Horizon Zero Dawn: A Game Design Postmortem
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- Опубликовано: 29 сен 2024
- In this 2018 GDC talk, Guerrilla Games' Eric Boltjes gives insight into the journey Horizon Zero Dawn's game design went through while moving from an ambitious paper concept to a finished open world action RPG, with all of the small and large design decisions and choices that have to be made along the way.
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God, I love that Guerilla talks so openly about development process. These kinds of details are usually kept behind many closed doors. And also admitting mistakes is a breath of fresh air.
I wanted to post that comment, as i really appreciate the openness.
Your mom talks so openly about the development process.
Sorry. Love you. Bye
@@davecarsley8773 ?
so common sense stuff/.
The concept of Aloy being unusual was in the way Batman is unusual: She was from the start extremely smart, considering her heritage, and Gaia had modified her DNA by about 0.5%. Since a 1.5% change can turn a person into a chimpanzee, this 0.5% is enormous and greatly increased her physical stamina, strength, and recovery ability after injury (especially her reaction to various "potions"). This easily allows her superiority over most other characters in the game without any "magic" and without making her invulnerable or otherwise "super-human". Other games sometime do not explain why the player character is so much better than the others in the game, but not this one -- good!
Finished the game...mind blown....DECIMAAAA!!!!!!!!
38:15: hindshite 😂 amazing. I’m going to definitely use that in as many conversations as possible
The only type of shite lol
Horizon: Zero Dawn I think has been my favourite game ever on PlayStation, which is a big statement, but it's just so darned pretty. I think it's a huge testament to how excellent and professional the developers and testers at Guerrilla must be that game patches for HZ:D are so few and so small, and that the game functions and holds up so well, even today four years later. Thank you, Guerrilla.
For me the only graphic glitch I noticed, which was obvious to me because I've written graphic renderers previously, was during the "Sun and Shadow" quest. The quest requires you to find Elida on her island in Daybrink lake, and thence Atral in Kestrel's Perch on the far shore, and swim back and forth across the lake a few times. I only ever noticed the graphic issue on this lake, and no other water bodies, and that glitch was that the reflections on the water are 180 degrees wrong: they're showing the lake shores from directly behind the player instead of those from directly ahead.
11:35 I'd actually play that!
Lego needs to release the crossover game.
I hope they give us a rocket launcher in the sequel, that would be awesome !
That's when you know your prototype is just right :D
Love it. Guuerilla, don't feel badly about too-complex economy. Every game I can think of has way to many inventory items. HZD was better less onerous than most. Love your point about be creative. Add narrative later, not first. Yeah, I hear in beginning of last year of development, the robots were too strong and hud info was too weak. Also they must have arranged to make more clear the importance of changing costumes. Yes, due to memory, each robot is tied to a locale. Too much memory to move them over multiple landscapes.
Now in 2024, after the release of the sequel, we can state both games are amazing and incredible. I can't stop returning to the world, trying another build (of weapons and outfits and tactics). Couldn't imagine the gamedev had any kind of harsh period this presentation shows. 😁 🤘🏼
Good talk! I finished Horizon last year and liked it, but there were a lot of smaller issues besides the core gameplay that added up over time. This talk mentions most of them, and if you guys improve on those problems for the second one, I think it could easily be one of my favorite games. So much good stuff is already in the game, it was an amazing achievement for your first open world. Wish you all the best for the future!
I hope game #2 in this series is as good or better. Lots of interesting questions were found but not answered in the first game, but the original enemy that caused the heroine Aloy to be created is still unknown and out there, plotting...
Am I crazy or is that the wilderness music from Elder Scrolls Oblivion playing during the mounted prototypes 😅
Since there is a sequel now, we know that in 2018 they were working on it.
And the first question probably made him think of it haha
Noooo! Why are the corners blurred??
Something about the gdc mic, makes me get an ocd for people swalloing.
The best game ever made.
A very good talk. I don't agree with the stuff about choosing bows over guns for the combat in the Q&A on the basis that I found it hard to believe an arrow fired from a primitive bow could damage robots. If the arrows were fired from some sort of EM rail like on a rail-gun mounted to the bow that would be believable but Alloy's bows are just string/cables tied to sticks. However I agree that taking down a monster with these bows is more satisfying than if it was a gun.
