Horizon Zero Dawn/Horizon Forbidden West

I'd say this being about Hephaestus is a pretty solid guess, especially since the connection between him and volcanoes is more than merely being the god of them; his counterpart in Roman mythology was Vulcan whom volcanoes were literally named after.

edited 13th Jun '17 4:04:45 PM by Jaustin89*

Hopefully we get some new critters in there somewhere and maybe a couple new weapons. Nothing much but it would be much appreciated.

Who watches the watchmen?

Yeah, new gear would be cool... but I dunno what they could do to make it distinct from what's already in the game. I've said before that I feel this game has too many weapons. I'd rather see a smaller selection of more distinctly different weapons with a greater degree of customisability, and not limit ammo types to any one weapon, because that makes no damned sense at all.

Anyway, that's for a sequel :P

Tangentally, I find it weird that she's wearing the Shield Weaver armour in the trailer. I wouldn't have expected a developer to showcase something that's only a step or two down from an invincibility cheat in a trailer like that.

Maybe it's a hint to how difficult the enemies will be. "Not even the Shieldweaver will save you, mwahaha"

edited 14th Jun '17 7:33:41 AM by KusaMigeru

... And that's called jazz!

That did cross my mind :P

I think it'd be cool if you could do things like whipping human characters around into each other with the wire caster, or stunning groups of humans with the tear blaster /tear arrows.

I'm pretty sure the combat with the robots was inspired by something they did with sweet spots on a competetive shooter game they did before, so I'm sure they could do some creative stuff like that if they wanted to.

Well, you sorta can stun people with tearblast arrows - or actually, throw people around. I was doing the Sunstone Rock quest and wanted to headshot a target with a precision arrow. But my finger went the wrong way while selecting the ammo and I shot a tearblast. It basically knocked my target over, and I had to engage directly.

should I say it took me some time to figure out why my arrows weren't doing damage

... And that's called jazz!

I just set them on fire and kill the survivors after.

Who watches the watchmen?

Melee combat being more interesting would be good, but I think that's a thing for a sequel, really.

Adding an auto-lock camera function (but not for targeting, just normal camera) would be nice. Someone has complained about it (or something related) and maybe some other people might have found trouble with that as well.

Now, there are some problems with that. You need a dedicated button for that, and all of them are taken. We have two buttons for the bow: one for aiming and one for holding and shooting. We could assign all those functions to just one button, Monster Hunter-style, and leave the auto-lock to the other.

But maybe Guerrilla didn't do it because otherwise it might be more difficult to cancel a shot, forcing you to evade (and possibly give away your position) or to waste a shot. MH has no problems with bow ammo (since it's technically infinite) nor stealth, because all-out battles are the norm there. So yeah. Any thoughts?

... And that's called jazz!

I dunno that there needs to be a lock-on button, but just a straight-up automatic lock like Assassin's Creed or the Arkham games might be nice. What I meant was more in the way of more variety in attacks instead of just light and heavy. Maybe some dodge counters (dodge at just the right time, get a counterattack, kind of thing).

It's just that melee combat is useless against almost every enemy you encounter, and if it comes to close quarters it's usually because you failed to kill something before it got close :P It's kinda just in there because it has to be. The most useful thing the spear does is subvert enemy machines.

Did anyone ever use traps? I think I only used them in the beginning when the Shadow Carja guys attacked at the Proving, and after that, I completely forgot about them.

Don't think I ever used them against people, but I used them sometimes against machines. The tripwires or proxy bombs always seemed like a better bet though.

I used them on a regular basis to lay ambushes and help stop a charging bot.

Who watches the watchmen?

I started going melee a lot more after upgrading the spear and getting the Shieldweaver. Knocking some machines down and then shooting at them became so much easier than straight up shooting...

... And that's called jazz!

For the trial where you have to stealthily kill two stalkers I just straight up ran in there and wacked them to death with heavy blows from the regular spear, and I got a blazing sun. :P

edited 23rd Jun '17 7:26:06 PM by xanderiskander

If you leave no witnesses it still counts as stealth! I guess.

