completion of Killzone: Shadow Fall in late 2013, the remainder of the staff began working on Horizon Zero Dawn.^[44] Guerrilla cancelled another game to allow the entire team to focus on the development of Horizon.^[45] Sony would later admit to being reluctant about having the main character be female and conducted focus testing to see if such a decision was marketable.^[46] The game had an estimated budget of over €45 million.^[47]

The game's concept explores the juxtaposition between the danger and beauty of the world, particularly analysing the concept of humanity not being the dominant species. The team aimed to emphasise the game's exploration element by featuring a quest system, as well as including items throughout the world that can be used to craft or replenish health.^[41] The team wished for the game to have a simple user interface design, specifically avoiding complicated menus for crafting, and considered the game to be a technical challenge.^[48] They felt that the game engine, Decima,^[49] which was designed for games such as the Killzone series and was previously used for Killzone: Shadow Fall,^[50] was difficult to alter for Horizon, in terms of draw distance and loading. To discover how some game elements work differently in open world games, the team sought help from talent in the design, art and technical fields.^[48] In extrapolating the game world, Guerrilla turned to anthropologists and researched the formation of tribal cultures as well as how building materials would decay over a millennium.^[42] The game's quest system and narrative design took inspiration from other role-playing video games, ranging from the "Relaxed" quest design of RPG Maker games to the "Strict" quest design of hack and slash games. They defined "Relaxed" quest design as having few centralised systems for managing quest progression, and "Strict" quest design as having a rigid structure and predefined elements, with the team deciding the latter.^[51][52]

Lead composer Joris de Man used experimental instrumentation in the score

Lance Reddick and Ashly Burch's involvement was revealed in January 2017.^[34][53] Burch voiced Aloy,^[34] whose likeness was portrayed by Hannah Hoekstra^[54] and motion capture was performed by Amanda Piery in London. Following an auditioning process in 2014, Burch was called in to do the E3 2015 trailer and proceeded to work on the game for two years in Los Angeles, providing facial motion capture as well.^[55]

The game's soundtrack was composed by Joris de Man, The Flight, Niels van der Leest, and Jonathan Williams, with vocalist Julie Elven serving as the primary performer.^[56][57] Lucas van Tol, music supervisor and senior sound designer, provided the composers with a game design document, insisting on an intimate sound for the score. For the tribal theme, they experimented with bows on piano wire and resonator guitars (with layered tracks of harmonicas on top of the latter) and playing cellos with plectrums or the back of a bow to convey how contemporary instruments would be played by someone to whom the instruments were unknown; de Man also used a contrabass flute and made synth pads from blowing on a Thai bamboo flute, noting "distant pads and ambiences, and wide, spread out chords seemed to work well". Circuit-bent synthesizers and percussive loops, run through impulse responses of metal and iron being beaten, were devoted to making a thematic identifier for the machines based on technology and metal. Van Tol required that the music be supplied in stems so that different pieces could be combined. The positive response to the first E3 trailer's main theme led it to be included in the main menu. The composers also did the motion capture for diegetic music vignettes, portraying in-game tribal musicians.^[58][59] The four-hour soundtrack was released via digital music platforms on 10 March 2017.^[60][61]

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Guerrilla Games

Guerrilla Games

Guerrilla B.V. is a Dutch first-party video game developer based in Amsterdam and part of PlayStation Studios. The company was founded as Lost Boys Games in January 2000 through the merger of three smaller development studios as a subsidiary of multimedia conglomerate company Lost Boys. Lost Boys Games became independent the following year and was acquired by Media Republic in 2003, renaming the studio to Guerrilla Games before being purchased by Sony Interactive Entertainment in 2005. As of June 2021, the company employs 360 people under the leadership of joint studio heads Angie Smets, Jan-Bart van Beek, and Michiel van der Leeuw. It is best known for the Killzone and Horizon game series.

Killzone 3

Killzone 3

Killzone 3 is a 2011 first-person shooter video game for the PlayStation 3, developed by Guerrilla Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. It is the fourth installment in the Killzone series, the first game in the series to be presented in stereoscopic 3D, and the first to include motion controls using the PlayStation Move. It is a direct sequel to Killzone 2. It was released worldwide in February 2011 to positive reviews.

