Recent reviews by Vogel im Käfig

The most important thing is no "Sweet Baby."
Remember, no Sweet Baby.

Spoilers alert!

Horizon Zero Dawn tells a "post-modern" story of the new human era after the downfall of contemporary human beings. The generation of new humans lost the advanced science and technology of human civilizations in the 21st century and returned to a medieval-like time, roaming in the wilderness with the war machines left on the earth. Aloy, the abandoned son of the Nora tribe and protagonist of the game, searches for the relics of the past human beings, explores the causes of the current situation of the world, and pursues his own meaning of existence.

The game adopts a familiar method of introduction found in Triple-A masterpieces, which explains the background of the story and takes gamers on a journey while introducing the operations of the game. Gamers are introduced to the childhood story of Aloy, the protagonist, who strayed into a cave by accident, uncovering the so-called ancient ruins, and finally escaping from it. From the cave, Aloy obtained the key prop Focus from a prehistoric high-tech civilization, which can be used for long-distance communication with other Focus wearers, checking the enemy's identity, interpreting prehistoric data and searching for enemy's weaknesses. This lay the groundwork for Aloy's "truth-seeking" in the game later. Then, after being pulled up from the cave by his adoptive father, Aloy climbed up the hillside and looked down at the world to welcome players to open their eyes for the first time in this world.



The power of Decima's game engine is amazing, achieving realistic rendering of vast and diverse vegetation on the earth as well as dynamic weather effects. The game includes many weather changes, from being sunny to windy, stormy and thunderous, as well as a variety of landforms and landscapes, such as deserts, snowy mountains, rainforests, and ice lands like in DLC. The rich and colorful natural beauty, enabled by powerful graphics, sets gamers on an unforgettable journey. In the combats, the graphics are amazing whether it is the sparks effect when the weapon collides with the machine, or the explosion effect when the mechanical beast falls to the ground, or the effect when the head of the Tallnecks is covered.


The main line of the story was set about hundreds of years after 2166, when human beings entered the mechanical revolution. Scientist Elisabet Sobeck created household machinery and environmental improvement machinery, and Faro Company, which helped turn these machineries into products, became the richest company in human history. However, just as Faro Company was popularizing military machineries to the whole world, terrible mechanical loopholes appeared in the machineries, causing them to become self-conscious. The mechanical armies went to total war with mankind and quickly wiped out many fighting forces of mankind. At this rate, all species on Earth would become extinct in the next few months. When Elisabet Sobeck learned of the disaster caused by Faro, he had no choice but to set up Project Zero Dawn. The core idea of the project is that, although the extinction of species on a global scale is inevitable, the seeds of life can be preserved. Although organisms cannot continue to survive, they can be continued by non-living organisms. In this way, there would be enough time to crack these war machines, and improve the earth's environment until it is suitable for living organisms again. Then, the seeds can be sowed to further improve the earth's environment. Elisabet Sobeck gathered elites from all over the world to secret bases all over the U.S. to carry out various ultra-large-scale work, including the construction of the gene pool of living organisms, the collection of human history, the records of national culture, the collection of languages, the preservation of various kinds of science and technology, etc. Due to the huge workload and only 18 months of time, governments around the world have decided to carry out false propaganda, calling on all mankind to block the machine armies with flesh and blood to buy time for the Zero Dawn Plan. This is a cruel and helpless decision.

Therefore, geniuses from all over the world jointly designed an ultimate artificial intelligence called GAIA to preserve the seeds and continue their work after human extinction. Since the ultimate goal is to sustain life, GAIA was designed to improve the earth's environment as much as possible, but what should be done if the environmental improvement fails? Scientists designed a module called "HADES" to help GAIA destroy everything, which is against GAIA's core mission of protecting the earth. Therefore, scientists should make sure HADES does not have greater authority than GAIA. To achieve this, they thought long and hard and finally came up with a shielding protocol that shields GAIA when HADES needs to operate, while still keeping GAIA in operation. HADES can operate independently of GAIA and shut itself down after the operation is completed. In this way, Project Zero Dawn gradually took shape in such haste.

Thousands of years later, the earth regained its vigor and vitality seen in the past. The rest of the machines have also become peaceful, but HADES suddenly lost control and wanted to destroy everything. GAIA immediately knew the situation and decided to destroy HADES by self-explosion. However, GAIA could not prevent HADES' body from escaping. So, before it was destroyed, GAIA used Elisabet Sobeck's DNA to breed what would grow to become Aloy later, as the final hope to stop HADES.

In addition, there are four tribes in the game, Nora, Carja, Banuk and Oseram. The Nora is a hunter-gatherer tribe who lives on the mountain and worships nature. The Carja are desert-dwelling city builders who worship the Sun. The Oseram are tinkerers known for their metalworking, brewing, and arguing.


In the game, the main character has 36 skills available, which are divided into three categories: "Prowler" concerns stealth, "Brave" improves combat, and "Forager" increases healing and gathering capabilities. They are unlocked by the skill points obtained from leveling up.

The fighting is mainly based on third-person shooting elements. Of course, the protagonist Aloy also has a spear as melee weapon. Melee weapons play a huge role in stealth. They can cause high damage to the enemy instantly and can also control machines by overriding their instructions.

The weapons used in the battle are bows at most. Besides bows and arrows, there are also rope mixers, slingshots and other weapons. Different kinds of bows and arrows have different attributes, including fire, thunder and ice. Fire can cause sustained damage to machines, thunder can make them stiff and paralyze them, and machines frozen by ice will receive additional damage when attacked.


Advantages: Excellent and magnificent graphics, smooth and exciting combats, and thought-provoking main plots.
Disadvantages: Limited number of weapons, relatively short main plots, and less well-rounded depiction of other characters.
(It would be even better if the PC version's frequent crash issues can be fixed.)