Guerrilla Games needs a wake up call.

 

I understand how 'commitment to the bit' is a powerful driving force behind some of the most insane ideas known to man, but at some point Guerrilla Games needs to realise that they aren't serving anyone by forever feeding into the most ludicrous meme in the industry right now. Because at this point it has to be intentional. There is no way that the same company accidentally stunts the potential of one of their releases by trying to go up against the might of a vastly more established brand time and time again- you would have to be managed by absolute villains or be shooting for cheap laughs on Twitter. But something tells me that in those moments, the actual developers sinking their blood, sweat and tears into making these genuinely fantastic games are not the one's laughing everytime their mentions are swept under the tide of everything bigger.

To be clear, I'm of course talking about their work caretaking for the 'Horizon' brand name, the surprisingly decent action adventure about post-apocalypse technologically futuristic but socially tribal societies beset by cybernetic dinosaurs. I say 'surprisingly' for how little of a footprint the games seem to have on the landscape of gaming despite how high quality they are in most every aspect. These games feel the kind that should be going up for Game Of The Year everytime they drop, but people always seem to forget about them by award season despite the incredibly interesting nature of the setting and the ever noticeable art direction and the tactile world building, and the lovable- okay, so most of the side characters aren't that lovable, but the protagonist Aloy is always a blast! What could be going wrong to keep this franchise down?

Well, that isn't even a matter of speculation- we all know what they keep doing. They keep releasing the game with a week, or sometimes a day, of some massive other game release that totally gobbles up the hype around the game in the matter of a few days and leaves it a relic. The fact the franchise is still profitable despite doing this time after time is a testament to how good the games actually are. Word of mouth manages to secure just enough interest to stop the games from being outright scrapped despite not being the year flagships that, to be utterly honest, they largely deserve to be. Look at their review scores- those aren't exaggerations! The games really are that good and compare pretty well against the slew of so-so open world titles that have littered the space since the 2010's. These games deserve so much more for the effort they clearly display.

And yet Horizon: Zero Dawn released on the 28th of February 2017, and Zelda: Breath of the Wild was released on the 3rd of March. A game which nailed so many of the open world checklist tropes that Ubisoft's AC games had infected the genre with, versus a game that totally forsook those cheap tactics to drag players about their world space and instead created a artistic masterpiece designed to encourage natural exploration at every turn. Zero Dawn had so much to offer but Breath of the Wild was like 'innovation incarnate'. There was no way Zero Dawn was going to steal the cultural zeitgeist in that head to head. And yet, Zero Dawn probably earned the most traction for this release than any subsequent Horizon ever would in the releases to come.

Horizon's most questionable entry was the VR title, Call of the Mountain, which at the very least gave itself a few weeks of distance from Hogwarts Legacy, only to release a day before Atomic Heart. To be fair, I would have taken those odds but Atomic Heart was an actual game and Call of the Mountain was a VR game so... the match-up was never going to go in their favour. Of course the real follow-up to the original game was 'Forbidden West' which still pretty definitively holds the crown of one of the most beautiful games ever made. And it dropped a week before Elden Ring. I mean, wow... you really can't make this up at this point, can you? It's like when Mad Max tried to take on Metal Gear Solid V- do you want to assassinate your opening week?

I bring all this up as a prelude to the fact that the PC version of Forbidden West, which I am actually excited to get around and play once I finally finish the first one (and open up my packed back catalogue) came out one day before Dragon's Dogma 2. First one's on you, second one's on us, third one and your taking the piss- fourth one? The jokes gone on for a bit, wouldn't you say? Is it really the end of the world to push back a release by a week or two? I'm not asking them to find some magical week occupied by no other games, because such a thing does not exist- they should just try not going up against majorly hyped super games that, whether they're good or not, are going to suck all the air out of the room on release! It's a fools gambit!

And here's the thing: I actually think this has a noticeable effect on the reach that Horizon games have had. I don't think any have been financial washes, which is good because for the amount of quality work that goes into them that would be a tragedy- but when was the last time you heard Horizon brought up in conversations about relevant modern games? Sure, part of that is the fact that Horizon isn't ground-breakingly innovative in the way it handles open worlds or monster battles or narrative storytelling or really any individual aspect of it's design. But it is exceedingly competent to a commendable degree. Hunting robot dinosaurs feels great, exploring the world feels decently rewarding, the narrative feels grand and world spanning- that alone should set the franchise apart as an example.