Fallout: New Vegas

Fallout: New Vegas

Fallout: New Vegas is a 2010 action role-playing game developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Bethesda Softworks. It was announced in April 2009 and released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 on October 19, 2010. A spin-off of the main Fallout series, the game is set in a post-apocalyptic open world environment that encompasses a region consisting of parts of Arizona, California, and Nevada. It is set in a world that deviated onto an alternate timeline thanks to Atomic Age technology, which eventually led to a global nuclear apocalypse in the year 2077 in an event referred to as "The Great War", caused by a major conflict between the U.S. and China over natural resources. The main story of New Vegas takes place in the year 2281, four years after the events of Fallout 3 and 204 years after the bombs fell. It is not a direct sequel, but does feature the return of several elements found in Fallout 2.

Aloy

Aloy

Aloy is a fictional character and protagonist of the 2017 video game Horizon Zero Dawn and its sequel Horizon Forbidden West. In the games' post-apocalyptic tribal setting, she is born in 3021, raised as an outcast, and trains as a warrior in order to win a ritual competition to discover her mother's identity. After narrowly evading an assassination attempt, she embarks on a journey to stop a cult that worships an artificial intelligence bent on the world's destruction, while also hunting machines that have grown hostile to humans. She has been critically praised for her design and characterization. She is voiced by American voice actress Ashly Burch and modeled after Dutch actress Hannah Hoekstra.

Game engine

Game engine

A game engine is a software framework primarily designed for the development of video games and generally includes relevant libraries and support programs. The "engine" terminology is similar to the term "software engine" used in the software industry.

Decima (game engine)

Decima (game engine)

Decima is a proprietary game engine made by Guerrilla Games and released in November 2013, that includes tools and features like artificial intelligence and game physics. It is compatible with 4K resolution and high-dynamic-range imaging, used for games on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Microsoft Windows.

Draw distance

Draw distance

In computer graphics, draw distance is the maximum distance of objects in a three-dimensional scene that are drawn by the rendering engine. Polygons that lie beyond the draw distance will not be drawn to the screen.

Hack and slash

Hack and slash

Hack and slash, also known as hack and slay or slash 'em up, refers to a type of gameplay that emphasizes combat with melee-based weapons. They may also feature projectile-based weapons as well as secondary weapons. It is a sub-genre of beat 'em up games, which focuses on melee combat usually with swords. Hack-and-slash action games are sometimes known as character action games.

Joris de Man

Joris de Man

Joris Maarten de Man, known as Joris de Man, is a Dutch composer and sound designer, well known for his work on the video games Killzone and Horizon Zero Dawn.

Hannah Hoekstra

Hannah Hoekstra

Hannah Hoekstra is a Dutch actress.

E3 2015

E3 2015

The Electronic Entertainment Expo 2015 was the 21st E3 held. The event took place at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, California. It took place from June 16 to June 18, 2015, with 52,200 total attendees.

Los Angeles

Los Angeles

Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Southern California. Los Angeles is the largest city in the state of California, the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, and one of the world's most populous megacities. With a population of roughly 3.9 million residents within the city limits as of 2020, Los Angeles is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic and cultural diversity, being the home of the Hollywood film industry, and its sprawling metropolitan area. The majority of the city proper lies in a basin in Southern California adjacent to the Pacific Ocean in the west and extending partly through the Santa Monica Mountains and north into the San Fernando Valley, with the city bordering the San Gabriel Valley to its east. It covers about 469 square miles (1,210 km2), and is the county seat of Los Angeles County, which is the most populous county in the United States with an estimated 9.86 million residents as of 2022.

The concept art as well as the game's codename, Horizon, were leaked in September 2014.^[62] Horizon Zero Dawn was officially announced during Sony's E3 2015 press conference.^[63] The game was featured as the cover story in the September 2015 issue of Edge and the October 2016 issue of Game Informer.^[64][65] At E3 2016, Sony had a life-sized cosplay version of one of the machines greet the trade show attendees.^[66] Originally set to be released in 2016, the game was delayed to February 2017 to be further polished.^[67] It was released to manufacturing in late January 2017,^[68] and launched to North American markets on 28 February 2017, in Europe, Australia and New Zealand on 1 March and Asia on 2 March for the PlayStation 4.^[69][70] Horizon Zero Dawn is forward compatible with the PS4 Pro,^[32] allowing it to run up to 4K resolution.^[71] In April 2017, a making-of documentary was released on Dutch public television.^[72] By March 2017, a story expansion had already been set in motion.^[73] New Game Plus, an Ultra Hard difficulty mode, additional trophies and aesthetic features were introduced with a patch released in July 2017.^[74] The expansion, The Frozen Wilds, was released on 7 November 2017.^[75][76] The Complete Edition, which contains the base game, The Frozen Wilds, and all additional downloadable content (DLC), was released for the PlayStation 4 on 5 December 2017 and Windows via Steam on 7 August 2020 and GOG on 24 November 2020.^[77][78] A tabletop game adaptation is being developed by Steamforged Games.^[79]

