Remembering Horizon: Zero Dawn — a Game about Technology with a Human Touch

With its messages about life, annihilation, and legacy, it’s no wonder Horizon still strikes a chord in a gamer’s heart.

Imagine Earth, years from today. Human progress has peaked and stalled. Society has gone back to being hunters living in huts, while once-obedient technology has transformed into dominant and intelligent robots. A new “Metal World” has bulldozed nature, leaving only traces of the world we know now.

You remember Horizon: Zero Dawn: Guerilla Games’ open-world action adventure with a futuristic view, starring a red-haired girl who ventures into this metallic world to understand it, learning her own story simultaneously.

I tried other Play Station 4 games, but none of them feature a tenacious woman saving a post-apocalyptic world from artificial intelligence gone rogue.

Horizon captured me with its beauty, art, and multi-layered story. Apart from the fluid mechanics and developers’ creativity I was sold on, I couldn’t help but feel the presented concepts of life, death, heritage, and human progress close to my heart.

Press Start to Begin

Horizon is not a game where you can press a button when it gets hard and win. It’s a game where the main hero is severely underpowered as opposed to her enemies, which she can only defeat with strategy and weakness exploitation.

Aloy, the main character, has to hit certain spots in the machines’ bodies with specific type of arrows (manmade arrows versus machine— that’s the kind of ill-equipment is at stake) to inflict damage, weaken, and destroy.

The effort that’s gone in coming up with the characteristics of these animal-looking robots still impresses me today.

It’s a battle game but it’s not gory. There is some violence but nothing too bloody. What I like most, is that ultimately you are killing machines — but as you do, they simply collapse, having run out of power. Plus, all these battles take place in a breathtaking post-apocalyptic world, on a field with stunning scenery or old ruins that were once a city.

You can’t help but feel like you’re both a hunter and being hunted, surrounded by creatures more powerful than yourself, in a world that has lots of memories you will never know.

She, the Leader

The protagonist Aloy is a young, witty and relentless woman – a lone wolf. It’s amazing how big the woman figure is in Horizon: Aloy not knowing who her mother is and following her own story throughout the main plot; women rule in this world, with tribes being led by alpha females; and essentially, the creator of Horizon and the next world being an intelligent and determined woman.

This is not just about shaking up the gamers’ world and putting a woman in the centre, fighting battles and saving the world with a spear and a few primitive arrows. It’s about women in STEM, female leaders, men and women working the same jobs in an important time — there is a lot in Horizon a feminist would like.

Your Home, Earth

When you first start playing, it feels like you are in a sprawling forest high on a mountain. This quickly changes though, once you start seeing remnants of cars, dilapidated buildings, and ultimately a destroyed, once-developed world that has surrendered to mother nature.

Horizon is a beautiful game. But in its beauty, it’s buried scary predictions about what the world might look like. It has embraced death and destruction.

Climate change is not expressly mentioned, but as you remember, the manmade robots started feeding on biofuel and spreading across the world, disturbing eco balances. Aloy walks through dead desserts, luscious jungles, fertile lands, and snowed-in horizons. You can find all of the weather extremes, discovering flora and fauna that generally sparks rather than breathes.

Welcome home.

A Game for Your Heart

Horizon leaves an impression because it’s not a mindless killing game. Through an elaborate story and a relatable character, it touches on profound themes that strike a chord.

The Mother Figure

The story is ignited by Aloy deciding to find who she is by discovering who her mother was. This simple concept of one’s mother in life is enough to make everyone feel like this is a worthwhile journey. In the end, it is sad to find out there is no such person, but it’s okay because Aloy’s mother lives in her, in a way.

Human Progress

You will know that the profitable corporation “Faro” decided to make the robots, dedicating their killer instinct and scary intellect to fighting future wars. A “glitch” in their programming however meant that the only war society would be fighting was against these very machines.

Our intellect, abilities and resources know no boundaries. I enjoyed the contemporary spin on Horizon, but it’s also food for thought. A successful company that wants more and tests the limits of technology is not a novel idea. It could happen today. Our strive for progress is presented in the game with careful consideration, which also lays out some worrying predictions. It made my gameplay exciting and kept me guessing. It also left a metallic taste in my mouth about how wrong AI can go.

For the Next Generation

Despite it being a game about destruction and apocalypse, Horizon is about hope. GAIA, the “good” IA, left a seed of hope to a world that surrendered to its own achievements, which became too much to take. It gave new life, allowing a phoenix to raise from the ashes.

What are we going to leave to the next generation? We have new and smart technologies, developed urban areas and improved quality of life compared to years ago. Horizon made me think how badly this can go if not careful with the power at hand. And if a game can make you think about this with such finesse, it’s no surprise that it remains such a pleasure to get lost in.

“… being smart will count for nothing if you don’t make the world a better place. You have to use your smarts to count for something, to serve life, not death.”