But Guerrilla Games, or whoever is making release decisions on behalf of Guerrilla Games, refuses to let the games shine. By pitting them up as the constant underdog, it's almost as though no one believes these games can stand the unbridled criticism of a full month's inspection, and I don't think anything could be further from the truth! The Horizon franchise has it's hang-ups, but I truly believe that Aloy's journey will go down as one of the greats in the Games Industry- whether or not this whole train crashes or not, and the more people who find a blank spot in releases and shrug-purchases a Horizon game, the more effort can go into making the next one an even better game! 

Remastering the remaster

 Keep polishing and you'll burn a whole through the disc.

There are certain games throughout history that have a very important impact on the artistry of video game development for how innovative, polished, or creative that they are. Glittering jewels of their time that transcend the rough confines of week-one release metrics and review aggregates and go on to become legends in their own right, regardless to the opinion of the day. Critics were somewhat lukewarm on 'Fallout: New Vegas' back when it first released, calling it "More of the same" and punishing it severely for the many bugs that the base package launched with; only for New Vegas to go on and be regarded as the single best game in the franchise even now to this day. Why? Because that game nailed the concept of what Fallout was supposed to be in a way that resonated with an audience who understood Fallout better than the critics did. New Vegas remains in perpetuity within our hearts for that reason. Do you know what we don't need in order to continue loving that game? A bloody remaster!

Yet in the world we live in today, it seems that every single publisher is possessed by this errant fancy that the success stories of yesteryear just vanish into the ether unless they get touched up by some up-and-coming studio, slapped with a more expensive price tag than what they original launched with, and ported to modern day hardware. Now in one sense; yes, I think it's very cool that smaller studios have a new avenue to cut their teeth, more players in the big leagues is good for the overall health of the industry without doubt- but good lord is this remaster problem getting out of control. Are we going to remaster every single big release for the next generation because backward compatibility isn't exploitable enough? Is that what we're doing, Sony? Because let's be honest with on another; this here is mostly a problem with the way that Sony wants to do their business!

We've got the Sony Remake for The Last of Us Part 1 which is a remake only in the strictest technicality because they made it on a new engine, The Uncharted Remastered collection and now, to throw atop the dung heap, a remaster of 'Horizon: Zero Dawn'. Why? What even is a remaster? Well typical definition would be a sprucing up of visual fidelity through way of lighting improvements, texture resolution, maybe even rendering techniques, all to make the product look better. But with art there really isn't anything as simple and objective as looking better, now is there? The remaster of Final Fantasy X back in the day sparked up some conversation about the philosophy of remasterings as it bought textures into sharper focus, but robbed the intention out of some of the original art. A sprawling bazar of goods who's background shelves would melt into the haze of the middle-distance became a simple shop with products that stretched a bit back until it hit that clearly defined wall back there. THe Last of Us Part 1 Remake noticeably brings down the colour saturation of the original to the levels of the sequel, despite that colour palette better fitting a story like Part II, rather than the more deceptively hopeful narrative of Part I. It's not always quite so cut-and-dry.

And then we have the real reason that remasters are even mounted, the politics and financial incentives bubbling behind the scenes driven by people who just want to make their extra buck off a game they don't have to make from scratch. I get it, creating something from nothing is very difficult and not even worth it when you can work off of what's there; but when you're already on your third rerelease after 10 years there really has to be a point at which someone stops you from making a fool of yourself. In a time where money is becoming tighter and games are, inexplicably, forcing themselves to be more expensive; it really is getting a little insulting to see our back catalogues exhumed from their gentle graves and shoved back onto our store shelves with a bit of lipstick slapped on top. The Switch release of Skyrim Anniversary Edition is shaping up as $70 for god's sake! That game came out 11 years ago! This kind of exploitation, at a painful financial time around the world, should be criminal! 

But I'm dancing around the stars to rant at the cosmos; let me bring this down to the catalyst of my little aneurysm; the recently announced, and thus lamentably upcoming, remaster of 'Horizon: Zero Dawn'. Guerrilla Games' epic game about a post-apocalyptic new age sci-fi fantasy story with robot dinosaurs. A triumph of overly-elaborate and complex visual design matched with spectacular animation and character models, in it's time Horizon was the belle of the visual ball. It was a must-have PlayStation exclusive game that Sony wanted people to know about in their lull between Uncharted releases, and it proved successful enough to warrant a sequel that would be released several years later. Oh, and the thing actually made it's way to PC a few years back. It's a game that lived it's life... and then faded from the pop culture sphere.

