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.)

Crossover Week

 Whoops, I slipped into the upside down timeline it would seem.

Who doesn't like a little bit of crossover action in their video games every now and then to break up the monotony? I mean you've got to get sick of staring at the same old mugs in the same old worlds all the darn time, why not switch it up and stick Batman in the Ironman suit? But moving away from the whole DC/Marvel crossover concept which I know riles some people up to even think about, what about when game franchises get to pop over the fence and see what their fellow series' are up to? Well, we get some of the coolest cross-over franchises of all time like Marvel vs Capcom, Kingdom Hearts and Super Smash Bros. It's a great way to envision otherwise rigid character roles in vastly different scenarios and set-ups wherein they can interact with others in ways that you might never have thought of in your wildest dreams. For example, who'd have thought that Goofy and Donald Duck would make such great battle friends in the war against the heartless? (Hmm? They're from the same- no way!) For me, I always love a little bit of a crossover time because it shows studio creatives shaking hands with one another and there really should be more of that across the art world in my opinion. However, that being said, even I have to admit that this past week has been a bit too much.

I'll never bemoan throwing franchises together every once and a while, but some sort of devil's bargain was pulled of these past few days because it's as though the magic boxes which contain all our favourite universes have just crumbled away and left us all in chaos. Not so long ago I thought that the most imaginative new crossover project I would see in modern years be the Final Fantasy XV crossover with Assassin's Creed. And to be fair that was absolutely wild, for a series that at least masquerades as being alternate history to crossover with a purely fantastical franchise, but I think some of last week's antics might be threatening to give even that the ol' run for it's money! I like to imagine the people who don't keep abreast of every development in the gaming world, like I do, and who might perhaps even be unfamiliar with the franchises being referenced. I'd love to see the reaction of a laymen to the Assassin's Creed Origin event where a fancy dressed Anime man teleports his way into a pyramid only to be chased out again by a gigantic flying knight with wings made out of swords. ("So which Egyptian myth was that again?")

Yet even with that sort of precedent, I myself am quite a bit taken aback by the event coming towards 'Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid', not least of all because that game was such a rudimentary fighting game easily outpaced by any of it's rivals that I didn't think it was worthy of receiving any support. I mean sure, the devs were going to take advantage of the lack of Power Ranger's games out there, mixed with the rabid fanbase, to fleece some overpriced microtransactions or two, that was a given. But why would any self respecting licence holder agree to having their brand associated with that sort of game/scheme? What's more, why the heck is the fighting game of the industry doing the crossover? That's right, Ryu and Chun Li from Street Fighter are actually suiting up as Rangers to get in on this game! (Hear that Jezebel? That's Chun Li from Street Fighter. Not Mortal Kombat.) This isn't even just skin jobs either. Both fighters have been given their own custom Ranger suits, which is a pretty big deal for fans, and their movesets are reminiscent of their Street Fighter appearances. Scrub my mouth out- but this actually looks like a well-executed Crossover coming to a game which may not deserve it. (How utterly weird)

But it get wilder. Because just as the gaming world was slowly trying to come to terms with the fact that was going to be happening and how we as a society failed to stop it, another crossover with a seriously questionable concept was announced. And I'm cheating with this one, because this isn't actually two gaming series' coming together at all. (Which does, in honesty, make it just a bit more odd.) For some incomprehensible reason fans of Rainbow Six Siege are getting Rick and Morty style skins added into the game. No, this wasn't announced a couple of weeks back on April 1st, this is apparently a real Collab. And want to know the worst part? One of the skin's is Pickle Rick. Oh god, the fifty year-old executives in the decision-room just learnt what memes are, but they're two years behind the curve anyway! That's right, the operative Smoke will be getting the Pickle suit (with Rat head) and a portal gun attachment whilst Sledge gets a Gromflomite uniform. Genuinely don't know what that second thing even is. Don't know if it's from a series I watched or if it came after I stopped watching because the community is the worst. (I should really finally catch up with Rick and Morty now that I'm reaching the end of Golden Wind- damn it, the crossover advertising worked!)

Yet of course that's not the end. Because what sort of 'Crossover week' would this be with only two crossovers? Pitiful numbers I say; Muda! What we also have to throw atop the pile is a crossover that at least makes a lot more sense, both conceptually and in timing, but still stands out to me because I just assumed this had already happened at some point in the past. Resident Evil announced a crossover with Dead by Daylight during their news blowout from the last week, but they've been pretty scarce on actual details like who's actually getting ported over. Now Dead by Daylight is actually no stranger to crossovers, with 'Stranger Things', 'Nightmare on Elm's Street', 'Halloween', 'Left 4 Dead', 'Evil Dead', 'Scary Movie', and 'Silent Hill' already in the rooster to boast about. Resident Evil might be seen as an inevitability. However, the question is what creature is coming this game's way to represent RE's finest; because there's actually a fair few to pick from. Mr X would be the obvious choice, given his reputation as the unstoppable stalker, but Nemesis certainly looks a lot more monstrous. And, if we really want to advertise the new game, may I suggest that perhaps Lady Dimitrescu and her glove/knife hand might make an appearance? Hey it was just a suggestio- what's that dog doing with that hammer? NO! Don't send me back to Horny Jail! I won't g- >Bonk<

And finally, to cap it all off, was a crossover which isn't really a surprise to anyone given that Fornite still holds the rights to crossover with literally anyone they point their fingers at. But even then, it's not as thought they announce a new crossover every week, they had to choose this period of crossover madness to reveal their 'Horizon: Zero Dawn' character crossover. Which served as a reminder to me that Sony are very willing to sell their character rights over to Epic, yet are desperately reticent on letting the actual games themselves get to the wider gaming audience. Yes, I did just turn this, otherwise unrelated, conversation into another complaint about how badly I want Persona 5 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake. Let not a week go by without my stating: Screw Sony. 

So that is at least four crossover events that all were announced at in this random week midway through April, and I can't be the only one scratching their head thinking there's some sort of Holiday I missed, can I? I mean, there's also the recently announced crossover with Dragon Raja (An MMO I've never heard of) and Evangelion, (A classic Anime that's getting an inexplicable resurrection soon) but somehow that didn't pop as well. And Illusion connect is crossing over with Zombie Land Saga- what the heck is going on! Am I crazy. Are hundreds of crossover events happening every other week and I've just never noticed it before? I feel like that can't be the case but all this is just too big of a coincidence, isn't it? The anomaly must originate from me!

I do love the idea of joining characters and franchises together in crossover events, even when it creates a godawful affront to god like that Pickle Rick skin. (I don't need to see that thing ever again, thank you very much) Where the stiff barriers that form our worlds of fiction broken down a bit more, I think it would make for a much more varied and inclusive eco-system where creators aren't forced to do wild things like steal a bunch of characters from other indie games under the knowledge that they'll never come after you because you're untouchable now. (I'm 90% the person who said that was joking when they did; but just in case they weren't I won't name them and let you look up for the quote for yourself.) However, I know that the sanctity of story telling and world building means that fictional worlds needs to contain some consistency to themselves, and so these crossovers must be rare and inconsistent. Unless it's this week, in which case they're freakin' everywhere.

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.)