Have you ever shot actual arrows? When they're shot from up close they can definitely pierce metallic sheets. I think they came to a really good solution in the end where Aloy's normal arrows barely scrape machine armour, but the big heavy hunting arrows are actually damaging (as they would be) and can even peel of some of the armour. The sound blast arrows made of compressed gas cylinders Aloy'd take from machines was a really cool idea too.
Not to mention using bows and arrows, with arrows made of future mechine metal and hardware pieces integrates that "old + new/nature + technology" theme so much better than guns would.
I would add the bows are actually made of machine alloy parts. Something Gaia had centuries to refine, so presumably, the strength properties of the bows and other weapons made of machine parts are higher than what you would expect to see today.
Never played the game.
The advantage of a bow is you can reclaim your projectile, tie strings to the arrow and fish or climb walls or trip target raher than kill.
A bow is not a weapon, its a tool.
A gun is a weapon and designed for a single purpose.
A gun can have projectiles that can be reclaimed, crossbows for example. You can fish with a gun and with the right attachments can be used to climb.
And unlike a bow, a gun can actually have a chance to punch through the tank-like metal plating of these machines.
Let me put it to you this way. There's a reason the most powerful weapons in the game are guns mounted on the machines, not bows.
@@PlebNC : good point and an arrow can be rigged with explosives.
So, the choice is a matter of style.
efe şenele selamlar
15:54
27:50
31:35
36:35
43:10
32:00 is she seating inside the rock?
38:13 Hind shyte!
I honestly think this game isn't fun.... how can rpg don't reward you with things. The loots are all the same
You clearly haven't played the game , he loots are only the same among the same machines. Forexmaple chillwater can be found on lance horns but not in chargers
"Postmortem"? I thought H:ZD did well?
In game development a "postmortem" is a review of the development process of a finished game. Most commonly after public opinion has settled.
The game has been released, so it's production died. A postmortem follows that.
Game was beautiful but damn boring
Finally, an explanation as to how this game was designed so poorly.
It's so bad, Korea split up over it.
I sold my Xbox, it was so bad. My Ps4 has about 20 games on it, it's such a good system I've got like six games that I've barely had time to start. Ps4 is awesome. HZD is not.
You fail to explain why you think it’s bad.
Talk about being objectively wrong...
you needed to post the same comment 3 times just to validate it lol
good talk. :)
pretty sure he meant populate instead of inhabit
It's exciting hearing the flaws in Horizon brought up. Video games are one of the great mediums where the sequel is usually better than the original, and with these problems admitted by the developer, it means they are probably going to focus on it in the future. The first Horizon really stood out for me because it had a unique story to tell, and hunting dinobots with a bow is one of the most badass sentences ever spoken. After reading some of the lore in the world, about the other tribes across the world, there are a lot of really cool directions they could go in for a sequel.
If you get to see this, YOU MADE A FUCKING AMAZING GAME. Me and my wife love the game, the story is great, gameplay ( well some movement can be frustrating ), it looks amazing and its highly addictive. Thank you for making this game, motivated me to want to make a great game, not sure I can pull it off but I want too. I forgot the world is so alive and exciting, love the robot animals and at no point did I not believe they were living creatures.
"highly addictive" doesn't sound like a good thing, highly engaging would be a lot better, though I don't think this game is that at all.
@@cometcourse381 your opinion, DUH!!😑😑
@@cometcourse381 I agree. People tend to say "good time-waster! or "highly addictive". Why would you want to waste your time or get addicted?
Did you love the game though?
This along with the documentary from Noclip is a treat.
There's a Dutch documentary about the game and the studio as well by VPRO, but they took down the English subtitled RUclips video I think.. :\ Here's the original Dutch version: www.vpro.nl/programmas/tegenlicht/kijk/afleveringen/2016-2017/all-in-the-game.html (with Dutch subs..)
@@JochemKuijpers I enjoy horizon, but I'm afraid I draw the line at learning Dutch to watch a documentary. Excellent though I'm sure it is.
@@JochemKuijpers ruclips.net/video/h9tLcD1r-6w/видео.html
@@JamieM20001996 ruclips.net/video/h9tLcD1r-6w/видео.html
As a huge fan of Horizon, I think there's one assumption made in this postmortem that I disagree with, at least in part.