I'm not saying that people forgot about the game... actually, yes that is what I'm saying. Not long after Horizon got it's fame and appreciation people moved on entirely from the game for some reason and denied it a formative position in the pantheon of game development. Now why would that... oh right, it launched the same week as Breath of the Wild. So in that sense I can understand why the developers felt that they were robbed of the limelight; no one would allow them to push their release out of the way of a Zelda game, and they themselves could probably never have guessed just how much of a world changer that game would be. Zero Dawn would have certainly scored a more favourable spot in history had it just had a little room to release. But it's no big failure, afterall they got a sequel earlier this year that... launched the same week as Elden Ring? (I'm sorry, are these people trying to sabotage themselves?)

By definition of what's 'fair' and 'deserved'; it's probably right to say that the Horizon games got screwed by their releases and deserved better; but does that mean we need to literally rerelease the things? With a remaster that'll probably cost $70 for work that does not, in any way, justify that price tag? Uhh... no, that's pretty much where I draw the line. All the lost fame that Horizon missed out on has slowly been sucked up over the years of exposure to the Internet. Perhaps not as explosively as the team would have liked, but slow recognition is better than none. Not only did Horizon have it's time to shine, it also already lived it's life as the best looking game of it's time, just as it's sequel did and is still doing now. (I'm pretty sure no game currently is better looking than it.) Sprucing it up again just feels like a child star chasing their lost moment in the spotlight. It's all just a little sad.

The only element of this I'm not upset by is the idea of these games over-riding the number of new games that could be coming our way, because contrary to popular belief, most of these remasters aren't manned by the core team. Can you imagine how insulting they would find that? Being asked to remake their own game again? No, it's new development teams that handle this stuff and I say 'good for them.' I just think this is getting a bit behind 'celebrating' and falling into 'exploitative' territory. Who was asking for a Zero Dawn Remaster? No, really! Can the culprit please step forward? They cannot, because they do not exist. I think Remasters should belong to those special few games that deserve to immortalise their place in history by another go around in the spotlight. Zero Dawn in not such a game, and I don't think I'll ever be proved otherwise. (Heck, a rerelease is just going to make the already middling combat feel even more dated.)

Salty Rings

 You could hardly imagine the jelly

It ain't often that I feel the compunction to speak so much about a game I haven't even gotten the chance to play for myself, but Elden Ring is such a triumph it would feel like a waste not to natter a bit about it. I mean it's a Souls-Like Fromsoft game that has finally broken into the mainstream, shattered the landscape of open world games and reintroduced fantasy as a serious contender in the entertainment field. This game has become something special, achieved more than I ever thought this genre was capable of, and I could not be more happy for the FromSoftware team. They've always put in the work, taken their time, embraced their creativity and brushed fine strokes of art across this gaming canvass. And they've also managed to hit a goldmine of bad port companies, it truly is astounding how nearly every port they've ever done, save Demon Souls (which was probably arranged by Sony, if we're being honest) has been a bit of a mess. I guess every title, no matter how ostensibly flawless, needs it's great equaliser. For FromSoftware games it's the port, for Undertale it's the community.

But if there's one thing which is absolutely certain to occur whenever one singular game strikes gold with the vast majority of the industry, it's that all of this extreme positivity is due to attract extreme negative reactions in kind. It's that rubberband equaliser again, rearing it's head. And it's good to have dissenting opinions, to change up the pool of reactions and keep this world of creativity ever on-its-toes and never complacent. I mean, could you imagine what the industry would be like if no one ever challenged the norms and we resorted to hitting the same standards time and time again? Do you know what that would be like? It would be like having an entire industry that developed only Ubisoft games, and I don't know about you but I can't think of a single scenario which would kill all of my enthusiasm for games as an entertainment medium more. (>A foreshadow passes overhead.<)

Yet there is a difference between criticism and substanceless complaints and grumblings, in fact I'd say that pivot point would be the difference between a hot take and a bad one. Needless to say the internet is full of bad takes, with nothing constructive to them, it is the lifeblood of modern society, we all have the bad-take virus pumping through our fleshy veins; but every now and then you'll catch a glimpse of such a take from a source that still manages to shock you. Either because it's someone you thought was on the up-and-up, or the take was truly abysmal, or because they've failed to follow that most simple of rules in life: people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Which is one of many ways to say: try not to heavily admonish someone else for a something you yourself have problems with, because it just ends up badly for you. On that point, did you catch that twitter thread which was bouncing around?

