This Was Never Meant To Last.
Jun. 16th, 2018 09:05 amI took a long break from it, but I got back into Horizon Zero Dawn, and I've finished it at last!
There's always a risk, in backstory-heavy works of fiction, that I'll get frustrated with the backstory for slowing things down. I don't care what happened in the past; I want to know what's happening now! (There's a reason I'm not a historian.)
In a way, Horizon Zero Dawn has the opposite problem: the backstory's so interesting that I started getting frustrated with the present-day aspects of the storyline. It was a great idea to focus primarily on a handful of individuals for the backstory segments, narrowing everything that happened down to the way a few people experienced it. We get glimpses of the old world in general, but we're also getting to know specific people who lived in the old world, which gives us a sort of anchor there.
I suppose the fact that the backstory lived in bleak mechanical ruins and the present-day storyline played out in incredibly gorgeous landscapes helped to balance my enjoyment out a little. The backstory's also pretty emotionally rough, so I could only take it in small doses.
And there were aspects of the present-day storyline I enjoyed a lot. Sun-King Avad inviting Aloy to stay in Meridian and Aloy going '...are you propositioning me when the woman you're in love with literally just died?' was the first point at which I really went 'oh, hello, I'm into this.' Every character is really into Aloy and it's great. Apart from Nil, who is really into murder, and is possibly therefore into Aloy on account of Aloy being really good at murder.
'No romance options but lots of flirting' is pretty much ideal for me. I don't want romance; I just want masses of weird unresolved sexual tension all over the place!
The arena fight sequence at Sunfall was extremely cool. They took away my armour for it, and I went 'well, on the one hand, no melee resistance; on the other, it certainly is nice to see Aloy's forehead.' One thing that troubles me about getting better armour in Horizon Zero Dawn is that it keeps putting Aloy in increasingly stupid headgear.
It's interesting to have a protagonist who's motivated primarily by the pursuit of knowledge.
The ending makes a sequel seem likely. I was really hoping that APOLLO might be retrieved somehow; maybe it might be possible in a sequel?
What would a sequel be called, though? Horizon Zero Dawn is already a pretty silly title (it'd fit as the name of a Kingdom Hearts game, which is never a good sign), and Horizon Zero Dawn 2 sounds terrible. Horizon One Dawn? Horizon Zero Midday? Maybe fully embrace the Kingdom Heartsness of it and call it Horizon Zero Dawn 0.5: Alpha Protocol.
There's always a risk, in backstory-heavy works of fiction, that I'll get frustrated with the backstory for slowing things down. I don't care what happened in the past; I want to know what's happening now! (There's a reason I'm not a historian.)
In a way, Horizon Zero Dawn has the opposite problem: the backstory's so interesting that I started getting frustrated with the present-day aspects of the storyline. It was a great idea to focus primarily on a handful of individuals for the backstory segments, narrowing everything that happened down to the way a few people experienced it. We get glimpses of the old world in general, but we're also getting to know specific people who lived in the old world, which gives us a sort of anchor there.
I suppose the fact that the backstory lived in bleak mechanical ruins and the present-day storyline played out in incredibly gorgeous landscapes helped to balance my enjoyment out a little. The backstory's also pretty emotionally rough, so I could only take it in small doses.
And there were aspects of the present-day storyline I enjoyed a lot. Sun-King Avad inviting Aloy to stay in Meridian and Aloy going '...are you propositioning me when the woman you're in love with literally just died?' was the first point at which I really went 'oh, hello, I'm into this.' Every character is really into Aloy and it's great. Apart from Nil, who is really into murder, and is possibly therefore into Aloy on account of Aloy being really good at murder.
'No romance options but lots of flirting' is pretty much ideal for me. I don't want romance; I just want masses of weird unresolved sexual tension all over the place!
The arena fight sequence at Sunfall was extremely cool. They took away my armour for it, and I went 'well, on the one hand, no melee resistance; on the other, it certainly is nice to see Aloy's forehead.' One thing that troubles me about getting better armour in Horizon Zero Dawn is that it keeps putting Aloy in increasingly stupid headgear.
It's interesting to have a protagonist who's motivated primarily by the pursuit of knowledge.
The ending makes a sequel seem likely. I was really hoping that APOLLO might be retrieved somehow; maybe it might be possible in a sequel?
What would a sequel be called, though? Horizon Zero Dawn is already a pretty silly title (it'd fit as the name of a Kingdom Hearts game, which is never a good sign), and Horizon Zero Dawn 2 sounds terrible. Horizon One Dawn? Horizon Zero Midday? Maybe fully embrace the Kingdom Heartsness of it and call it Horizon Zero Dawn 0.5: Alpha Protocol.
