E3 2015 - Horizon Zero Dawn Dev Demo

At the Sony E3 Press event, there was a lot of buzz going around for a number of games, but one game grabbed my attention and it was a new IP, Horizon Zero Dawn. While the game grabbed my attention from its visuals I wanted to know more about it, thankfully I had the chance to sit down with the games director and studio head and watch it be played live.

It was in a very small room off the show floor that this demo took place and it was the same section of game that we saw at the press event, though this time it was controlled by Mathijs, the games director while Jan Bart talked about the game and what the team wanted to do. First we got some back story on the world, nothing spoiler related of course, no matter how much I asked, but still it is a good concept.

The game is set 1000 years in the future and the old human cities that people saw in the trailer are to the humans of this world like the pyramids are to us, relics of civilizations from ancient history and they are so unknown to the humans of this world, they don’t enter them. Instead they make life work like tribes, living off the land and while some tribes are large and wield power, there are those that are small but still able to do things like hunt, which is what the tribe your character Aloy does.

Of course, if you have seen the trailer then you will know that Aloy does not hunt deer and such, she hunts machines, but they are not what we expect, they are animals in machine forms. The first creature that we encounter is called a watcher, a long, snake like machine, with legs though that help it get around. It is true to its name sake and keeps watching for threats to the heard. If they spot a threat they will send out an alarm, which if you can’t stop them in time they will call in some larger help, which is something that you want to avoid.

As Aloy moved close to the grazers, the deer like creatures with the canisters on their backs, two massive Thunderjaws came through the clearing. These creatures are massive, the size of which becomes super apparent later, but by staying out of sight, they pass on by with no issues, except one of them appears to be damaged. Sparks are actually coming from the first of the two and when you compare it to the second one, it's missing armour from a variety of places. Once they have passed it is time for the hunt to begin in earnest and this is where things get tricky.

Using the bow, you can draw back and shot the canisters off the grazers, allowing you to collect your spoils, but as you would expect the moment that you make your move the heard is spooked and the creatures scatter and the direction that they ran towards is the same one that the Thunderjaws went, which results in the damaged one coming to their aid, something that does not work for Aloy. But Aloy is not without her tricks, in fact as the demo progresses we get to see her use a variety of tricks and weapons to bring the massive beast down.

It is really important to note that the arrow types that Aloy uses are not infinite, in order to create an explosive arrow, the machines must be hunted and resources gathered as the humans of this time do not have the knowledge to create explosives on their own, so they need to use the machines to do that. But you can’t bring down just any creature to create these arrow types, the larger the creature the better the resources. So there is a constant need to manage your arrows, so you don’t expend one type when you might need it later on.

After some furious combat the Thunderjaw is brought down, which brings us to the end of the demo, but there was now time for some questions. The first thing I had to ask was the design of the creatures, if they were inspired by animals, such as the deer like Grazers or if it was a combination of creatures, like the Thunderjaw. In response to this question the answer was very cryptic, while they do look like animals we know from modern times and history, they are built to serve a purpose, as for who built them and why, we will find out by playing the game.

The other question asked, by another journalist in the room was if Aloy was the only character you could play as, the answer was yes, but you can change her skills up, so each player will have a different experience. As Aloy levels, you will earn skill points that you can use to help your character grow through character specialisation. You will be able to go down paths like Hunter or a stealth path, depending on your preferred play style.

While I myself was not able to play the game, with it's blend of awesome futuristic setting, combat and open world gameplay, Horizon Zero Dawn was one of the games that stood out the most for me at E3 2015.