Of course you did, I'm covering this more than a week late, but the reason is because, again, I haven't played the game so I didn't really feel like I had much of a horse in this race. So I've done a little bit of second hand research, absorbed a little infomation on both sides of the topic, and now feel a tad more qualified to cover this. Yet still I'll introduce it to you. Because, over the week a trio of established, and even senior, game developers attempted to insert their entire foots in their mouths in order to trash on the success of Elden Ring in some very specific ways. Let's inspect, and of course we're going to Twitter because that's where common sense goes to die. First, the protagonist of our story, states: "The fact that (Elden Ring) scored a 97 metacritic is proof that reviewers don't give a flaming poop about Game UX. My life is a lie." To which mambo-number-two replied "Nor PC Graphics, stability and performance, apparently", and the thread was topped off with a healthy "Nor quest design, really" by a third sacrificial lamb.

Now there are actual criticisms in these posts, they're general but they do raise topics of discussion; unfortunately they're presented in such a blatantly antagonistic way, that it's hard not to read these reactions as anything more than salty responses to the fact that Elden Ring scored higher than their respective games did. That first fellow seems to equate Elden Ring's success purely to an utter disregard of general acknowledgement for his job, implying that Elden Ring does so terribly at it's Game UX (Game User experience) that if it's merits were taken into account, Elden Ring would be recognised as far inferior than it's current perception and 'Mr Insecure' over here, could feel better about his job security. There's a genuine take in there, hidden away, but it's overpowered by the utter bitter scorn stuffed in the middle, which the other two commenters unwittingly (probably) assumed when they decided to reply. And whilst those later comments might have some plausible deniability in relation to their intended tonality, the first guy went on to drive in his bitterness with another tweet characterising Elden Ring's UX as so bad that he can only assume the team were 'smoking at their desks and working on CRT monitors'. Which is... strong. Basically saying that Elden Ring's systems are so shoddy that the entire team must be backwards Neanderthal/dinosaurs belonging to a bygone age of game design. Thems be straight fighting words.

And with a tone like that you just know that this has to be coming from a guy with some solid walls around him, so that he can safety toss those stones. I mean, you'd have to be crazy to make such a targeted and vindictive swipe against this one part of Elden Ring unless you've got the receipts to show that you do, indeed, know better. Either receipts or a more coherent criticism; either would be fine. Hmm? What's that? This guy is a UX Director at Ubisoft Stockholm? (Them walls looking mighty transparent right about now, buddy boy...) Ubisoft? Are you serious! Guys who make games so uninspired and formulaic that the entire team could be replaced by AI tomorrow and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Except the games would be completed faster and probably with less bugs so... yeah, why don't we just do that? The average Ubisoft employee has never coloured out of a dotted line in their entire lives, of course they're going to short-circuit and start spilling brain matter out their ears when they come across a title that takes any direction not explicitly laid out in design school. I haven't played Elden Ring, but I've played almost every Ubisoft game and they are vapid to the point of sleep-walking. The UX is streamlined to the same point that every aspect of those games are, so that you can breeze through everything quickly and absorb none of it. Do they display bad UX practices? No. (At least not nowadays.) But are they boring and uninventive? Absolutely.

Our second lady, well she quite rightly pokes at the bad PC performance for Elden Ring. However, because she attaches herself to this thread she has, whether or not she realises it, implied that reviewers have whole heartedly ignored PC performance in their impressions, which is an absolute lie. I don't think a single review I've read has failed to mention the issues on PC, they just haven't allowed that caveat to effect the score of their review of the game itself, for how it plays on consoles. If we're talking about a review on the PC version specifically, there have actually been a couple that have noticed and knocked off marks. But expecting everyone to just turn around and go "Well, the game is as near to perfection as anything, but the PC port is bad: 6/10" is kind of a reductive expectation. Different reviewers have different priorities; that's the reason we have multiple reviewers and not just one big amorphous conglomerate blob review monster that we christen 'The Meta Critic'. Also, one of her 'inspired' points is about something as vapid as 'graphics', which really lets you know where our lady is approaching game design from, huh? "Screw the stellar art direction, my character's skin doesn't have naturally refracting follicles!" Yep, she is a Graphics Programmer who has worked on PC versions of big, sometimes vacuous, titles; most recently 'Avengers'. Lesser jelly perhaps, but there's some lingering gelatin morsels on the plate. 