Eric Boltjes suggests that it's a flaw of the game that the tutorialized intro focuses on gameplay elements that wound up not being very important as the game progresses. And it's true, the rock throwing is something I almost never did after the first 8+ hours of the game -- at one point I forgot that rock throwing was even a mechanic in the game.
However, I think that it may have hurt the game somewhat if the opening tutorial was a perfect microcosm of the game itself. I see this a lot in so many game. If you play the first 20 minutes to an hour you've essentially played the whole game, all that's left are a few surprise moments (hopefully) and following the story. And this leads me to get bored with a good number of games from the big publishers (Ubisoft especially). While making the opening of your game last has been shown to have great benefits (the original God of War is a good example), I think it's also important for gameplay to evolve over the course of play. And changing gameplay is especially necessary in an open world game that you're expected to spend 40+ hours in (incidentally I've spent at least a hundred+ hours in Horizon, and I haven't even started a new game yet). I think it's great that the opening hour or so of the game is actually pretty unique from the middle and late game... and the game just evolves as you play it and are challenged to alter your tactics (and boy are there a lot of play options) when what you _were_ doing stops working as well. I mean, the different weapons you're able to get hours into the game are a real boon in this regard, giving you different ways to approach combat.
So, any developer looking to make another entry in the open-world genre, with quests and side quests and progression (level up) systems, try to have gameplay evolve/alter over time. Things that are important should change from early game to mid game to end game. And depending on the size of your game there might be more steps than that. And the world should change too. I'm currently playing AC:Origins and while it finally makes some changes in the formula, the game is really just a matter of finding new areas in which to do the same things you have been doing since the first area -- enemies are all the same and use the same tactics, just with higher stat numbers to require levelling up. It has a fine core loop, but overall it's sort of dull because it never stretches its wings, never does anything new.
Very good game no doubt about it.
To me the tutorial/intro phase (the part of the game before it opens up) was a bit too long.
But this is minor complaint.
I agree tutorials do not have to explain everything, balancing them is hard. And especially in game in which your character develops during the game. But there are methods. In case of horizon there is a small explanation what each perk does (and even though it might not be meaningful - like all weak spear hit will give more damage) it encourages player to experiment. Same with weapons - short clips are not telling much. But encourage player to grab the weapon and trying it. And this is nicely done.
I'm playing the game right now and to me it is very good plus (8,5/10) so far 65% completed 74 hours played.
The rocks will Lure machines to you, into traps or away from you. Much more useful than the Lure ability which is actually redundant.
Also, I started the game with some negative bias for it being an "generic AAA game (those that try to make everyone happy but ends up without anything in particular to say)" but the thing he says at 41:00 is what first made me start to fall in love with HZD.
When I picked up a bunch of old keys and the game called them "ancient chimes" because of course people in that world would have no idea what those tinkling little pieces of metal were I was like ALRIGHT this is good, this is very good. You don't see this too often, and this is special.
Kazataca
Same here, I thought it looked really kitschy, like "LOOK MECHA DINOSAURS ISN'T IT COOL". But then, to my utmost surprise, I discovered rich worldbulding, amazing visual design and tight game design. Not much original here, but probably the most soulful modern open world game.
Kazataca
I'm playing the game now. 65% completed, main story far from finish, level 39, 74 hours in. (I just like cleaning the map, which is not what I usually enjoy).
So no doubt this game drag me into its world and gameplay.
If I were to rate the game now on my scale it is very good plus (8,5/10).
After checking dozens of reviews my expectation was - a game combining known open world mechanics, with interesting approached to combat. Where elements were polished more than in most of the the same template based open worlds.
And this is what I got.
I love being a hunter. Sometimes stealthy, sometimes showing my power over the machines I need to defend or combining these two.
The only thing that I liked less was too long introduction (the part of the game before world opens up).
I recommend this game. I was not engaged in a game to this extend since I played Yakuza 0 and The Witcher 3.
the ancient items are all things people had on or inside them (artificial heart), such as keys, etc, when they were dissolved alive by the hartz-timor swarm
2001? What? I think you meant 2011 bro? 😂
Alex Townley was confused there too, I thought I heard it wrong.
