Horizon Zero Dawn‘s Devotion to Loneliness Makes It a True Solitary Experience

WhenHorizon Zero Dawnfirst released five years ago , its giving draw play was the protagonist Aloy exploring post - apocalyptic America and fighting robot fauna with just a bowing and various arrows . That , plus the whodunit surround the machines and the big world , drew fans deeply into Guerrilla Games ’ open world action - RPG at a time when the PlayStation brand was more typically consociate withguided cinematic experienceslikeUnchartedandThe Last of Us .

As Horizon ’s story begins right , Aloy ’s been an outcast for her entire life . Found as a baby by the High Matriarchs of the Nora tribe , she was placed into the care of the outcast Rost because the Matriarchs believed that since she did n’t have a human mother , she would be a curse on their the great unwashed . compound with Aloy ’s obsession with find out where she came from , it ’s a self-coloured hook to set up a story of a young lady becoming a hero and traveling the world ( well , post - apocalyptic Colorado and Utah ) . But it ’s the way that the story manage Aloy ’s isolation from her peers all the more interesting .

Before the climactic battle against the rogue AI HADES and his Eclipse cultist in Zero Dawn , Aloy finally gets the solution to her parentage that she ’s been look for : not only is she a knockoff of Elisabet Sobeck , the charwoman who give the planet a second luck at life during the original simple machine ascend hundreds of age prior to the issue of the game , her birth only come about to as a design to restore the other AI and stop HADES . The revelation feels a bit overdone , but it does its business in underlining just how alone Aloy she sincerely is in this world .

Image: Guerrilla Games

Being alone and an outsider is something the game never lets you block . With her modern Focus earpiece and the power to commute political machine to her side , Aloy ’s reckon as an leftover , albeit utile tool for those who need her help . ( Other time , her closing off is treated as a small muzzle , such as the recurring bit where NPCs flirt with her and she just shrugs it off . ) The only person in her travels she could possibly relate to is Sylens , but it ’s decipherable through Lance Reddick ’s overblown performance that he just ca n’t stand other people , and does n’t even strain to form a resonance with Aloy . Their kinship is purely transactional , as he only regards her as the net key to the answer he spent years searching for .

So many open world game and RPGs in the AAA space do n’t really countenance you be alone , even if they ’re undivided thespian affairs . Mass Effect and Final Fantasy always let you fetch company members along for the ride ; From Software ’s beloved Souls games , while relishing in the despair bestow about your player fictional character ’s often solitary trek through their unflinchingly harsh worlds , are equally built around the idea of community , and hammer solidarity in that connection to other player . Even Legend of Zelda : breathing time of the Wild , a secret plan with quite lineal comparisons to Horizon , celebrate Link constantly colligate to the soul of his dead friends who aid him in fight . The moments where you ’re decease from your party are n’t abysmally retentive , and ally are often just a release flick aside .

Horizon considers Aloy ’s loneliness as important as the machines she faces . The belief of being an outsider is unvarying , whether it ’s due to her aforementioned technological prowess in a world that is otherwise no longer equipped for it all , or just by the simple act of her constantly move from one new settlement to the next , seeing and leave behind the families and friend that interact with one another the . The biz never unlimited states it , but you get the sense that while Aloy enjoys cope with masses and explore new settlements , she feels more at home being away from them , out in the wild with just her bow and spear . There ’s something liberate that comes from research the land after exiting a settlement , calling a mount to collect resource and explore technological secret tarry underground , left with only your thoughts as the player , and Aloy ’s , for company .

Graphic: Jim Cooke

They don’t know I’m the savior of the human race. Oh wait, they do?Image: Guerrilla Games

While the next plot in the serial publication , Forbidden West , will bring over many of Aloy ’s companion from the first game , it ’s not as wide-eyed as have them by her side changing that tone . “ She still finger like an foreigner , ” said story theatre director Ben McCaw in aPlayStation Blog . McCaw would afterwards tellGame Informerfor its cover account on the sequel how she would “ discover that it ’s lonely being a savior . It in reality winds up being a big part of her bow as a character … this idea of take the domain on her shoulder . ” What ’ll be interesting to see with the second installment of this saga wo n’t be if Aloy get wind that friendship is magic , but if it ’ll commit to lease her feel at peace on her own while also having the support arrangement she ’s needed her whole life . It ’s nice to have friends , but sometimes , you just have to get forth from it all and take some time for yourself .

Horizon Forbidden West releases on PS5 and PS4 on February 18 . Zero Dawn is out now on microcomputer and PS4 .

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They don’t know I’m the savior of the human race. Oh wait, they do?