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Sony Interactive Entertainment

Sony Interactive Entertainment

Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) is a multinational video game and digital entertainment company owned by multinational conglomerate Sony. SIE primarily operates the PlayStation brand of video game consoles and products. SIE is made up of two legal corporate entities: Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC (SIE LLC) based in San Mateo, California, and Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc., based in Minato, Tokyo. SIE Inc. was originally founded as Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. in November 1993 to handle Sony's venture into video game development for the PlayStation systems. SIE LLC was established in San Mateo in April 2016, and is managed through Sony's American branch, Sony Corporation of America.

Edge (magazine)

Edge (magazine)

Edge is a multi-format video game magazine published by Future plc. It is a UK-based magazine and publishes 13 issues annually. The magazine was launched by Steve Jarratt. It has also released foreign editions in Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain.

Game Informer

Game Informer

Game Informer is an American monthly video game magazine featuring articles, news, strategy, and reviews of video games and associated consoles. It debuted in August 1991 when video game retailer FuncoLand started publishing an in-house newsletter. The publication is now owned and published by GameStop, who bought FuncoLand in 2000. Due to this, a large amount of promotion is done in-store, which has contributed to the success of the magazine. As of June 2017, it is the 5th most popular magazine by copies circulated.

E3 2016

E3 2016

The Electronic Entertainment Expo 2016 was the 22nd E3, during which several hardware manufacturers and software developers and publishers from the video game industry presented new and upcoming products to the attendees, primarily retailers and members of the video game press. The event, organized by the Entertainment Software Association, took place at the Los Angeles Convention Center from June 14–16, 2016. Approximately 50,300 people attended the event, slightly down from the previous year's. With video game consoles currently a couple years into their 8th generation, the focus of E3 2016 was primarily on new software titles, with new hardware revisions and auxiliary equipment to support the growing market sectors of 4K resolution displays and virtual reality headsets.

Cosplay

Cosplay

Cosplay, a portmanteau of "costume play", is an activity and performance art in which participants called cosplayers wear costumes and fashion accessories to represent a specific character. Cosplayers often interact to create a subculture, and a broader use of the term "cosplay" applies to any costumed role-playing in venues apart from the stage. Any entity that lends itself to dramatic interpretation may be taken up as a subject. Favorite sources include anime, cartoons, comic books, manga, television series, and video games. The term is composed of the two aforementioned counterparts – costume and role play.

PlayStation 4

PlayStation 4

The PlayStation 4 (PS4) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Announced as the successor to the PlayStation 3 in February 2013, it was launched on November 15, 2013, in North America, November 29, 2013 in Europe, South America and Australia, and on February 22, 2014 in Japan. A console of the eighth generation, it competes with Microsoft's Xbox One and Nintendo's Wii U and Switch.

Forward compatibility

Forward compatibility

Forward compatibility or upward compatibility is a design characteristic that allows a system to accept input intended for a later version of itself. The concept can be applied to entire systems, electrical interfaces, telecommunication signals, data communication protocols, file formats, and programming languages. A standard supports forward compatibility if a product that complies with earlier versions can "gracefully" process input designed for later versions of the standard, ignoring new parts which it does not understand.

4K resolution

4K resolution

4K resolution refers to a horizontal display resolution of approximately 4,000 pixels. Digital television and digital cinematography commonly use several different 4K resolutions. In television and consumer media, 3840 × 2160 is the dominant 4K standard, whereas the movie projection industry uses 4096 × 2160.

New Game Plus

New Game Plus

A New Game Plus, also New Game+ (NG+), is an unlockable video game mode available in some video games that allows the player to start a new game after they finish it at least once, where certain features in NG+ not normally available in a first playthrough are added, or where certain aspects of the finished game affect the newly started game, such as keeping in the new game items or experience gained in the first playthrough. New Game Plus is also known as "replay mode", "remorting", "challenge mode", or "New Game Ex". The genre where they are most prevalent is role-playing video games.