And the third of our terrible triplets; he has a problem with Quest Design and indirectly claims that it is no longer a factor of consideration in game reviewing. This time I am aware what he's digging at, and to be honest it's more of a UX consideration than raw Quest Design, but he was eager to get his little point there in the end so he could be part of the club. Elden Ring has no quest log or quest markers, it gives players a quest objective and trusts them to remember what they've agreed to, where they should deliver their quest to, and when it's appropriate to do so. Every Souls game operates like this, however with the size and open world nature of Elden Ring this free-form approach to giving players tasks stands out more. But does that make it bad, or different? Reviewers, again, do tend to mention this little design choice, and so likely factor it into their score decision process, but I think we're coming to grips with the fact that the people clearly didn't actually read any reviews before deciding to run their mouths on Twitter because again; that is where reason goes to die. This guy is, surprise surprise, Senior Quest Designer for 'Horizon: Forbidden West', and there's certainly a lot more genuine, and justifiable, salt here.

The original 'Horizon: Zero Dawn' was considered a very solid, if largely conventional, open world game with great graphics and a world we hadn't seen before, but it was robbed of the chance to make a significant impact on the gaming world when a month after it came out: 'Breath of the Wild' dropped. Suddenly all of those ardently polished conventional design choices got eclipsed by a game that seemed to lionise a much freer approach. No one is saying that BoTW pioneered these design choices, as some people like to claim, but they bought them into the spotlight with artistic flourish and dangerous intent, effectively stealing HZD's place in gaming history by taking all the air out of the room. Now 'Forbidden West' has landed, it gathers a lot of Steam, it's doing the rounds: Then a week later Elden Ring comes out and is an unexpected smash hit. It's the same story, all of those carefully manicured leap-frogs on conventional modern open world design traditions have been subverted entirely, and now people are moving their attentions exclusively to the new hotness. Horizon will make it's money, it's already sold strong, but once again that all-important place in history has been stolen and that sucks. The Team worked really hard and it shows. But is throwing shade on Twitter the best way to release that frustration? Maybe go watch a movie instead, might cause less of a PR disaster.

Since all of this has done the rounds, all three have privated their Twitter accounts, wisely noting that it was thoughtless blabbering on Social Media that got them into this mess and the same isn't likely to get them out of it, but their absence has left an interesting taste in the mouth. It feels as though that old affliction of 'old men waving their fist at new technology they don't understand' is taking hold on a lot more younger folks then you'd think. These people who study to make their games a certain way, and in all three cases probably do their job to the best standard they think they can, are being outperformed by someone who rethinks the practice altogether, and they're stuck in the mentality that: 'It's not the approach I would have taken, therefore it is wrong.' The reviewing public, along with the gaming public, seem to resonate with the full package as it is, 'but that just means they're insular and aren't respecting my sector of game development with their little monkey brains'. It's this failure to adapt one's viewpoint which all of humanity suffers from to some degree, I have mentioned the subjects I struggle with from time to time, but if you have the self introspection to be able to recognise that; you can directly and objectively address yourself and come away with greater insight, either to yourself or the subject in hand.

I don't really think that these three are suffering from terminal jealousy, even if it really does feel like that factor has played a part in these responses at least somewhat; but they definitely aren't evolved critics. Even I, a decidedly tepid and out-in-the-styx critic, see the overwhelming bias and lack of objectivity here. A lot of that stems from standing on the shoulders of that Ubisoft guy, he has the most issues with himself to work out here it would seem. Still, at the end of the day there were three genuine critical points here, all butchered in execution and thus rightly mocked, unfortunately burying the points they had under the fervour. Maybe in the future these people need to look into channelling their frustrations in a much more back-handed way; such as the way I dislike Toby Fox for being so multi-faceted and talented at different creative mediums that it makes me feel bad about being mediocre in my one chosen medium. God gave that man too many attribute points in character creation and it's upsetting the balance of my D&D game.

More Horizon! Whoop!

 Alexander best be weeping right now.