Instructor: Aight, you gotta show that you're expert at stealth hunting. Catch your prey swiftly and quietly, and the prize is yours.

Aloy: lolno *jumps into the bushes* LEROOOOOOOOY JEEEEENKIIIIIINS

>wins a Blazing Sun

edited 24th Jun '17 6:01:16 AM by KusaMigeru

... And that's called jazz!

Patch 1.30 adds new game plus, ultra hard mode, and new trophies.

Yeah - the challenges saying "You must learn patience.... now go slaughter some machines in under a minute!" - that kinda swerved me. I don't like time challenges as a rule, but these were fun. I'd have preferred .

I'm looking forward to the DLC - hoping that they simplify any new weaponry a little...

I finally beat Horizon and loved it.

My chief complaint however was that once you start going into sidequests and stuff the game really overuses death. I mean yeah it's post apocalyptic but the majority of the people you meet either die or a loved one of theirs die. It was surprising at first but after a while it just really stops having any effect. The surprise switches to being surprised that everyone actually involved in a quest survives

The Frozen Wilds release date properly announced as 7th November.

edited 7th Aug '17 7:39:52 AM by artfulscruff

deFinally got around to playing this and it's been a blast. Just finished the Proving and meeting Aloy's "mother"..

Right off the bat I've noticed:

