feotakahari

 I’m thinking about Horizon Zero Dawn in relation to Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon. Both of them get a lot of mileage from messages left behind just before the apocalypse, and what people thought about when they knew they were going to die. In Fragile Dreams, this sort of tragedy is the game’s bread and butter. In Horizon, it’s something that occurs in between death-defying adventures through the remnants of the old world.

Fragile Dreams does a lot of things right. The message from the suicide bomber, when he realizes the world is going to end before he gets the chance to end himself, is one of the most chilling things I’ve ever heard. But it’s also an emotionally draining endurance run, and I reached a point where I couldn’t even have reactions anymore. I think Horizon is actually a better game, because the heroism makes the loss sting all the more.

It's interesting because it's clearly lifting mechanics from games like Dark Souls, where the fantasy world used to be beautiful before everything went to hell and zombies started killing everyone. But it's not a fantasy world; it's our world a few decades in the future, and the catastrophe that ruined everything was climate change. And instead of a mournful look at a fallen world, it's a bitter satire of corporate greed and shortsightedness. 

I got to thinking, what would it look like if a game took place in our future, but it had a genuinely Dark Souls-like tone and attitude? And suddenly, I understand why Horizon Zero Dawn feels like such a weird game to play. Gameplay-wise, it's a relatively conventional action sandbox game, but the tone is 100% fallen-world, and the criticism of modern corporations isn't satirical; it's dead serious.