Horizon: Zero Dawn - Open World 'Design by Subtraction'

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Mark Brown's (aka Game Maker's Toolkit) video about Design by Subtraction [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmSBIyT0ih0] is the video that really made me realize why my favorite games resonate so much. My favorite games are mainly the ones that focus on one specific thing and being the best at that specific thing. After watching that video a year or so ago, I realized it's because those games only focus on their core without adding extraneous elements that would only dilute the experience. So many games nowadays, especially since the open world trend started, basically just throw in elements that are just there because every other game has it (like say crafting or Arkham combat) instead of having said elements because they support the core of the game. And that brings me to Horizon and how it accomplishes only supporting the core experience by basically using common elements found in many games both properly and in a reserved manner.

-The open world itself supports both the theme and mechanics of the game, an actual rare thing in most open world games. Firstly, the open world is required to house the game's machine enemies. And, the world itself isn't very big but focused on density and diversity instead. From the thematic aspect, the open world also fits perfectly with Aloy's journey of discovering a world she doesn't know. Even the core story never has "the end of the world" looming in the background while Aloy partakes is some pointless quest or mini-game. Everything you do in the open world feels like something Aloy needs to do on her journey. Even highly regarded games like Witcher 3 fail at that aspect.

-The quests themselves are very limited in number with the game having less than 50 actual quests. Now, Horizon doesn't have the best designed quests by any stretch, but every one of them is there for a reason regardless of the quality of the quest itself. Most games have you come to a new city and you see at least 10+ NPCs with exclamation marks above their heads whereas in Horizon, there's like 2 NPCs that are quest givers per city. The game isn't going to artificially extend or pad anything for game length.

-The collectibles are very reserved in nature and are always there for world building purposes (whether old world or new world). The first "wow" moment I had in Horizon was picking up the first Metal Flower and the box popping up saying 1/30 instead of 1/100+. Horizon has basically Ubisoft's radio towers with the Tallnecks but there's only 6 of them (not 20 or so), they fit the world in their function, and they're like 100 times cooler than a radio tower. Horizon's vantage points, again, teach you about the world. Nothing feels like you're just doing it because it's on a to-do list.

-The combat was designed completely with fighting the games large machine enemies in mind. The obvious downside was that the human combat was average at best. I'd rather the combat support the core game experience than the other way around. For example, Witcher 3's combat should have prioritized monster combat as witchers are monster hunters; however, it was obvious the combat system was designed with humanoid combat in mind thereby making monster combat just "meh" instead of the highlight of the game it should've been. I feel Horizon needed the human combat for thematic purposes because the story wasn't just machines=bad, humans=good obviously. I just wish the combat was better, giving just a couple more melee options like say a juggle move to hit enemies in the air then shoot them with a bow would be a great addition to the sequel.

Horizon isn't some revolutionary open world game that reinvents the wheel. It merely took already established game elements seen in many many games but applied them in a manner to support the core game instead of diluting it. Everything you did as Aloy felt like something Aloy needed to do to complete her journey and that's why Horizon resonated so much better then the latest flavor-of-the-month open world game.

 

[stroopwafel]

I really wanted to like this game but got really bored by it. The graphics were exceptionally pretty and I also liked the designs of the mechanical dinosaurs and the fluidity of the animations was also really well done but the entire game between fighting the dinobots was just tedious, and I generally like open world games. There wasn't any variety in weapons other than the bow and gathering all the resources to craft new arrows was a chore(espescially considering you use the bow as a rapid fire weapon) and fighting the human enemies was crap. The story hinged on an interesting premise espescially when you discover the origin of 'project HZD' but the other half of the story, that of Aloy and the tribal drama, didn't grab me at all.

You compare HZD with Witcher 3 which I think is a kind of stupid comparison(considering they don't have a lot in common other than the open world setting) but Witcher had a lot more going for it. More than the sum of it's parts the game kept me engaged for 100+ hours while other than the encounters with the mechanical dinosaurs HZD didn't have much else I found particularly enjoyable.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

The combat, platforming, riding bot traversal, crafting, hell everything involving gameplay was honed to near perfection and felt butter-smooth. Melee was merely "ok" because it was so basic, but still felt alright. Plus it is one of the best looking games around by far. Riding a Broadhead up to a Tallneck for instance and just watching closely how it walks is enough to realize GG put some serious time into making these machines feel like authentic inhabitants, as with all the other smaller ones.

