[hans0l074]

Did you get a chance to checkout Horizon: Forbidden West (the sequel to Horizon: Zero Dawn)? I have been gaming for a few decades now, and this is the most impressive technical achievement I have seen in a game. For me, everything else pales in comparison after this experience (The studio develops their own game engine Decima)

[rjzzleep]

It looks beautiful, but I tortured myself through zero dawn and then dropped forbidden West an hour in. The story is dumb, the dialogues are a nightmare and I feel like the more they try to paint the female protagonist as some kind of strong woman the worse it made the whole thing. Instead of making her seem strong she's like a petty person, constantly complaining and badmouth everything. The game mechanics make it hard to overlook the terrible storytelling, constant boring grind with an extremely boring skill system.

But it's not exclusive to her. All of dialogues are silly. If you had Horizon with the script writers of God of War (2018) even with the boring game mechanics, it would probably be a masterpiece.

[Gareth321]

> The story is dumb, the dialogues are a nightmare and I feel like the more they try to paint the female protagonist as some kind of strong woman the worse it made the whole thing. Instead of making her seem strong she's like a petty person, constantly complaining and badmouth everything.

The Mary Sue trope has infected Hollywood and now the gaming industry. Every woman needs to be perfect; flawless. Every man serves only one purpose: make the Mary Sue appear even more perfect. At this stage I'm impressed when media doesn't include a Mary Sue. I'm really disappointed to see this game is similarly compromised, as I was looking forward to playing it one day.

[ESMirro]

Do you think you would feel the same about Aloy if she were presented as a male character?

As the protagonist of the story she’s privy to information and intelligence far beyond the knowledge of much of the rest of the cast. She’s treated as a literal outsider for much of the early story and is often held back from completing vital goals by archaic and arbitrary belief systems throughout both games.

The character is arguably too nice and accommodating to those blocking progress, given the situation, yet your complaint is fairly common.

[nikanj]

I did the same. Aloy is supposed to be the chosen hero who destroys massive killing machines with just a stick, but instead she’s stuck dealing with a petty bureaucrat who refuses to open a gate.

PS: I tried shooting the dude, to see if that works. He’s bulletproof because railroads and scripted events

[andrewingram]

Horizon: Forbidden West is an amazing technical achievement, I just wish I had found it more enjoyable, instead it was "fine". Elden Ring coming out 2 weeks later kinda made me forget all about it - it gave me a feeling I haven't felt playing games in decades that I had been really missing.

[sodapopcan]

I felt the same. I came late to Zero Dawn playing it 5 years after it came out. My first Zelda was the original Zelda (I was 7 when it came out) and Zero Dawn is the closest I ever came to that same feeling as an adult. I don't know the siblings comments are on about—I usually don't really care about the story, though I found myself super curious to find out what was going on the whole time and worried less about what kind of person Aloy was.

[capableweb]

> The studio develops their own game engine Decima

Death Stranding (Hideo Kojima's latest game) also uses Decima and is a nice showcase as well, runs like a dream on even the Steam Deck.

[nicolapcweek94]

Death Stranding on the PS4 is the last time I remember being truly immersed in the world the game is presenting - in a non-Nintendo game.

The first time you go out of the city, the world just opens up to you and the soundtrack just gets more and more calming and you're left with Sam, the cargo and the target. It's just... wonderful.

Of course, the same exact thing happened this morning in the first few minutes of Tears of the Kingdom. Nintendo seems to get this right way more often than everyone else.

[Scaevolus]

Curiously, Death Stranding's PC port is much better optimized than Horizon: Zero Dawn's port.