The Sony of today is a very different beast to the one that lumbered up to the Industry back in the days of the Nintendo 64, and indeed a very different beast to most other console manufactures in history. I say that not just because of their success in the face of all the competition of today, but because of their aura of exclusivity they've successfully managed to establish for themselves and their rule through the supremacy of the software on offer even when their hardware falls just that hair's breadth behind. They've proven that at the end of the day games make a platform, a lesson that has rubbed off poorly on pretenders like EA (who ended up having to sell their games on Steam after they realised no one wanted to use their god awful launcher) and Ubisoft (same deal). And though it's not entirely accurate if we start cutting precisely into dates and what launched when, in my mind the very first serious move in this direction of funding solid exclusive games starts with the title 'Horizon: Zero Dawn'.

In many ways Horizon sounds like the sort of game that would be summoned up for a tech demo; given enough of a life to justify the eye-popping visuals on screen, and then dumped into the forgotten pile despite how interesting it might have looked. Because I mean just think about it; a post human world ruled by robotic dinosaurs that you have to fight with a futuristic mechanised recurve bow and can ride!? That's some next level crazy stuff that feels like it was invented just to survive a pitch meeting rather than to make it all the way to retail and survive a ribbing from the public. And yet whoever came up with this idea was serious enough about it to get it realised into an actual game that, whilst looking very much like a tech demo, is an honest-to-goodness complete game! I know that sounds weird- gushing over the fact that Horizon Zero Dawn is actually playable- but it's just not how I've been programmed to expect new games to work. 

Typically you start off with an interesting sounding idea that gets delineated down into "what we can do", until the idea itself begins withering away and your left with a sanitised product. I have no doubt that Horizon went through that exact same process, but amazingly on the otherend I believe it must have kept it's wild soul. And it was more for the better the game remained as much of a spectacle as it did, because Zero Dawn ended up reinforcing the values that would go on to define Sony, or at least their game studio branch, for the better part of the next decade. Cinematic-level storytelling, top tier fidelity, fun gameplay loops and never going for the easy path. Although that last one is perhaps a little bit of lip-service because nearly all of Sony's first party extravaganza games have been third person action adventures. (Why not make a blockbuster rhythm action sidescroller Sony? What are ya- scared?) The only negative in my eyes regarding Horizon, beside the terrible human AI that always accompanies games in which humans are a 'side enemy', would be the fact that Sony really didn't do a good job keeping the spirit of this game alive when the developers had no more content to put out.

When Horizon was coming out you would see it advertised everywhere, Sony was singing it from the rooftops, but then it launched and Sony immediately moved onto promoting the next thing. Zero Dawn had a life in the hands of those that bought it, but you wouldn't know it if you weren't a playstation player. (Especially not since you'd have to wait until the new decade to play it on PC. Geez, Sony, we get your 5 year old games now? How gracious of you...) They did the same 'promote then dump' for Horizon's big story DLC, and if I wasn't sure that Sony was just incompetent with how to market back then I'd assume they were actively trying to sabotage the game's success. What's the harm of keeping the ad campaign's going just a little bit past launch for those who didn't rock up day 1? Or are week one sales literally all that Sony cares about? (I say that facetiously in knowledge of the 'Days Gone' exec's assertions to that very truth.)

I can only assume that all my complaints will get completely laid to rest in the wake of the brand new Horizon entry; Forbidden West, which recently got an extensive gameplay demo during a Playstation Now event that I defiantly knew was coming and didn't rock up to as it was ending. (How the hell do people keep up with all these events? Do I need to get on some sort of mailing list or something?) So how does the new title shape up to the picturesque original now that we're on the verge of a new console generation and are pushing the old consoles part their limits? Unreal. Simply unbelievable what the team have managed to bring to life here. I'm being honest when I say that from a purely graphical level, I'm not sure I expected graphics to get this stupidly realistic. LOOK AT THE WATER! I know, I'm sounding like a madman again but you don't understand, digital water is impossible to get right. Not just to make it move realistically but even to be stationary. (Which makes sense, water is by nature never still.) That's simply because our minds can instantly point out the fakeness from something we see so often- but this game has waves. Waves! Water physics that dynamically react to environmental input too. No one needed to do that (and I'll bet it's largely absent for the inexplicable last gen versions of the game) but they did it anyway. Because they could. Another reason why I'll always consider Horizon 'the little Tech Demo series could'.