The ironic thing is the prologue feels very basic and almost clunky as a kid, but I think they did it on purpose to show the growth in Aloy's abilities once the game really opens up.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I really wanted to like this game but got really bored by it. The graphics were exceptionally pretty and I also liked the designs of the mechanical dinosaurs and the fluidity of the animations was also really well done but the entire game between fighting the dinobots was just tedious, and I generally like open world games. There wasn't any variety in weapons other than the bow and gathering all the resources to craft new arrows was a chore(espescially considering you use the bow as a rapid fire weapon) and fighting the human enemies was crap. The story hinged on an interesting premise espescially when you discover the origin of 'project HZD' but the other half of the story, that of Aloy and the tribal drama, didn't grab me at all.

You compare HZD with Witcher 3 which I think is a kind of stupid comparison(considering they don't have a lot in common other than the open world setting) but Witcher had a lot more going for it. More than the sum of it's parts the game kept me engaged for 100+ hours while other than the encounters with the mechanical dinosaurs HZD didn't have much else I found particularly enjoyable.

There was pretty good variety in the combat, I would literally choreograph step-by-step how to take out certain enemies. Sure, the game might've been better with one less bow and some different weapon, but you still had slings, traps, the rattler, ropecaster, and the tearblaster. The machines themselves allowed for variety like breaking off weapons and hitting fuel/cold/electric sacs. You could even tearblast off a sac and then shoot it on the ground to go off like a bomb or shoot a sac on a dead machine to explode hitting the one you're currently fighting. There was a boring optimum combat strategy but you didn't have to utilize it; same could be said of Witcher 3 as well (quen and axii spam).

I was comparing very specific elements of Witcher 3 and Horizon (like the open world setting). In Witcher 3, Geralt was rushing to find Ciri yet took time to play gwent or do sidequests that had nothing to do with finding Ciri. Whereas in Horizon, everything you do in the game is something important for Aloy to experience on her journey. And how both characters (Geralt and Aloy) are basically monster hunters yet Witcher 3's combat did not prioritize monster fights while Horizon did; fighting humans in Horizon wasn't good but fighting monsters in Witcher 3 was as crappy as the human fights in Horizon. Horizon focused on what the core of the game needs to be about and Witcher did not in several areas. Witcher 3 even succumbs to the Ubisoft/AssCreed issue of putting 100s of icons on the map when most of those things to do are the same thing over and over again like diving for treasure and monster nests. I could go on and on about what Witcher 3 did wrong (as I found nothing gameplay-wise that was ever fun or satisfying) but I focused on how Horizon used it's open world to support its core while Witcher 3's open world served to dilute it.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

I .... like H:ZD. But honestly the open world feels kind of lifeless and didn't inspire in me that feeling of awe that Breath of the Wild did. There's too much garbage on display, sure you can turnit off but given that you do 5 little tallneck climbs and have everything you need to navigate effectively, the exploration feels counter-intuitive.

In Breath of the Wild, sure you cn climb towers ... unlock part of the world .... but there is enough verticality to each location that simply plotting a course from Point A to Point B is sufficiently occulted by tree cover, ravines, mountain ranges, all of which you can scale and cross but requires investment and planning to do so ... well it creates a sense of adventure and you rediscovering the landscape.

In H:ZD it didn't seem to sum up the same sense that the world had effectively lost something. Sure, there were mournful aspects as you piece together lives of pre-Horizon humans facing annihilation ... but it does so in a way that is effectively a collectaphon of stuff that ultimately only goes so far as to reward you contantly having to switch modes to analyze your world. In Breath of the Wild, or hell even Fallout 3/NV/4, paints narratives of places simply through stuff you discover without relying on anything more convoluted than direct notes written by people.

The annoying aspects of BotW (like the memories) in order to get the good ending are a hell of a lot more abundant in H:ZD, and of which saves itself from their ignominy solely by the idea that they are inconsequential to actually completing the game.

H:ZD also has a problem that BotW suffers in spades only late game. Add onto this the lack of complex miniquests that demand of you more than; "Hey, this corrupted zone or bandit place ... deal with it, will you!? You can go in fighting like a woman possessed or you can use these obvious stealth parts to do it more quietly before going in swinging and shooting like a woman possessed! The options!"

