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The upcoming PlayStation 4 exclusive title Horizon: Zero Dawn is facing a quandary thanks to it’s a frankly novel premise mixed with a narrative that appears to have as much depth as titles like The Witcher 3 and the Mass Effect franchise. Based on the first impressions of a few hours of gameplay, reviewers are noting the considerable effort that went into making the game as story-driven as it is action-packed.
Reviewers got a preview copy of the video game made by Guerilla Games, with media companies like Engadget being given the opportunity to play it for over four hours. As the publication noted, this goes a long way towards easing some of the skepticism that reviewers feel when it comes to previews and demos. After all, a lot of AAA titles in the past have been caught with extreme differences between what was shown during promotional materials and the actual experience.
In any case, reviewers were basically given free rein to do whatever they wanted to do in the post-apocalyptic world that the studio created. By the end of it, many felt that what they saw represents enough of the game to get a good grasp of what the final product is all about. Although their verdict varies in specifics, the overall impression is encouraging.
Digital Trends is particularly interested in how Horizon manages to mix both elements of action-RPG games and a compelling storyline, which is a trend that seems to be increasing with studios like BioWare and CD Projekt Red leading the charge.
John Gonzalez is the lead writer for the game and according to him, the story only became fully formed after the general concept of the game was created. Basically, the developers built the world, the creatures, and the population before really putting some thought into the narrative and it would seem that Gonzalez liked what he saw.
“That [concept] was a big part of why I came on board,” Gonzalez said. “It was that they actually posed this mystery of how this world would come about that I felt like I had to get to the bottom of. I wanted to, like, come up with the answers myself.”