Of course, this game isn't all about graphical fidelity, (I mean that's a lot of it though) there's actual gameplay here to. The demo acts as a handy tour through what you can expect out of the game and, providing the final product plays as this footage shows which we know is absolutely not a given, then we'll probably have another game-changer entering the Sony Game Studios Pantheon. One thing I've noticed, and I'm unsure how genuine this is, is that there's a lot of crossover between story and dynamic gameplay moments. For example, early on we see Aloy being chased by several robotic enemies whom she seems to react to even as she's escaping despite the fact that the player could feasibly stop and kill them. Is this going to be a scripted moment where you literally can't beat them and have to run, or is the game going to be littered with these little moments going above and beyond where the game, and specifically the voice acting, reacts to your actions? (I'm leaning towards the latter as The Last of Us Part 2 and the Spiderman games already established that design philosophy heavily.) There's also a moment later where the player tames a creature in gameplay and then rides it into a cutscene in which it is shown.

Then there's the bossfight to end the demo, because of course Sony and Guerrilla games wanted to end with the showstopper that would make my computer weep to even think about rendering. After losing points to some serviceable but ultimately mediocre cutscene cinematography which is, at this point, unworthy of the game around it; Horizon demonstrates how it looks and flows it's best in action: a stark contrast to the state of games when I was teenager, that's for sure... The fight against the tusked elephant beast is simply epic, like something out of a sci-fi retelling of Lord of the Rings. (Although these beasts are nowhere near as large as the Mûmakil, in fairness.) I adore the way that parts of the robot are stripped off in the ruckus, the way that Aloy fires a sticky arrow that genuinely appears to gum up the thing's mechanics dynamically and I even love the way the thing attacks. Shooting the ground in front of you with a sustained beam and then raking across the land at you- it's just that little bit individualistic and atypical, using lasers to simulate the actions of tasks scrapping the ground. And if this is just what they want to tease in the first gameplay showcase, I shudder to think what the full game might hold.

I speak so adoringly of Horizon despite the fact, as veterans might have picked up on my terminology faux pas' here and there, never having actually played the original. That's right, never owned a PS3 or 4 and thus didn't have the opportunity to enjoy this game to the fullest. (I've still played it, just briefly and not as much as I wished to) I celebrate anyway because, as the saying goes, a rising tide raises all ships; and a game willing to up-the-bar like this is going to touch the rest of the industry. It might not prostate itself all over the new technological horizons like some of the next-gen exclusives do, but it regardless teases a level of developing excellence in most areas that can be translated to all projects, big and small. Next gen blockbusters or small time indie projects. It's games like this that remind us how the details matter in making something truly, grossly, incandescent, and several years down the line I hope to finally get a chance to see what all the fuss is about first hand rather than just standing longingly at the gate.

Horizon: Forbidden West

Journey to the West

If there's one positive that no one can take away from Sony in the last console generation, it was the plain fact that they freakin' nailed it with the exclusives. (And by that I refer to exclusives that they funded, I don't respect the one's that they bought) In fact, Sony made so many great exclusives in the last generation that their worst one was probably 'Days Gone', and even that was an above average game by most standards. And that, at the end of the day, is the single most important thing for any gaming platform to have. It's why the Ouya failed, why EA have started selling their games on Steam, and why Sony have held unparalleled console dominance for the majority of the past decade. Thus it should come to the surprise of literally no one that during their PS5 event Sony continued to put their money in their most successful policy. And hence we have: 'Horizon: Forbidden West'. 

Now seeing as how I'm still in the process of zeroing in on a buyer for my kidney, I never managed to pick up a Playstation 4 and thus haven't tried 'Horizon: Zero Dawn', but I know it's pedigree well enough. It dropped back in 2017 and put it's developers, Guerrilla Games, back on the map after their last game was received a little lukewarm due to it being more a great tech demo than a game with any creative heart to it. (Although in their defence, so was the rest of the Killzone franchise, what did you really expect?) It was a much lauded game which featured an idealised version of the 'Ubisoft-style' open world, an apparently strong narrative with great characters and a engine so beautiful that even today screens of that game look great. (I especially love the way it handles light and particles, it almost gives the current Final Fantasy engine a run for it's money.) It also served as a great reminder to publishers that single player games could still seal a profit in a time when they were eager to forget that, although it was 'God of War' which really shut up the critics on that particular front. (With good reason. Who wants to question Kratos to his face?)