That problem being that your character is insufficiently challenged once you level up enough only.

How the game handled stealth feels ... it kind of channels the worst aspects of Metal Gear Solid, but with fewer conqeuences for failing. I love the game, don't get me wrong ... but it feels like the world is separate from the people that live in it. And it could have done with offering more distinct terrain and biomes with biome specificities as well as some other reasons why I actually bother farming these big robots for parts I won't use.

It suffers that Shady Mordy problem of provoking warchiefs to boost their fighting ability, just so you can kill them and possibly get a slightly better rune, and then micromanaging your runes ... only add on the tedium of highly limited inventory space or stuff you can't just dump somewhere like in any other open world, loot heavy game.

Also suffers from the Shadow of Mordor/Assassin's Creed problem of...

 

[sXeth]

I mean, there's the actual documentary from Guerilla themselves where they say they started with post-apocalyptic giant dinosaur robot fighting and worked the rest out from there. That would seem to contradict the idea that the open world was designed around the core concept or the story, when there's then random bandit outposts entirely of humans lifted straight out of the AC/Far Cry model.

I don't say this as a condemnation of the game (which IIRC I had at #3 for 2017), but it fits in with the known narrative of "Hey them Killzone guys" doing a 390 degree flip to make this kind of game that they pulled a lot of inspiration from other sources to fill out their premise. That was kind of why I have a higher level of criticism for Breath of the Wild where a veteran team just seemed to deliver a shallow (Less level design, less narrative/writing, less mechanics, less unique combat challenges) variation of something they had done before, just in bigger format.

Horizon does at the start handle the marriage between "actual plot" and "open world" somewhat well. Within the open world genre anyhow, it avoids the obvious pitfalls of having imminent calls to action that make the exploration/side activities seem bizarre (until it doesn't, which is around a third in IIRC), and gives a character that has reason not to know the world well. Although that shouldn't be a hard bar to clear, and "child who's forced out into the world by tragedy" is almost the default cliche to do so.

Horizon also does that one really oddball thing I've noticed obtrusively in multiple open-world games. Fixed spawns. Spawn points/zones are kind of understandable, otherwise you'd probably get weird junk spawning inside a building or up a tree or whatever. But Horizon (and Dragons Dogma, and Destiny) has the odd path of often (barring a handful of premade roadside encounters) having spawns that are always the same thing, every single time. Particularly memorable was a Thunderjaw that just always hangs out on the main road between the Nora lands and Carja. Not being particularly strenous about fast travelling ,and bouncing on side-quests, I passed the rare and dangerous beast dozens of times, killed it a few times (rimarily by exploiting the fact that much like the MMOs fixed-spawn logic comes from, Horizon also has leash mechanics keeping the thing from pursuing you properly)

 

[stroopwafel]

I was comparing very specific elements of Witcher 3 and Horizon (like the open world setting). In Witcher 3, Geralt was rushing to find Ciri yet took time to play gwent or do sidequests that had nothing to do with finding Ciri. Whereas in Horizon, everything you do in the game is something important for Aloy to experience on her journey. And how both characters (Geralt and Aloy) are basically monster hunters yet Witcher 3's combat did not prioritize monster fights while Horizon did; fighting humans in Horizon wasn't good but fighting monsters in Witcher 3 was as crappy as the human fights in Horizon. Horizon focused on what the core of the game needs to be about and Witcher did not in several areas. Witcher 3 even succumbs to the Ubisoft/AssCreed issue of putting 100s of icons on the map when most of those things to do are the same thing over and over again like diving for treasure and monster nests. I could go on and on about what Witcher 3 did wrong (as I found nothing gameplay-wise that was ever fun or satisfying) but I focused on how Horizon used it's open world to support its core while Witcher 3's open world served to dilute it.

I'd say it's exactly the other way around. The Witcher 3's world felt incredibly authentic and 'lived in' with a genuine sense of place while the world of HZD was obviously just designed around the dinobot fights. TW3's world you just want to keep exploring as it never really sets in routine or predictability(espescially characters or story beats could take unexpected turns at any moment). Sure, combat in Witcher isn't the best but combined with the well designed background stories and strong characterization it motivates to keep playing. Compare to a game like Nioh which has superior combat but is lacking in everything else: nonsensical story, weak level and environmental design, poor variety of enemies and zero sense of adventure. In Witcher even the question marks were mostly attached to some kind of neat little piece of story that enriched the world. It's a game that(despite not being the best in the gameplay department) manages to keep you invested in a way that many other games with superior gameplay don't(espescially the time it takes to complete TW3).