Steam (service)

Steam (service)

Steam is a video game digital distribution service and storefront from Valve. It was launched as a software client in September 2003 as a way for Valve to provide automatic updates for their games, and expanded to distributing third-party game publishers' titles in late 2005. Steam offers various features, like digital rights management (DRM), game server matchmaking, anti-cheat measures, social networking and game streaming services. Users receive automatic game updates, cloud storage for game progress, and community features such as direct messaging, in-game chats and a community market.

GOG.com

GOG.com

GOG.com is a digital distribution platform for video games and films. It is operated by GOG sp. z o.o., a wholly owned subsidiary of CD Projekt based in Warsaw, Poland. GOG.com delivers DRM-free video games through its digital platform for Microsoft Windows, macOS and Linux.

Tabletop game

Tabletop game

Tabletop games or tabletops are games that are normally played on a table or other flat surface, such as board games, card games, dice games, miniature wargames, or tile-based games.

Horizon Zero Dawn received "generally favorable" reviews from critics, according to review aggregator Metacritic.^[80] Destructoid's Chris Carter commended Ashly Burch and Lance Reddick for their performances, with the character of Aloy receiving credit for maintaining a "captivating" and "interesting" consistency in the narrative and action sequences. Carter also lauded the focus on exploration and discovery, which he said grew more effective as he traversed more of the land. The game world itself was subject to compliment for its "beautiful" day-night cycle and weather system. According to Carter, the challenging nature of the machines and varied methods with which to battle them brought a real sense of fun to the combat.^[82] Matt Buchholtz of EGMNow likewise praised Burch as well as the game world, which he found to be mesmerising. Considered the most powerful part of the game, the Focus feature gained approval for complementing the combat in a way that "forces you to become a hunter".^[31] Writing for Game Informer, Jeff Marchiafava opined that, unlike with other open world video games, searching for audio logs and emails provided the plot with a "remarkable sense of discovery". He was thankful that story-based missions dominated the overall experience, arguing that they worked to detail the world and inspired gameplay variation.^[83]

Peter Brown at GameSpot reflected on Aloy's character development with amazement. One constant thrill to Brown came from combating the machines, which he said took the spotlight and never lost its flair. He appreciated also that the main quests encouraged one to explore the environment.^[84] Zoe Delahunty-Light, writing for GamesRadar+, was fascinated with the intricacies of the world and found integral value in the lore scattered among the ruins. She echoed Brown's view that fighting machines maintained excitement throughout.^[85] Giant Bomb's Jeff Gerstmann declared Horizon Zero Dawn as "a near-perfect story" with a satisfying conclusion, and emphasised that it contained substantial depth.^[86] Lucy O'Brien at IGN admired its weight in meaning, while welcoming the charm of the protagonist's personality. A considerable impression was made with the combat, which was stated as the most compelling accomplishment.^[87] Writing for Polygon, Philip Kollar applauded the game as what he dubbed the "refutation" of Guerrilla Games' past work, a change of pace he described as "refreshing". Aloy was observed to be perfectly coupled with the story in that she offered the curiosity to seek out its many mysteries. Kollar perceived the Focus as "key to combat" and the machines as engaging foes in battle.^[88] Colm Ahern of VideoGamer.com wrote in his verdict, "Destroying large robot beasts while frantically switching between weapons is intoxicating, but the strength of Horizon Zero Dawn is in Aloy's engaging quest to find out who she really is".^[90]

Conversely, Carter saw the characters beyond Aloy and Sylens as uninteresting and bland in their designs. He also disparaged the human artificial intelligence as being worse than that of the machines.^[82] To Buchholtz, the weapon system in relation to ammunition appeared convoluted; the ability to only purchase one item at a time "a massive oversight"; and Aloy's ability to only grab marked ledges was confusing for a "parkour master".^[31] Marchiafava's only major criticism was that it held too familiar roots with established open world formula.^[83] Although Brown drew enjoyment from other aspects of combat, he disparaged the melee for its ineffectiveness and simplicity.^[84] Delahunty-Light concurred that the melee fell short of its potential, and also took issue with the jumping mechanic.^[85] O'Brien felt the dialogue occasionally contradicted the otherwise intelligent narrative.^[87] Kollar bemoaned the character models as its one visual shortcoming.^[88]