At 37:20, he mentions wishing they had made combat with humans as engaging as the machine fights, and based on the most recent gameplay trailer for the sequel, it looks like that's exactly what they did.
Yep
Is that Oblivion's music under the prototypes?
So it would seem. I actually laughed.
The first one is from the movie "Inception".
Harvest Dawn from Oblivion during the open world prototype and mount prototype.
I mean, it makes sense from a design perspective, since they were looking for the feel the game would give the player. Music, though we don't really think about it, plays into that, and its easier to just copy someone else's song and throw it in when testing. Still made me laugh tho
Lol, at17:25, right after him saying so this is what we came up with... an add for a Japanese mobile game came up and for a brief second I thought, “wow the visual style of this game must’ve changed a lot!”
35:20 Imagine if the robots could actually speak
That first question though... damn. Q: "Did you also make those mistakes in the DLC". A: "... Yes... :( ".
I love the fact that they use Elder Scrolls music in their town
I LOVE this game!!! Its the first game I couldn't put down since Super Mario in 1985. I had a lot of fun in Aloy's world
Tutorializing and starting from the beginning seems super interesting, I did notice the Dark Souls series had this same problems where tutorials did not accurately represent the rest of the game (lets teach you how to turn trees into bridges, youll use it exactly once) and the best content comes halfway trough.
It does remind me of an old interview with John Romero where he said that with the DOOMs they started somewhere in the middle and worked towards the start so that they could familiarize themselves with the systems and discover what works and what doesnt before making the first levels.
Though not a pitch-perfect open world game in terms of its many gameplay aspects, Horizon is a very impressive first attempt and this talk was very interesting in highlighting both the strengths and weaknesses that resulted from the teams inexperience with these types of game. For instance, a lot of open-world games have 'just fine' combat (think Witcher 3, Elder Scrolls, GTA V etc) but Horizon's is so fun and satisfying on a mechanical and systems level by comparison (at least when fighting the machines that is). I think a large part of this has to do with the teams experience with combat design in the Killzone games. Meanwhile, other elements like the economy, the traversal mechanics, the resource gathering and some (though not all) of the side quests are much more rote in design and belie a clearly less experienced team in these areas.
The traversal mechanics in particular I felt were very underwhelming from a gameplay perspective, being more of the boring, dis-engaging, automated Assassins Creed variety, when I was hoping for something with more interactive feedback, like say the climbing and traversal mechanics in the new Tomb Raider games, which manage to make traversal fun, fluid and satisfying all together. Such a change would make exploring the world feel like a more meaningful activity in terms of gameplay and create an even stronger connection between the player and the player character in gameplay terms, which can reinforce one's connection to that character within a story context too, provided the story and writing are compelling as well, which thankfully in Horizon they were, for the most part.
All praise aside (HZD is bar none my favourite game of all times, let's just get this "out of the way"
Oh man, here goes a little more: shield weave armour wans't just the most powerful, it was also the coolest thing Aloy could wear in the entire game (aside from the reeeeeally cool frozen wilds outfits). Of course everyone loves it.
A few thoughts:
-Regarding the tutorials, this is why in my publishing field, it's not uncommon to put a book's front matter (table of contents, introduction, how to use this manual, etc.) at the _end_ of the production schedule rather than the beginning.
-HZD's economy was complex, yes (and not helped by occasionally inaccurate item uses displayed), but most of the difficulty around items for me was in the UI. There were just too many layers of inventory/crafting UI that really felt like they could have been simplified or combined. For example, crafting UI probably should have just been integrated into the main inventory menus. I should have been able to inspect a weapon in my inventory and press a button to modify it rather than having to back out of that menu to go through another.
-What made HZD special for me wasn't that every aspect was the absolute best of its type. There are probably games with better combat, games with better traversal, games with better writing, games with better progression, games with better graphics, etc. But HZD managed to deliver really high quality work across all of those areas in a single package, and that made me feel like this a very special, well-made game.
I really hope GDC can eventually get mics that pick up voices but not every single lip smack and water swallow, I want to hear these talks so bad but it's insanely difficult to sit through.
Holy... ! It's so impressive to take a look at the development process of one of the most beautiful, artistic and overall awesome games ever. So much work going on, it's so inspiring!