Looking back on both games I remember TW3 as an engrossing and memorable experience while HZD is just a profound 'meh'.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I was comparing very specific elements of Witcher 3 and Horizon (like the open world setting). In Witcher 3, Geralt was rushing to find Ciri yet took time to play gwent or do sidequests that had nothing to do with finding Ciri. Whereas in Horizon, everything you do in the game is something important for Aloy to experience on her journey. And how both characters (Geralt and Aloy) are basically monster hunters yet Witcher 3's combat did not prioritize monster fights while Horizon did; fighting humans in Horizon wasn't good but fighting monsters in Witcher 3 was as crappy as the human fights in Horizon. Horizon focused on what the core of the game needs to be about and Witcher did not in several areas. Witcher 3 even succumbs to the Ubisoft/AssCreed issue of putting 100s of icons on the map when most of those things to do are the same thing over and over again like diving for treasure and monster nests. I could go on and on about what Witcher 3 did wrong (as I found nothing gameplay-wise that was ever fun or satisfying) but I focused on how Horizon used it's open world to support its core while Witcher 3's open world served to dilute it.

I'd say it's exactly the other way around. The Witcher 3's world felt incredibly authentic and 'lived in' with a genuine sense of place while the world of HZD was obviously just designed around the dinobot fights. TW3's world you just want to keep exploring as it never really sets in routine or predictability(espescially characters or story beats could take unexpected turns at any moment). Sure, combat in Witcher isn't the best but combined with the well designed background stories and strong characterization it motivates to keep playing. Compare to a game like Nioh which has superior combat but is lacking in everything else: nonsensical story, weak level and environmental design, poor variety of enemies and zero sense of adventure. In Witcher even the question marks were mostly attached to some kind of neat little piece of story that enriched the world. It's a game that(despite not being the best in the gameplay department) manages to keep you invested in a way that many other games with superior gameplay don't(espescially the time it takes to complete TW3).

Looking back on both games I remember TW3 as an engrossing and memorable experience while HZD is just a profound 'meh'.

I took his comments as basically meaning, Horizon?s strengths are its machine fights and supplementary gameplay mechanics, and the world housing them doesn?t overly burden you with anything else outside of what supports those encounters.

I would never consider The Witcher 3 to be anything close to Horizon or vice-versa aside from both being open world games. TW3 does a lot of things, but from a gameplay perspective nothing really stands out as being a must-buy for imo. I personally enjoy the series for its whole being greater than the sum of its parts, whereas I?d consider Horizon to be the exact opposite.

 

[Cold Shiny]

H:ZD design is genius. My favorite recent open world games are this and Nier: Automata.

Both games understand that less is more, and their worlds are much smaller and more intimate than their competition. Smaller world means more detail, more emphasis on worldbuilding, and mechanically, questing is less annoying.

 

[stroopwafel]

I took his comments as basically meaning, Horizon?s strengths are its machine fights and supplementary gameplay mechanics, and the world housing them doesn?t overly burden you with anything else outside of what supports those encounters.

I would never consider The Witcher 3 to be anything close to Horizon or vice-versa aside from both being open world games. TW3 does a lot of things, but from a gameplay perspective nothing really stands out as being a must-buy for imo. I personally enjoy the series for its whole being greater than the sum of its parts, whereas I?d consider Horizon to be the exact opposite.

Yeah, exactly. The machine fights in HZD are awesome but this alone doesn't really support the kind of drawn out experience open world games tend to be. Despite being vastly different games I had the same problem with Nioh. Incredibly fun and rewarding combat but way too long when it had little else going for it. Atleast for me when you have a game that is dozens of hours long it needs a kind of intriguing world or story to keep you invested or that isn't too formulaic in it's approach. Otherwise you just fall into this repetitive loop of doing the same thing over and over. The only games that can get away with this are games with tons of emergent gameplay like for example Far Cry or Monster Hunter World. If HZD had more variety than just the bows and besides the machine fights there was a really good open world shooter in there as well I probably would have enjoyed it more. Either that or make the world more compressed and ditch all the filler stuff like the fights against the human enemies. Getting to the good parts just took way too long in HZD.