Game director Yoko Taro listed it as one of his favourite PlayStation 4 games.^[91] Entertainment Weekly ranked it as the fourth best game of 2017,^[92] GamesRadar+ ranked it second on their list of the 25 Best Games of 2017,^[93] and Eurogamer ranked it 31st on their list of the "Top 50 Games of 2017".^[94] The Verge named Horizon Zero Dawn as one of the 15 Best Games of 2017.^[95] In Game Informer's Reader's Choice Best of 2017 Awards, it took the lead for "Best Sony Game", coming up in second place for both "Best Action Game" and "Game of the Year".^[96][97] Game Informer also awarded it "Best Sony Exclusive" in their Best of 2017 Awards, and also gave it the awards for "Best Story" and "Best Character" (Aloy) in their 2017 Action Game of the Year Awards.^[98][99] EGMNow ranked the game third in their list of 25 Best Games of 2017,^[100] while Polygon ranked it eighth on their list of the 50 best games of 2017.^[101] The game won the Gold Prize and Users Choice Prize at the 2017 PlayStation Awards.^[102] It was nominated for "Best PS4 Game" at Destructoid's Game of the Year Awards 2017.^[103] It also won the awards for "Best PlayStation 4 Game" and "Best Graphics" at IGN's Best of 2017 Awards,^[104][105] whereas its other nominations were for "Game of the Year", "Best Action-Adventure Game", and "Best Art Direction".^{[106][107][108]} It was nominated for "Best Looking Game" at Giant Bomb's 2017 Game of the Year Awards.^[109] In 2018, it won the awards for Best PS4 Game, Best Performance for Ashly Burch, Best Art Direction, Best Soundtrack, Best Story, Best Post-Release Content, Best PlayStation Console Exclusive, and Best Use of PS4 Pro at PlayStation Blog's Game of the Year Awards.^[110]

Sales

Horizon Zero Dawn was the best-selling game during its release week in the UK.^[111] It surpassed No Man's Sky as the biggest launch of a new intellectual property on the PlayStation 4 and was the most successful launch of any kind on the platform since Uncharted 4: A Thief's End,^[112] as well as Guerrilla Games' biggest debut to date.^[113] The game sold close to 117,000 copies in its first week in Japan, becoming the second best-selling game that week.^[114] Horizon Zero Dawn was the second most downloaded game on the North American PlayStation Store for February. Because its launch day occurred on the last day of February, only one day of sales was counted.^[115] Within two weeks it sold 2.6 million units.^[116][117]

It was the best-selling game in its week of release in Australia.^[118] In March 2017, it was the second best-selling game in the UK and the highest-selling PlayStation 4 game.^[119] Horizon Zero Dawn was also the best-selling game on PlayStation Store that month.^[120] It was ranked number one in the UK sales chart in April 2017, while hitting eighth place in the Japanese chart.^[121] By February 2018, over 7.6 million copies had been sold,^[122] increasing to over 10 million a year later, making it one of the best-selling PlayStation 4 games.^[123] By February 2022, over 20 million copies sold in PlayStation 4 and Windows platforms.^[124]

In an effort to increase profitability, in 2020 Sony decided to begin porting their first-party titles to PC.^[125] Horizon Zero Dawn released on PC in August 2020 and had a successful launch, moving over 700,000 digital copies.^[126] By March 2022, that number had increased to about 2.4 million copies.^[127]

In February 2022, Hermen Hulst announced via his Twitter account that the game had sold over 20 million copies as of 28 November 2021.^[128]

Awards

Discover more about Reception related topics

Metacritic

Metacritic

Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged. Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc Doyle, and Julie Doyle Roberts in 1999, and is owned by Fandom, Inc. as of 2023.

Destructoid

Destructoid

Destructoid is a website that was founded as a video game-focused blog in March 2006 by Yanier Gonzalez, a Cuban-American cartoonist and author. Enthusiast Gaming acquired the website in 2017, and sold it to Gamurs Group in 2022.

Electronic Gaming Monthly

Electronic Gaming Monthly

Electronic Gaming Monthly is a monthly American video game magazine. It offers video game news, coverage of industry events, interviews with gaming figures, editorial content and product reviews.