Honestly, human combat seems very awkward after all the adrenaline-high machine hunting, but it`s still nice they added it,because it just needed to be in the game. Otherwise amazing robot fights would just become normal, so this slow, more careful stealth approach (stupid bandits like, almost instantly kill you) give you a time to breathe and much better pacing.
But the stealth mechanics are like,unfinished, each alert takes way too much time, it was common for me after alerting someone to just go make some tea,or play a little bit on my phone, that`s how much time it takes and it breaks imersion.
And some Frozen WIlds criticital here
HZD might actually be my fav game of all time,or at least, at the very very very top of that list. Frozen WIlds is a very mixed experience for me though.
The Banul culture and the landscape,side quests (they`re so good! like, amazing good,acting is amazing there, i wish it was more polished in the main game, sometimes characters there seem weird), everything in FW except combat felt amazing for me.
But the new machines felt very very overpowered, where in the main game you had different approaches and openings and you chose the one you like, machines in FW have uneding attacks, for some reason have 'magical over-distance elemental power' and attacks. Need to constanly change your outfits really messed me, because I`m that person who changed outfits depending on wealther or biom (carja silks for Meridian, banuk icehunter for Gravehoard,etc) and seeing Aloy run around in -40 C degrees in carja outfit? Cruel. I felt very sad for her.
I just have a lot of complains for FW, but that`s probably enough. I liked it overall, but can`t say it was enjoyable,unlike main game which is absolutely amazing.
My two cents about human combat is not to try to make fighting a single human more interesting, but to apply the encounter design of fighting a robot to a group of humans fighting together. Give each human opponent different specialties so the same kinds of tactical decisions that go into fighting a thunderjaw could also be made about which humans to target first out of a group.
Another concept I'd love to see in the next Horizon is for humans to have made war machines out of dismantled robots. They'd be less elegant than the native robots, but would augment the humans by providing abilities like greater awareness, or a sluggish but mobile artillery platform to augment a raiding party.
how many game of the year games have you designed?
I mean, for someone giving advice to a studio made of professional people who have heavy titles under their belts, you must be experienced and levelled... right?
Or just some randome youtuber with little to 0 knowledge about the process of making a video game other than youtube vids.?
+Persephone Rothlion
Horizon's worst part of gameplay is the human combat, so not only are you using an appeal to authority fallacy, you aren't even doing a good job of picking the authority. Guerrilla Games only past success happened with their first person shooter Killzone franchise, which even Guerrilla Games admits doesn't directly transfer over to an open world third person shooter.
Still wonderful to listen to these talks.
Starting at the beginning with throwing rocks... While not very useful - it does instill a sense of danger and carefullness, which you later ignore when you get very powerful gear.
And you return to using rocks when you go into the Cut with mediocer gear and lvl 30 at higher difficulties...
.... Any company that is shocked to hear their game is very unbalanced and a massive let down clearly has no gamers in their team at all, or never even played their own game AT ALL. It takes ANY gamer less than an hour to gauge a game, especially balance. To say you are 'surprised' by this just shows you didn't even bother playing your own game...
Yea, it takes some balls to admit your mistakes, but come on... that is not a mistake that should happen. You HAVE to sit down and play your own game.
Having said that. I love this game! They ended up with an awesome game, well done! They were able to adapt and listen to player feedback
everyone likes the carja blazon adept
The complex inventory is a drag on the game, BUT there are things that are minor irritations and things that are major failures. The latter sink a game, while the former cause some grumbling and allow a goal for the next game to fix, but will not cause a game to fail. In real life there are always things that you have to do every day/week/month/year that you do not like (taxes, anyone?), but they do not make the rest of life sink into despair unless you have some deeper problems than just these. This game shows you that even a heroine has to slog it out with real life between her heroic encounters. I think that this makes the game better, though the exact way this is being done could be improved, obviously...
Red dead Redemption 2's horses could use some lessons from Horizon's Striders.
Are you kidding?! The Striders move SO SLOWLY on normal walking!