 

[sXeth]

I would never consider The Witcher 3 to be anything close to Horizon or vice-versa aside from both being open world games. TW3 does a lot of things, but from a gameplay perspective nothing really stands out as being a must-buy for imo. I personally enjoy the series for its whole being greater than the sum of its parts, whereas I?d consider Horizon to be the exact opposite.

I'd put more specifically gameplay focused titles like Monster Hunter as the more direct opposite. But semantics.

Witcher 3 (and probably the other 2, though I only played a bit of the first one) does not strive to really stand on its gameplay. Its an audio/visual adaptation of a novel series. Which gives a certain weight on the narrative side. Though also comes with its own batch of flaws. An RPG progression system for a veteran Master Witcher who should logically already be well past it, and storytelling quirks that work when you're reading about a character, but not when you are playing *as* the character (typically this occurs when the character is doing something that the character has knowledge and context for, but hasn't been imparted to the player to understand why they're doing it)

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I would never consider The Witcher 3 to be anything close to Horizon or vice-versa aside from both being open world games. TW3 does a lot of things, but from a gameplay perspective nothing really stands out as being a must-buy for imo. I personally enjoy the series for its whole being greater than the sum of its parts, whereas I?d consider Horizon to be the exact opposite.

I'd put more specifically gameplay focused titles like Monster Hunter as the more direct opposite. But semantics.

Witcher 3 (and probably the other 2, though I only played a bit of the first one) does not strive to really stand on its gameplay. Its an audio/visual adaptation of a novel series. Which gives a certain weight on the narrative side. Though also comes with its own batch of flaws. An RPG progression system for a veteran Master Witcher who should logically already be well past it, and storytelling quirks that work when you're reading about a character, but not when you are playing *as* the character (typically this occurs when the character is doing something that the character has knowledge and context for, but hasn't been imparted to the player to understand why they're doing it)

That?s an irksome elephant in the room. It?s probably why I?ve gotten more into Kingdom Come: Deliverance since it gives better context. You start out as a nobody and gradually gain experience through simply doing things. From there you can apply another layer of more specific perks which could be considered gamey, but it adds to the strategy since they typically have pro?s and con?s. I.E. horse can run faster but carry 20% less, or carry more but run 20% slower. It?s nice to be riding to a destination and see a ?New Level in Horsemanship? pop up instead of having to ration a pool of collected XP to whatever from merely doing whatever.

It?s a natural system that works well, and hasn?t felt that tedious yet after about 40 hours. I?m curious to see how the new God of War handles progression too. I?ve read the director was adamant on having a strong ?why? for everything, so I?m hoping for something similar. It?s also cool to hear that you can still wander around after completing the story to find stuff you might have missed.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I .... like H:ZD. But honestly the open world feels kind of lifeless and didn't inspire in me that feeling of awe that Breath of the Wild did. There's too much garbage on display, sure you can turnit off but given that you do 5 little tallneck climbs and have everything you need to navigate effectively, the exploration feels counter-intuitive.

H:ZD also has a problem that BotW suffers in spades only late game. Add onto this the lack of complex miniquests that demand of you more than; "Hey, this corrupted zone or bandit place ... deal with it, will you!? You can go in fighting like a woman possessed or you can use these obvious stealth parts to do it more quietly before going in swinging and shooting like a woman possessed! The options!"

That problem being that your character is insufficiently challenged once you level up enough only.

How the game handled stealth feels ... it kind of channels the worst aspects of Metal Gear Solid, but with fewer conqeuences for failing. I love the game, don't get me wrong ... but it feels like the world is separate from the people that live in it. And it could have done with offering more distinct terrain and biomes with biome specificities as well as some other reasons why I actually bother farming these big robots for parts I won't use.

It suffers that Shady Mordy problem of provoking warchiefs to boost their fighting ability, just so you can kill them and possibly get a slightly better rune, and then micromanaging your runes ... only add on the tedium of highly limited inventory space or stuff you can't just dump somewhere like in any other open world, loot heavy game.

I found HZD's world interesting to explore in sorta the same way I found Shadow of the Colossus meaning there was just something about it that made me wanna go and checkout every area even though there was really no reward for doing so; HZD had no loots/rewards to find for example. Plus, it was interesting what new machine or combination of old machines you'd stumble upon as well.