But for some reason the game didn't really manage to settle a place in pop culture, surprising for how popular it was at it's release. That isn't to say that public reception turned, not at all, just that people didn't really talk about in conversations about Sony's success'. You would hear people mention Spiderman, God of War, Last of Us, Uncharted etc, but Horizon only really got an influx of attention when it's DLC dropped. I only remember it being significantly addressed during the hype for 'Death Stranding' were Kojima mentioned working with their team to develop his own engine on their framework. (I think he just ended up sharing their engine in the end.) As someone who never played the title I wasn't really in with the community, so I couldn't accurately claim why the game's light faded like it did, merely speculate; but the result was that a decent number of folk forgot about this franchise until the PS5 reveal event rolled around. (At least it's getting it's day now.)

The immediate take away that I think even those coming fresh to the Horizon train would have, it's that the whole thing looks absolutely beautiful. As I understand it (and I may be hugely off-base here) the whole concept revolves around this pseudo-spiritual sci-fi post apocalypse where nature has taken over and there's also gigantic robots in the form of dinosaurs. (Still don't know what the robots are about. Might wanna look that up.) And although the genre is decidedly Sci-fi, the spiritual elements allow for a more classical fantastical narrative like an epic journey to prevent the end of the world from... something. (Again, never played the game. I'm in the dark here.) If there's a couple ingredients that every epic needs in order to successfully sell it's premise it's scale and diversity; and man-oh-man does this trailer shine in that regard.

I don't know if the original title maybe received some slack for samey environments which caused the team to develop some sort of complex, but I'm astounded by the lengths they've gone to stick popping visuals in every location. They have these vein-like metal tentacles in the tundra-expanses, scarlet fauna beneath stormy skies, vibrant bursting coral and even a bit of desert. (You don't really need to work to make a desert pop. It's just naturally like that.) What this trailer shows specifically which I didn't notice from my brief time looking at promos for the first game, was an abundance of relic ruins from the old world that helps place where you are in relation to things. I mean, this could have been a totally fictional world for all I know but seeing this trailer I think it's pretty evident that we all recognised the Golden Gate bridge poking out above the canopy. This alone strokes my 'Nier: Automata' vibes and makes me excited for all the opportunities for commentary which I'm sure they'll brush by or touch in a manner that makes me wish Nier's writers were in charge. (But I can hope.)

It's hard to really dig into what I hope this game can achieve without knowing the original title, but I will say what I hope the games in general will be once I get my hands on them. (Now that they are no longer exclusives. Yay!) Playing a lot of Ubisoft games I've noticed that they've dived away from their cinematic angle and more towards freedom, which is great for the playability but absolutely abysmal for their storytelling skills. (Which weren't exactly top-notch anyway) As Ubisoft pretty much sets the absolute minimum requirement for an average open world game nowadays, I absolutely cannot let this stand and need them to significantly up their game. (a rising tide lifts all boats, guys.) Now I already know that 'Zero Dawn' had some significant cinematic DNA and I hope that Forbidden West can continue that and set an example for the industry. If the game really did reach this balance of playability and epic narrative crafting as I've heard so many say, then let that shine and stand as a beacon. (I want this game to have a longer presence than it's predecessor did.)

And when it comes to the question of if it was wise to have this showcased at the Playstation 5 reveal event I have to err towards the yes, this was exactly the right kind of game for the show. Horizon does a fantastic job of teasing the power of the console, with gorgeous rendering of the natural fauna and animals as well as the more busy designs of the mechanicals. Nailing both organics and synthetics is impressive, and yet the Decima engine, powered by the Playstation 5, makes it look positively easy. The winning shot in my mind was off this turtle mech, known as an 'Amphibious Shellsnapper' according to the game's twitter, rising out of the ground with a shell covered in moss and foliage. It's like the poster child for goodlooking gaming and Playstation would be insane not to try and attach such images to their new console. This here's a system seller.

In conclusion, I'm happy that Guerrilla Games have managed to press onward with the Horizon series, as it looks worlds more interesting than Killzone, and I'm even more ecstatic now that the franchise has made it to PC alongside Death Stranding. As first party exclusives go I think this will be a power house that Microsoft will have a hard time matching, and seeing as how my schedule dictates that I'm writing this several hours before the Microsoft conference I'm yet to see if they even will. (My money's on a hard no.) If this is indicative of Sony's plan to double down on their high quality first-party games model than I think they've set a stellar example and excuse to buy the PS5. Unfortunately I'm getting word back that my kidney's are apparently 'worthless', so I won't be able to enjoy that promising ecosystem anytime soon. (More's the pity for me.)