Dude are you for reals
Yep....just Ignore the Rdr2 Fanboys above me
Erm, they never hit a tree even once, unless you manually took over control and rode them into trees. If you're riding through a high-density tree area, you just had to let the AI do its thing, and you wouldn't hit anything. Other than that, the actual physics movement-wise is perfect in RDR2, as is the Human player movement too... But I think I'm in the minority in thinking that, however... lol
Guerilla should not be quite as hard on itself as to "we should have". No, you shouldn't. If you had, you might have gone off on a tangent and ran up against a wall requiring too many major rebuilds. You were learning how to do it from scratch. Considering how complicated these games are, the fact that you can do them at all is, to me, awe-inspiring. I am a retired computer engineer who was doing work for the US Navy on the early shipboard "small" digital computers for controlling ship weapons (double-refrigerator-size computers with half of the memory size and 1/100th the speed of a Commodore 64, though with several very fast parallel I/O ports) when they were introduced in the early 1970s. I was a Computer Engineer before the profession was even part of the US Government range of technical professions (Electronic Engineer, which I was at the start, was as close as was available), so I did not start "at the ground floor" but "in the basement" of early dedicated computer engineering (as opposed to the large "mainframe" machines running many things at once, which were already aboard many Navy ships as part of their Combat Information Centers) -- the first primitive "personal" (here meaning dedicated to a specific weapon) computers. Running a missile weapon system (sensors (radars and so forth), control consoles, maintenance tools and documents, weapon magazine, weapon launchers, the missiles themselves, connections to the other ship support systems, input/output to the ship's CIC to allow the officers to control the weapon and know what it was doing, weapon selection logic, aiming calculations, etc.) is MUCH, MUCH less complex than what you do and it took us YEARS to figure how to do it even halfway right, including a major problem with the "human interface" part for both maintenance and console displays and controls. Even such things as what kinds of indicator lights on the consoles to use and what they should mean had to go through lots of mistakes before they properly displayed data that the person using the console completely understood and could act on NOW, not after consulting some document in the middle of a battle! As a small, but critical example of this was the fact that there were several factors that went into determining whether or not a given enemy at some current range, speed, altitude, and direction of motion could or could not be successfully shot down by our weapon. If not, the decision makers on the ship had to decide what else to shoot at or if they should wait until the enemy finally came inside the "weapon envelope" and could be shot down. We had two major computer systems to figure that out: The one controlling the weapon (mine) and the one controlling the ship's CIC. Unfortunately, they both had >separate< red (not interceptable)/green (interceptable) lamps. In most cases, they agreed with one another, but sometimes they did not; that is, the CIC might say that the target was inside the "kill zone" of the weapon, but the weapon computer might see that there was some obstruction to aiming the missile in that direction (ship superstructure, for example) and state that the target was NOT in the real kill zone at that instant. So you got one red light and one green light at the same time. Guess what, the CIC person firing the weapon almost always said "half a loaf is better than none" and fired the weapon anyway, which of course failed to hit the target (both computers knew what they were talking about since lots of technical design and testing had gone into deciding these things). The console users did not really understand what the indicator lamps meant, even though they had used the consoles sometimes FOR YEARS (!!!). I figured this out after a string of missile failures and concluded that the two lamps should be removed and replaced with one that only went green when BOTH computers said GO. Fixed the problem. If even that can be screwed up, do not knock yourself for not being Yoda-like in your knowledge of what should have been done in your super-complicated, years-in-the-making game.
The only aspect of the game that was a bit clunky for me, was I think it needed a light climbing mechanic. Not the ability to climb everything like in breath of the Wild, but something better than having two Jump Around frantically hoping to catch a ledge. It could have been a lot more smooth
This game had dynamic weather, dynamic day/night, the map view was also very beautiful. Early in the game I only rode my horse visiting campfires aimlessly and simply had fun getting better at hunting & gathering. This clicked with me early on as a strong gameplay.
However I came across the limitations of the game economy and had to make my way to Meridian to merchants and began using fast travel to sell all my resources and balance my inventory. This took a little longer to understand but once I have I can enjoy it without feeling guilty.
Still I think I'm only halfway through the story 2 cauldrons & 3 Tall-Necks completed. I'm still excited for the ending, the DLC, and the forthcoming sequel.
Horizon was my 2017 GOTY, great talk
Whilst Horizon was bloody awful, it's nice to see videos like these.
