That’s hilarious. I have had a few of these, but none quite so much on the sheer jump scare scale.
Those crazy little kamikaze watchers are just adorable.
I’ve explored just about all of the right, early part of the map. Will soon trek past a small lake/pond and continue the main mission though. Just having a lot of fun finding the collectables and spontaneous robot hunts.
I have so many stories that the gif bring to mind, but I don’t want to ruin the…fun for others. Great gif. And really, a gem of a game. I so rarely get into long winded single player games. For this one, I am so glad I did.
I can’t tell what that is so not sure if I’ve seen one or not!
In this pic, I really didn’t think this sawtooth was going to follow me up the ridge…persistent!
It may be heresy, but this is grabbing me way more than Witcher 3 did.
I’m in the same boat. I think there are things Witcher 3 does better like story/writing and it probably has more interesting side quests. Horizon has more engaging gameplay and the setting is awesome. I haven’t put this many hours into a single player game like this since Dark Souls and I can’t remember the last one before that.
Same boat here as well. For me Witcher 3 has the smallest fault that just sticks in my head. Like so many recent male heroes of late, Geralt suffers from “Gravel Voice” and it bugs me. This game does a lot of things right for me. It’s got a nice sized open world. It has “stumble upon” quests and a snappy quest system. It has collectible activities, but none of them are “collect 300 tiny feathers”. And it’s gorgeous. I still just like riding around and discovering new places. But the best is the combat. It keeps evolving for me as I open up new weapons, gain new skills, or change my approach. And as I explore and get higher level, it seems the groups of bots I run into are larger and take more thought to take down.
Witcher bounced off of me too. And its not like I didn’t give it several tries. I think the crafting is streamlined enough to not be an OCD headache and conversation trees, while there, are not 70% of your time in H:ZD. Plus the combat is interesting and more of a center piece of the game play experience. I guess I am a heretic.
tldr; It’s certainly in the Witcher 3 class depending on the metric.
Having now put in some serious hours it’s certainly in the Witcher 3 class, but Witcher 3 held my admiration for well over a hundred hours, maybe two hundred. No idea if Horizon will do the same yet, though at the moment it certainly feels like it.
Combat is the one area it spanks the Witcher 3 in. It’s a masterclass in design, at least for my tastes. I keep improving my own skills in tandem with Aloy and her gear in such a steady, organic fashion. My progression has gone from scanning just the body, to scanning sub parts, to checking the notebook per Timex’s recommendation. I now understand why you guys want to rotate the models in the notebook, it just gives such a wealth of information. All of those fiddly parts you can blow off do different things, many not obvious at first, but wonderfully consistent with the world. And very, very useful to know.
Never mind all of the traps and pre-battle setup you can do, which is well worth it.
I find the lore to be more interesting than the Witcher 3. Robot Dinosaur Apocolypse > Witcher world and I read a few of the books. Witcher 3 had an interesting story I cared about, but which was set in a very close to the median fantasy world. They brought that world to life in an amazing way, but Horizon takes a bat shit crazy world and at least equals it. This is quite the accomplishment in my book. Tiny little things like how various machines have headlights at night evoked some pretty strong memories of mine camping. Real, visceral memories. Can’t say games manage to do that very often.
I did find the Witcher 3 characters and story to be considerably more nuanced and well written than Horizon though. Horizon feels clumsy and unrealistic in parts in regards to the characters.
The story is less polished, but I do still like it thus far.
Count me as one who likes the game and game world more than the Witcher series.
That’s fine. Some people like stories of human conflict. Other people like robot dinosaurs.
The Witcher has an appeal to me because I’m a fan of the series and of the books. The characters and relationships that are fleshed out in the Witcher have a solid feeling that comes from a history of writing in the series that something like Horizon couldn’t have. Also, it’s hard to dislike Geralt. That said, Witcher 3 (that I love and admire) does have a few large problems in the storytelling department. Like everyone you talk to, for instance, has a cut scene. Not just a regular cut scene, like a draw out irritating cut scene. While you get some of that here, I don’t feel it’s wasting my time for the millionth time after I talk to jimmy the dung cart driver about his drowner problem.
Also, the Witcher had an awesome world, but it isn’t as well realized as this one. The game was cut up into several large maps instead of one giant, kind of open one.
I was going to go into the irritation I feel about the decisions in Witcher 3 not making a difference like they did in Witcher 2, but I don’t want to completely derail this topic.
They aren’t robot dinosaurs. They seem to be robot… normal animals. Like panthers, cattle, and crocs. And last night I found out why. And last night I realized I was more engrossed with this story than even the (excellent) one being told by The Witcher 3. And I have a feeling I have some big reveals coming. I won’t make any blanket statements until I beat the game, but so far the crazy back story and the reveals are more interesting (to me) than anything The Witcher 3 did. Though TW3 isn’t really that kind of game, either, so it’s not really a fair comparison.
This game is also fucking huge. At one point I was 27 hours on file (it seems to not count time while the game is minimized like I do when I walk away, or it would say I had hundreds of hours in) and I saw I had wrapped up 15 out of 27 main story missions.
Now I’m over 32 hours in and I still have 4 main story quests left, so probably 3-6 hours I’m guessing, and a back log of side quests that I’m skipping because I really, really want to know what happens next in the main story. But I’m also level 36 or 37 now and don’t feel like I need more skill points, better weapons or armor, or better mods - I’m quite happy with my load out currently.
Horizon is a story about human conflict as well, but instead of being in service to dwarves and elves it’s in service to robot dinosaurs. What’s so ridiculous is how well it does it. I am getting ready to wrap up the main story and I am sold on the story as near future possible. Given the ridiculous premise I think it an amazing accomplishment to get me to believe, even for an instant, that this would be possible.
It does this through the main characters, but also a ton of random text and voice logs found throughout the world.
The whole ‘savage in a apocalyptic world’ also works so well. From your first discovery to the near end I kept admiring how it all came together and was told through Aloy growing up. Given how I pick apart other stories, from movies to books to games, they either got absurdly lucky or spent an enormous amount of time trying to make the world real.
Or I just have a heretofore unknown weak spot for robot dinosaurs and was blinded by their chrome-atic magnificence.
I think I just hit level 39 but I believe I have a ton of story missions ahead of me. Finally made my way to Meridian yesterday. I’ve been doing all the side quests as I go along though but not sure of my hours played.
Probably a bigger number of hours than you’d think - you can see the time listed in a manual save, if you are curious.