Man you gotta stop calling it that.
I don’t think I could tell you the first thing about the stories in those games. But I’ll try anyway. In Shadow of Mordor, uh, your family got killed by orcs and a zombie elf ghost helps you get revenge by killing truckloads of orcs. Am I close? In Mad Max, you’re just Max and there’s a guy named Chumbucket who sometimes rides in the back of your car. I’m pretty sure I’m 100% on that one.
Horizon, on the other hand, made me sit through a bunch of stuff that I remember because I had to wait for the purple ghosts to finish doing their cutscene so the doors would unlock and I could finally leave the room. It also made me feel embarrassed for Lance Reddick. You don’t forget that.
-Tom
I played Mad Max, even finished it, and it hurt. It was so unbelievably repetitive, fulfilling the Ubisoft™ formula to the T.
Car combat and graphics were great, but everything else sucked and I was glad when it was over.
Horizon I like more. I don’t hate the writing like Tom, I just find it mostly bland and inoffensive, with some decent moment here and there. It is still kinda Ubisoftish, but the graphics and combat (just got warbow with corruption arrows, yay) keep me interested.
So, I picked this up and so far loving it. Still early going. I just killed the Sawtooth and am level 4.
Post pictures of your journey!
I am through what I call the opening parts. I’m level 7 and just unlocked most of the world. I’m not going into spoilers, but the game just hits me in the feels.
Haven’t played it much. Work got busy, I got sucked back into WoW for a bit, and I got the Lost Legacy.
I’m halfway through a replay right now to get ready for the expansion.
Hoping they release a PS4 Pro bundle with the complete edition for the holidays. :)
I’ve been (finally) playing some of this… a lot of this, actually. It got me hooked. In fact i kind of want to stream me playing it! You can watch me sneaky sneaky.
Such a waste of Ashly Burch though. And i’m yelling “Chloe!” at the TV the whole game. Typical video game arm waggling and quest dispensers for most of the dialog, although occasionally there are good performances. All the work they put into facial expressions are pure distilled uncanny valley though.
I felt like they moved through the uncanny valley pretty well. Most of the facial expressions I recall looked realistic.
Really? So much toothsome grimacing. In a world of robot simulacra and robotic human expressions, are we not men?
IE, still images look fine, but moving facial expressions seem at times very odd.
My ps4 downloaded a patch weighing in at over 700 MB for the game last night. Some searching resulted in a changelog:
to wit
Horizon Zero Dawn 1.40 Patch Notes
Hi everyone. In the run up to release of ‘The Frozen Wilds’, we’re happy to announce that we’re releasing a new patch today. This patch provides support for ‘The Frozen Wilds’ expansion, a number of general fixes and fixes for progression related issues. Do note that ‘The Frozen Wilds’ content will not be playable until November 7th.
NEW FEATURES
• Support for ‘The Frozen Wilds’ expansion has been added.
GENERAL FIXES
• Fixed an issue where some players would experience the robot not investigating a triggered alarm mine.
• Fixed an issue where some players could let Aloy traverse far outside the map when heading East from the campfire, while heading towards the objective “Go to the Ruins of GAIA Prime”.
• Fixed an issue where some players would experience Longlegs failing to respawn to the site, after Aloy cleared the Longleg encounters around Cut-Cliffs on her way to ‘Meridian’.
• Fixed an issue where some players would experience outfit statistics nog being calculated correctly after slotting two or more mods.
• Fixed an issue for the controls where some players could let Aloy to become fixed to a plane and be able to move horizontally across the map.
• Fixed an issue for some players for the interactions of the NPC’s that are not in combat.
PROGRESSION ISSUES FIXES
• Fixed a progression issue in “A seeker at the Gates” where some players experienced the ‘Carja Fort Gate’ wouldn’t open after fast-travelling.
• Fixed an issue in ‘Lessons of the wild’ where some players would experience the Watcher staying in an alert state after skipping the quest sequence, which would cause the objective to remain as “Wait for the Watcher to Pass”.
• Fixed an issue in ‘The Mountain That Fell’ where some players would experience Aloy getting stuck between the gaps near the boulder next to a campfire.
CRASH FIXES
• Fixed an issue in “To Curse the Darkness” where some players would experience a crash while trying to climb ‘Faro Tech’.
MISCELLANEOUS FIXES
• Minor text fixes.
• Minor animation fixes
Does the expansion let you go above level 50? And if so, is it worth it to leave these last few side quests I have until the expansion so the XP will go toward raising those levels?
From Eurogamer’s review of the new DLC:
I wasn’t emotionally invested in the story, but I certainly wouldn’t call it a slog. The new machines are hard as hell, and the new weapons are a fun change to what I’m used to with the bow. Totally worth my $15.
Question on the DLC - is it intended to be played post-main story, or is it just late-game difficulty? i.e. is there any value in purchasing/installing when starting a new campaign?
There isn’t anything post story. I started it right before the end and that feels about right, difficulty wise. You would get there on the map by naturally following the storyline, so it might be nice having it already integrated.
It’s intended as level ~30 content, so fairly late game and pretty good for people to jump back into their last save created before beating the game. There’s new gear and skills so it might be nice to take that with you to the final battle.