If it's not someone's thing, I understand, but how can anyone be delusional enough to call it "bloody awful"?
Sorry, bloody generic.
Man, I'm trying so hard to love this game. Playing it for the first time and i'm a couple hours in. It's suck a pretty game BUT: the NPC dialogue is so boring and predictable. The side quests so far have been: bring this, rescue that...The climbing and traversing terrain is sooo painfully lacking..my mount is just moving with any dips or highs in the terrain :(....The melee swings are so slow and there is no lock on for it...The skill tree is soo minimal..and resource gatherings are quite outdated, no autopick...omg...overall its very cinematic but i'm trying my best to like it...I can't just play a open world for the main story alone, everything else I've encountered was sub par...
That's my experience too. The main story did seem interesting, I'd like to know about what happens with the machines and old cultures that built the underground metal caverns/structures. But the rest of the, the bulk of what you do, is boring as hell. Crafting and resource gathering needs to die off in games.
Just starting this video but I want to hear them address 3 issues I had with the game:
1. Melee combat and combat vs humans was extremely half baked
2. No really strong supporting characters and to have Aloy bounce off of throughout the narrative. Most side characters disappear after their relevant quests end only to reappear at the end.
3. The cities felt pretty lifeless
42:37 - I don't really can say that anything in Horizon Zero Dawn would be a fail. Okay, we can't place more than 15 tripwares/traps once although Blameless Marad says we can review the attack sites and prepare (so we actually CAN'T prepare to the fight with anything because traps disappear once the fight begins and we even can't place 16 or more traps once because the 16th trap actually makes the first one disappear) but that's a BUG, NOT A FAIL.
I felt while HZD was an ok game it had a lot of flaws that prevented me from liking it, I only played it for the sequel because when I initially bought it I stopped halfway because everything felt too generic from the side quest perspective, and too restrictive in exploration, it is my opinion that open world games should have as many options to explore as it can possibly can, mind you I am not talking about having things non-linear because I totally don’t mind that, but to be able to tackle content in a variety of ways.
The game was also too straightforward and not engaging. I played the Frozen Wilds and I liked some of the changes that were done to some core concepts of the game as well as npcs.
I am glad to say that you have succeeded in fixing these issues in HFW, not only are npcs involved in side quests lively and memorable, but you have fixed one of my major issues with HZD and that is the engagement with the player. No more do I go collect trinkets without some kind of engaging gameplay and no longer are Tallnecks just go to one and climb. I particularly liked that in one Tallneck there was more than one solution to getting on top of it even though you obviously put structures there to climb it.
You also made sure there were more ways to explore with more climbable terrain, to the glider and other ways.
Finally let me just say that the melee combat is incredibly fun, and that one particular combo always brings a smile to my face, as well the amount of different weapons you included for the sequel as well as more abilities.
On my second play through and it’s even more fun, more beautiful and more addictive than my first. Truly a masterpiece... and Forbidden West is looking incredible too
Forbidden West brought the Rock throwing back! Now that theres no Lure Call skill
Seems like it wasn’t a waste of time after all
are you really doing that thing where auto-captions are disabled? please enable for those of us who can't hear and want to enjoy the content. thanks!
I'd say the machines were pretty well made but the combat with them is so frustrating. They move just when you aim at them and you take 2 years to pull out arrows and shoot. the ones you shoot fast dont do enough damage.
You say you wanted to give players options but i feel like the game forces you into stealth. going the stealthy way is so much smoother. I mostly go head on but it just feels like you dont have time to do anything if the machines are charging at you.
That Oblivion music lol
06:14 Giantic Robot Dinosaurs ("never made before"): never heard of Dinobots? Or Zoids?
Ah, I guess that's another thing because they were not in a videogame
45:30 what an amazing question ahah
Did anybody ever give an answer to why there was the blur effect tho?
18:40
Sound: why Tekken 3's Gon just died there?
The narrative team saved this game. I was wincing so hard at how generic that proof of concept sounded.
Tell that to the two major writing awards John Gonzales won for this game. The narrative was amazing. Rarely do you encounter a game with such detailed history and cultures. It has too many exposition dumps, but those were actually moments I loved.
HD Simplicityy can’t tell if you’re agreeing or disagreeing with your parent comment, but thats what they are saying as well. They’re saying that the proof of concept trailer, which was made before the narrative team was hired, is very generic and dull.
