Looks like Guerilla Games is sticking to their guns and throwing you into Horizon: Zero Dawn to fight guerilla-style. Most games come with some sort of starter tutorial to ensure that you won’t get torn to pieces within the first five minutes of the game. Guerilla doesn’t seem to believe in that, and they’re encouraging the players to figure out how to defeat the robos themselves.
Art director Jan-Bart van Beek elaborated on the different weapons and ammo types, saying that there are certain ways to use the weapons that are more or less “right” for the situation and robos involved. These are things that the developers want you to figure out yourself.
This approach carries over to the storytelling aspect of the game, too. “You won’t find us in any interviews explaining what the robos are, why they are there or how they came to be,” van Beek tells VideoGamer.com in an interview. Players are expected to explore the world and study how the robos interact and react.
Horizon’s RPG system is meant to help players unlock perks through gaining XP, giving them a better chance at defeating the bigger robos. There are two main ways to upgrade your character: keep earning XP and unlocking perks, or use the harvesting and crafting system to get better armour plating and weaponry. The choice of pacing is up to the player.
Some might say this is a lazy approach on the developers’ end, but it sounds like a good challenge. A lot of games tend to spoonfeed basics to the player, taking away from their immersion in the game’s world.
Horizon: Zero Dawnhas no confirmed release date, but will be exclusive to the PlayStation 4.
