Horizon Zero Dawn Preview

We still don’t know much about Horizon Zero Dawn besides the basic premise and the gist of its combat and gameplay, so it’s good to see Eurogamer attempting to shed some light with a new preview that includes some quotes from the developers. Overall, it’s not clear how much of an RPG the title is going to be, but it does sound like it’s going to at the very least be interesting:

The little we know about the game beyond its combat remains impressively cohesive, keeping its attention squarely focused on the thematic and systematic possibilities of these robots and the fantasy of being a futuristic-prehistoric hunter-gatherer. Aloy is a master craftsman; using natural materials and robot parts to build new weapons, ammo types, tools and traps will be perhaps the most prominent element in the game’s lightweight RPG system. There are echoes of The Witcher and Monster Hunter in the idea of tracking down a powerful mechanical dinosaur to extract some rare component for your next bow. The game’s “loot economy” will extend past the player to the varied tribes of this post-Earth: we’re shown concept art of a bazaar where traders in robes haggle over machine parts, and the frame for the demo is that the canisters on the backs of the grazing robots are a critically important resource to one of the tribes.

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“We always felt that we wanted to have a female protagonist for this game, we felt that it fitted best… it has always been Aloy for us.” he says. “We were looking for a character that was sort of agile and clever and strong at the same time: so the characters that we used as reference were Sarah Connor from Terminator, Ripley from Alien.” He doesn’t shy away from her resemblance to the Game of Thrones character Ygritte, as played by Rose Leslie in the TV series, calling the fearless Wildling a recent inspiration and a “nice coincidence”.