• Matriarchy's pretty heavy in this world - All-Mothers, Sister Matriarch, Womb of the Mountain, a quest for the mother instead of the father. What interested me was when Rost died - the male parental figure dying in a somewhat pitiful fashion (come on Rost, you expect Aloy to roll down a mountain to safety with a throat wound, but you with your little stab wound couldn't roll yourself down with her.
  • Funny enough I don't think Aloy has shed a single tear over it yet, which reinforces her as a strong warrior but also struck me as notably different from what I'm used to seeing in video games. Compare Dom's death in Gears of War 3, or Johnny's death in Saints Row 3 - I expect these dramatic video game deaths to hurt and motivate the protagonist, but Aloy seems to be handling it pretty well. I feel like there's going to be some kind of "emotional flashback side mission" dealing with Rost later, though.
• Aloy can actually keep pace with NPC's during conversational transitions - I've always hated how Assassins Creed and Red Dead Redemption and Fallout force you to walk behind people but you have to awkwardly pace behind them, running means getting ahead of them and throwing off their pathfinding, walking means falling behind and the AI waiting on you. Aloy, however, is walking at the same clip as Tereesa. I was ecstatic to see that.
• This game doesn't do much for you in terms of tutorial - I remember seeing clips of Aloy tethering giants to the ground and eagerly awaited the moment the game would teach me about this. Granted, I'm not very far, but I just saw the gadget that lets you do that in Karst's shop. It's just sitting there and from the looks of it I'll be teaching myself.
  • This is a little problematic for me because I've gotten into the habit of playing free-roam games/RPG's in-character and not doing senseless things like farming for Shards or hunting animals repeatedly until the narrative demands - not the healthiest playstyle admittedly. As such, I feel like I'm about to miss out on an especially fun part of the game because I haven't gone out of my way to visit Karst repeatedly.
  • I can't seem to recall the game teaching me how to melee enemies either, whereas it did have Rost teach Aloy how to shoot a bow and make medicine, so I was a little cautious about attacking or even approaching machines at first.
    • It might seem obvious. Clearly you're supposed to just figure it out - it really isn't hard - but it seems a little disingenuous to offer in-story moments/character development for Aloy where she learns how to perform basic gameplay actions (shoot bows, climb, sneak, gather resources) but then ignore something as basic/intrinsic to gameplay as spearing machines and rolling out of combat. (It's kind of like if Grand Theft Auto V started off by teaching you how to move the camera and then put you into a plane and had you parachute into a building)
• There's a bunch of cool animations - Aloy crawling up steep surfaces, rappeling, stealth takedowns - but my favorite, presuming I didn't imagine it, was this cool little sideways flip Aloy did when I had her sprint towards an outcropping and vault over it. I haven't been able to replicate it but it looked damned cool.
• It took me 15 minutes to realize that Aloy's voice actress is Ashley Burch, who voiced another favorite character of mine in another game.
• Combat can feel a little awkward at times when an NPC is yelling the same 2-3 lines of dialogue over and over, but mechanically the only issue I've had is forgetting which button causes Aloy to slam her spear into a robot's chest cavity and which one opens the weapon wheel so I can reload. As you can imagine, this has led to some amusing stealth failures.
• During The Proving gauntlet, right as Aloy says, "They had the village, I had the wilds..." I accidentally ran her right over the bridge to her death. So far that's been my first and only death.
• The world map is pretty intimidating but the first few areas - Mother's Watch and Mother's Heart - are so visually stimulating that travel is actually a breeze. My only complaint is that I picked up a Level 25 side mission in a part of the map I couldn't get to, the mission that appears after you pick up your first power cell.
  • Though at least it's not like Assassin's Creed (yet) where I have to race through dungeons in under 4 minutes to get any sort of reward.
• I'm in love with Ashley Burch Ashley Burch's voice-acting.
  • That said, some of the micro-dialogues/side mission dialogues look and sound terrible. Aloy always crouches down to speak with someone. I hate picking a dialogue option that seems "further along" in a conversation, like when you ask Rost a question and he'll tell you to leave the matter be and get back to the task at hand, but then Aloy can ask him a totally different question that he'll answer passively. Or when you're talking to Olin and asking him some pretty forward questions when he clearly wants to be left alone.
    • For all of the imagination put into the various little things Aloy can and will say - complaining about the rain, fearing a huge incline when she's about to race down a hill, calming herself when the machines stop looking for her - it's a little irritating that she can't just exit a conversation and has to go through the motions of saying farewell to someone.
  • Did I mention I love Ashley Burch Ashley Burch's performance? I'd imagined Aloy as having a more Nariko-like personality from what little of her I'd seen in the first trailer and promotional images, The fierce wit and dogged loyalty caught me by surprise.
    • Now while I'm not too fond of her bedside (2) manner, she still comes off more human than protagonists like Delsin Rowe or Talion.
    • There was one quote from one of my aborted early saves when I was looking for Olara's brother and Aloy had just climbed a tree and been spotted by a Scrapper. She goes, "It's going to be a bad day for one of us," right as I engage it. The sarcasm in her voice just sold the line to me.
• Bast described a scar he gave Aloy when he threw that rock at her. I swear, I have a pretty big TV and I can't see a single scar on her, some blemishes, but no scar.

edited 11th Aug '17 12:54:29 PM by Soble

I'M MR. MEESEEKS, LOOK AT ME!

Melee only really starts to make a difference once you get certain skills. I'd say I just hit a machine with a heavy attack or two until it falls to the ground, then Critical Hit and repeat the process. Most part of the time the long-ranged weapons feel much more effective and less dangerous, though.

And there's also size: small machines aren't usually trouble for the spear, but some others are too big for this tactic to work at all

Oh, and glad to see you're enjoying the game. It's gonna get even better.

edited 11th Aug '17 12:20:06 PM by KusaMigeru

... And that's called jazz!

I've typically resorted to just stealth killing the crap out of them. :p I got bored with this and switched to melee for awhile. This didn't work too well on the Saswtooth and I nearly got wrecked but, fortunately, I managed to damage it's legs somehow and slowed it down enough that flicking a few arrows at it brought it down.

I feel confident enough to melee the Watchers, Scrappers, and Striders - even those cultist dudes - but in the beginning they gave me a brief "tutorial box" that said something about knocking a machine over and it vanished before I could finish reading it. It just felt awkward because there wasn't a segment of the prologue introducing me to the spear or how to use it. You just have it the moment you step out into the world.

edited 11th Aug '17 12:38:36 PM by Soble

I'M MR. MEESEEKS, LOOK AT ME!