I don´t see how the economy is too complex. The inventory was cluttered but compared to other games especially RPGs it almost felt oversimplified.
I especially loved how everything revolved around shards.
Why wasn’t that art in the art book?!
I fucking LOVE Nordic accents!
Band gate at about 4-6k set at, like, -20dB.
Just sayin
Did anyone else notice how the guy in the hologram cutscene (shortly after getting the focus) blows in the wrong end of the kazoo? Ruined the whole game for me
Why did it ruine the game for you?
Genuinely asking.
@@gdolphy missed the ‘/s’ lol. It didn’t ruin the game for me, just humourous
@@pixstatic200 : ok, I notice some people are bothered by what I think is minor things but a major issue doesn't phase them.
When I ask they usually can not explain why it bothers them or why a major issue seems like childs play to them.
I didn’t engage with changing outfits until Frozen Wilds, so well done them for learning from the initial game.
This game is the reason why I bought a PS4. The graphics and gameplay were exceptional as expected, but the game had no soul. I didn't care for the story and Aloy was not a great memorable character, she was average.
Same here, the Horizon franchise is the best marketing for Playstation
I'm shocked to hear Oblivion music in the first settlement prototype. Especially when Joris de Man was the lead composer and not Jeremy Soule.
You can use anything in protoypes. Theyre meant purely for testing different ideas.
I love love love this game, every aspect of it. Well done guys!
46:24 to me the armor switching seemed less important than it could have been if the armor actually had noticeable effect (except for the stealth costume, the force field armor and the DLC healing armor)
I think they have great effect. Damage taken from Freeze/Fire/Shock is significantly reduced with resistances. In some situations, Stealth was simply not useful at all.
I've only played the game in "normal" mode, but I hear that resistance potions have greater impact in harder play modes. The same might be true for outfits + weaves.
Great Postmortem Eric. Thanks for it
ruclips.net/video/TawhcWao9ls/видео.html
He is right, Human combat was terrible. The only enjoyable way to clean a bandit outpost was with stealth, and it wasn´t well designed either.
37:25 I’m not sure about that. The individual humans should not be too powerful compared to machines. Especially if they don’t have any unique armor or weapons
I USED THE TRADER JOB FEATURE
I love how he started the story in media res.
As a simple gamer it is becoming clearer and clearer that a lot of game development is trail and error and made up as they go along, maybe this is true because $multi million AAA games is still a young art form.
O M G, I didn't realise this was a concept in 2001
16 years! before release
It was a great single player experience. Thanks for sharing so much info about development.
25:00 spoilers :(
I may have spoiled the story after watching this
I finished playing on pc a few days ago and didn't get spoiled in 3 years of the game's release
"so 28 years ago, for this postmortem"
"So 2 years ago, a year before the game released, for this postmortem"
Ive had the complete edition in its wrapper somewhere under my bed for months. Time to play it i guess.
Enjoy it. You're in for a treat.
Wow, no kidding. It’s a great game, I hope you like it!
Wow, that was realy interesting and informative. Thank you.
Looking forward for the Forbidden West Postmortem!
I'm so jealous of how little of a Dutch accent he actually has.
I just ignored the economy. It was still frustrating though, so it’s great to hear them acknowledge that it should have been better; another reason to look forward to the sequel!
I love how defensive he gets at the mere suggestion that Aloy could've been different, even though the guy that asked really meant nothing by it. Really shows how much the devs care about her.
Really amazing how Guerilla went from making what is in my opinion a regular meathead shooter to honestly the most perfect game I've ever played. I'd recommend watching the documentary they made about it too, if anyone sees this comment.
please can you link the documentary? :D
@@cyberducc ruclips.net/video/h9tLcD1r-6w/видео.html
Besides God of War, Horizon: was one of the greatest games ever.. Behind God of War actually..
@Yafet Kibrom we can agree to disagree. 😏
My personal GOTY 2020 (played this on PC). I just love the story and the way it is presented. The sense of discovery of the back story is simply amazing.
Geweldig!
This game is a modern work of art.
Using Harvest Dawn in the open world demo was amazing
17:55 i can see why graphic is quite important now