I don't mind the lack of complexity to the side stuff. The corrupted zones made perfect sense with regards to the story/world and they also upped the challenge a decent amount. The bandit camps are by far the biggest stretch with regards to "fitting in". It makes sense there would be bandit camps, but as far as Aloy caring about bandits, it really doesn't. It would've been nice to have Aloy ambushed at one point by bandits and captured and needing to break out, then meeting that one guy afterwards and doing maybe 1 or 2 more bandit camps. Even with that added in, that's like 3 at most bandit camps that would probably feel about right.

HZD does get really easy once you understand how all the mechanics work, not necessarily because you leveled up as new weapons didn't actually do more damage. I merely house-ruled out the OP stuff like the sharpshot bow and corruption arrows. You do have a lot of options on how to take out the machines if you think past just doing stealth or rambo basically. You could knock off say the fuel sac and shoot it on the ground for an explosion, you can also detonate the sacs on killed machines to help you take out what's left, you could fight on a mount to great effect. One of the coolest moments was whistling for a mount as a rockbreaker was chasing me, getting on the mount, then plugging it with freeze arrows.

I think the stealth is fine with regards to the machines but obviously pretty silly with regards to human enemies (the game's weakest point). I don't really get the complaint about farming or killing machines for the mods. You could buy any parts you needed for a new weapon or whatever so you never needed to farm for rare drops (and even then the rare drops are hardly that rare compare to most rare drops in other games). There was really no point in farming for mods because getting that highest possible bonus mod for say fire wasn't crucial to a "build" for example, getting a 42% fire increase mod when you already had a 41% fire mod hardly made a difference in combat. I never ran out of inventory space for mods as you got new ones, old ones became useless basically so sell them.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I'd say it's exactly the other way around. The Witcher 3's world felt incredibly authentic and 'lived in' with a genuine sense of place while the world of HZD was obviously just designed around the dinobot fights. TW3's world you just want to keep exploring as it never really sets in routine or predictability(espescially characters or story beats could take unexpected turns at any moment). Sure, combat in Witcher isn't the best but combined with the well designed background stories and strong characterization it motivates to keep playing. Compare to a game like Nioh which has superior combat but is lacking in everything else: nonsensical story, weak level and environmental design, poor variety of enemies and zero sense of adventure. In Witcher even the question marks were mostly attached to some kind of neat little piece of story that enriched the world. It's a game that(despite not being the best in the gameplay department) manages to keep you invested in a way that many other games with superior gameplay don't(espescially the time it takes to complete TW3).

Looking back on both games I remember TW3 as an engrossing and memorable experience while HZD is just a profound 'meh'.

Basically what Hansel said in his reply.

I definitely give Witcher's world a more lived-in/organic feeling for sure. I don't feel Witcher 3 really needed its open world though. I didn't really enjoy exploring much because everything was so same-y looking. Any time I did plot a course to checkout some structure on the map, it was really disappointing like a broken down house; realistic and organic but not very interesting. Doing the quests takes you to all the interesting parts of the world so I quickly stopped exploring. Plus, you had the enemies usually always bothering you and the combat just wasn't fun. In Horizon, you could put on stealth gear and just run around without having machines attacking you when you didn't feel like fighting them.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I mean, there's the actual documentary from Guerilla themselves where they say they started with post-apocalyptic giant dinosaur robot fighting and worked the rest out from there. That would seem to contradict the idea that the open world was designed around the core concept or the story, when there's then random bandit outposts entirely of humans lifted straight out of the AC/Far Cry model.

Horizon also does that one really oddball thing I've noticed obtrusively in multiple open-world games. Fixed spawns. Spawn points/zones are kind of understandable, otherwise you'd probably get weird junk spawning inside a building or up a tree or whatever. But Horizon (and Dragons Dogma, and Destiny) has the odd path of often (barring a handful of premade roadside encounters) having spawns that are always the same thing, every single time. Particularly memorable was a Thunderjaw that just always hangs out on the main road between the Nora lands and Carja. Not being particularly strenous about fast travelling ,and bouncing on side-quests, I passed the rare and dangerous beast dozens of times, killed it a few times (rimarily by exploiting the fact that much like the MMOs fixed-spawn logic comes from, Horizon also has leash mechanics keeping the thing from pursuing you properly)