Game Informer

Game Informer

Game Informer is an American monthly video game magazine featuring articles, news, strategy, and reviews of video games and associated consoles. It debuted in August 1991 when video game retailer FuncoLand started publishing an in-house newsletter. The publication is now owned and published by GameStop, who bought FuncoLand in 2000. Due to this, a large amount of promotion is done in-store, which has contributed to the success of the magazine. As of June 2017, it is the 5th most popular magazine by copies circulated.

GameSpot

GameSpot

GameSpot is an American video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information on video games. The site was launched on May 1, 1996, created by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. In addition to the information produced by GameSpot staff, the site also allows users to write their own reviews, blogs, and post on the site's forums. It has been owned by Fandom, Inc. since October 2022.

GamesRadar+

GamesRadar+

GamesRadar+ is an entertainment website for video game-related news, previews, and reviews. It is owned by Future plc. In late 2014, Future Publishing-owned sites Total Film, SFX, Edge and Computer and Video Games were merged into GamesRadar, with the resulting, expanded website being renamed GamesRadar+ in November that year.

Giant Bomb

Giant Bomb

Giant Bomb is an American video game website and wiki that includes personality-driven gaming videos, commentary, news, and reviews, created by former GameSpot editors Jeff Gerstmann and Ryan Davis. The website was voted by Time magazine as one of the Top 50 websites of 2011. Originally part of Whiskey Media, the website was acquired by CBS Interactive in March 2012 before being sold to Red Ventures in 2020, then to Fandom in 2022.

IGN

IGN

IGN is an American video game and entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Inc. The company's headquarters is located in San Francisco's SoMa district and is headed by its former editor-in-chief, Peer Schneider. The IGN website was the brainchild of media entrepreneur Chris Anderson and launched on September 29, 1996. It focuses on games, films, anime, television, comics, technology, and other media. Originally a network of desktop websites, IGN is also distributed on mobile platforms, console programs on the Xbox and PlayStation, FireTV, Roku, and via YouTube, Twitch, Hulu, and Snapchat.

PC Gamer

PC Gamer

PC Gamer is a magazine and website founded in the United Kingdom in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future plc. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games magazines in their respective countries. The magazine features news on developments in the video game industry, previews of new games, and reviews of the latest popular PC games, along with other features relating to hardware, mods, "classic" games and various other topics.

Polygon (website)

Polygon (website)

Polygon is an American entertainment website that publishes blogs, reviews, guides, videos, and news primarily covering video games, as well as movies, comics, television and books. At its October 2012 launch as Vox Media's third property, Polygon sought to distinguish itself from competitors by focusing on the stories of the people behind the games instead of the games themselves. It also produced long-form magazine-style feature articles, invested in video content, and chose to let their review scores be updated as the game changed.

Artificial intelligence in video games

Artificial intelligence in video games

In video games, artificial intelligence (AI) is used to generate responsive, adaptive or intelligent behaviors primarily in non-player characters (NPCs) similar to human-like intelligence. Artificial intelligence has been an integral part of video games since their inception in the 1950s. AI in video games is a distinct subfield and differs from academic AI. It serves to improve the game-player experience rather than machine learning or decision making. During the golden age of arcade video games the idea of AI opponents was largely popularized in the form of graduated difficulty levels, distinct movement patterns, and in-game events dependent on the player's input. Modern games often implement existing techniques such as pathfinding and decision trees to guide the actions of NPCs. AI is often used in mechanisms which are not immediately visible to the user, such as data mining and procedural-content generation.

Yoko Taro

Yoko Taro

Yoko Taro is a Japanese video game director and scenario writer. Starting his career at the now-defunct game company Cavia, his best-known work was on the action role-playing video game series Drakengard, and its spin-offs, Nier and Nier: Automata. Yoko was born in Nagoya, Aichi, and studied at the Kobe Design University in the 1990s. While he did not initially intend to pursue a career in video games, after working at Namco and Sony, he joined Cavia and became the director and scenario writer for the first Drakengard game. He has since worked extensively on every game in the series, and on mobile titles, after becoming a freelancer after Cavia's absorption into AQ Interactive.

In June 2020, Guerrilla announced a sequel titled Horizon Forbidden West. It was released on February 18, 2022.^[153][154] A spin-off, Horizon Call of the Mountain was announced in January 2022 and is slated to release in February 2023.^[155] A second, multiplayer-oriented spin-off was confirmed in December 2022.^[156]