I've watched a NoClip documentary on Horizon. I totally know the pitch was post-apocalyptic robot dino hunting and that was basically it. That's fine, that is the core of the game and everything in the game is designed to support that core in my opinion (outside of a minor exception here or there). Guerilla brought in people to help at stuff they weren't good at like writing and quest design (from literally Witcher 3's dev team). The most surprising aspect of that NoClip documentary was that Guerilla let ‎John Gonzalez come in and have so much input and power. ‎Gonzalez was like we have to take out all the big animals because it doesn't fit the story I'm putting together that actually makes robot dinos make as much sense as possible and Guerilla agreed to do that even though they had gameplay for Aloy riding animals. Most games are developed where the concept and levels are basically done and the writer has to string it all together somehow whether it's a game like Mirror's Edge or even Uncharted and it becomes rather obvious when playing most games. The fact that the head writer and the rest of the dev team worked together in that manner for Horizon really made the game so much better.

Yeah, the bandit camps are probably the weakest aspect in both gameplay and in actually meshing with the rest of the game. I'll copy and paste what I said above about them here:
"It makes sense there would be bandit camps, but as far as Aloy caring about bandits, it really doesn't. It would've been nice to have Aloy ambushed at one point by bandits and captured and needing to break out, then meeting that one guy afterwards and doing maybe 1 or 2 more bandit camps. Even with that added in, that's like 3 at most bandit camps that would probably feel about right."

Yeah, the spawning of enemies could be better. I think if you had the enemies just move/travel around after spawning, then that would make enemy locations a lot more dynamic. I do think enemies should be in certain areas at least and just having say 3 enemies spawn based just on RNG wouldn't really work out that well either.

An RPG progression system for a veteran Master Witcher who should logically already be well past it, and storytelling quirks that work when you're reading about a character, but not when you are playing *as* the character (typically this occurs when the character is doing something that the character has knowledge and context for, but hasn't been imparted to the player to understand why they're doing it)

So many aspects of Witcher 3 don't flow and essentially contradict each other and progression is one big one. I don't get why CDPR didn't just do a Mass Effect 3 where you get a ton of skill points to allocate at the start so Geralt isn't a level 1 character. Then, the whole loot system in the game just doesn't fit with Geralt being a master witcher at the start and the fact that you'll find and most probably use witcher gear at like level 15 or so. Geralt ain't even allowed to hold a level 2 sword at the start, I get it's to limit your DPS for combat purposes. However, even Horizon accomplishes that better as when Aloy gets new weapons, the damage stays the same, the weapons just give the player more combat options. What increases your DPS in Horizon actually comes from understanding the mechanics like status effects and certain skills Aloy gains like double/triple shot along with hunter reflexes. I always feel RPG progression feels better when DPS increases due to character leveling or weapon leveling instead of getting just plain better weapons. Anyway, back to Witcher 3, it's loot system is only relevant for awhile because then the aforementioned witcher gear contradicts the whole loot system. Once you find the witcher gear you want (cat, bear, etc), you simply just go over to blacksmith every 5 levels or so to upgrade your gear so the loot becomes pointless outside of selling it but like most games, you really don't need money for much. Thus, coming full circle, Horizon greatly succeeds at having just about all its elements there supporting the core game while many games fall into many pitfalls of adding stuff just to add it while not realizing it's really just diluting the core game.

 

[sXeth]

Yeah, the spawning of enemies could be better. I think if you had the enemies just move/travel around after spawning, then that would make enemy locations a lot more dynamic. I do think enemies should be in certain areas at least and just having say 3 enemies spawn based just on RNG wouldn't really work out that well either.

Yes, you'd need regional preferences generally. Even ignoring the simulation of animals (like the snapjaws being near water), from a strict gameplay sense, you don't want total RNG with multiple Thunderbirds spawning right outside the start and wiping the new player.

The fixed spawns are a bit of an odd one. It seems almost like a missing sidequest or something in some cases, like the Thunderjaw on the main road.

Granted, the Ubiopenworld games with more randomized animal spawning also have hilariously bad animal behaviours and AI, and dodgy animations and hitboxes along with it (to say nothing of the nonsense in survival games like Ark or 7 Days). So there could be some internal engine reason why they couldn't drop things wherever.