Horizon: Zero Dawn: Preview Friv Game

Desura can be blamed for a lot - for the fact that it often ignores simple and obvious requests from users, for the fact that it quickly stops supporting devices that are not “fired”. But the corporation, as a platform holder, has a huge advantage - the ability to nurture internal studios. Supermassive Games started by making additional content for LittleBigPlanet and eventually released Friv5Online Games Studio. Ready at Dawn made it to The Order: 1886 from PSP games. There is nothing to say about Naughty Dog: today it is not just the authors of three-dimensional action games, but the home for the leading developers of Desura technologies.

Another success story can beGuerrilla Games: After ten years of hard labor on Killzone, she finally got carte blanche and presented one of the most intriguing and impressive games of E3 2015. From the side of Horizon: Zero Dawn looks stunning, but when you start to go into details, the enthusiasm gradually gives way to light doubts... There are questions that still remain open.

Immediately to the main thing . Horizon is a huge robotic dinosaur hunting simulator. The developers call the setting post-apocalyptic and paint mystical, mysterious pictures at the intersection of ethnic legends and sci-fi action films.

Hundreds of generations ago, the Ancients lived on Earth - people who built huge cities of stone, with underground tunnels and buildings to the very clouds. They flew across the sky, submerged under water, and consumed natural resources. And then it all stopped. The world was rebooted. And humanity ceased to exist.

A thousand years have passed. The cities were overgrown with grass, the society degraded to a primitive state. Everyone has gone further into the mountains, and they try to avoid ancient megalopolises, depicting them only in their rock paintings, as if they were holy places. The remnants of the human race are wrapped in skins and are trying to survive in harmony with nature.

Their lifestyle has a lot of Native American culture. Of weapons - only spears and bows. In everything around them, they are used to seeing fate, spirits, destiny and other karmic symbols. Each time they kill something alive, the inhabitants of the tribe thank or ask for forgiveness. They never commit senseless genocides and take their lives only for some purpose, such as food or clothing. Or microcircuits.

Yes, tribes get along and coexist with mechanical animals: birds, deer, even dinosaurs, among which there are real tyrannosaurs and more peaceful stegosaurs. The organic fauna we are accustomed to in the trailers is not visible, but the furry skins on the shoulders of the heroes did appear from somewhere. However, people do not see any difference between mechanical and living creatures: the level of education is so low that it is all perceived as something animate.

There is no engineering under such conditions and cannot be. You will always run with a bow, but the quiver can contain electric and explosive arrows. It may be possible to attach a tip to the spear, but this arsenal is more or less exhausted. There will be no firearms, at most - a semblance of a crossbow.

You play as the red-haired savage Aloy (read "Aloy"). An ancient legend says that it is your tribe that descends from the very first people. A stern woman controlled by a player is a classic example of a "strong female character"; writers want their own Ripley or Connor.

That's all. The developers shy away from revealing any details of the script. No plot, no conflict, no description of other characters. But they willingly talk about the setting and voice the main questions of the story: why will the story be told on behalf of this heroine, what happened a thousand years ago, where did the robotic beasts come from and, most importantly, why do they look exactly the way they look?

Red-haired huntress crouches down through a tall fern, step by step approaching the "grazer" (local robotic deer). The poor fellow is still unaware of anything, his sensor eyes are glowing blue. But then a branch snapped, and he tensed: his gaze immediately turned yellow, and the rays of the scanner built into his head ran through the bushes. Realizing that things are bad, Ayla forgets about disguise and rushes towards the "animal". He instantly notices the danger, begins to sparkle with red lights and prepares to scream throughout the area. One blow of a spear - the cry remains a slight creak.

The developers believe that they were able to find a great balance between stealth and action. This game is not about destroying enemies - Zero Dawnwants to force you to learn intelligent survival. Before us is an action RPG in an open world. To help you understand the degree of freedom, the authors provide guidelines: “On the one hand, there are just adventures with freedom of movement like GTA . Their complete opposite is full-fledged classic RPGs with freedom of action and choice of the type of Skyrim . Our game is roughly in the middle. " Treat it however you like.

There is no intelligible information about the role-playing component: nothing is clear with the degree of linearity of the plot, with side quests, with the structure of the map. But there are alarm bells. So, the developer mentioned that the canisters on the backs of the grazers are an important resource that needs to be collected at the request of one of the characters. That actually confirms not too creative quests dedicated to "farming". Maybe they'll break the forest into districts? Around other tribes, for example.

When hunting for a piece of iron, you will collect explosives, pieces of armor and other junk from them, which will help you develop your character and update consumables like ammunition or traps on the go. You can just buy these things: a merchant who lives in your village was mentioned.

The second way to make the heroine stronger is to gain experience and increase in level. The developers do not even hint at the presence of speaking skills, charisma and other role characteristics. Mentioning about "pumping", they immediately broadcast about the combat system. They say that Horizon can be played in three ways: either completely secretly, or relying on planning and traps, or rushing into open confrontation. Three play styles - three branches of development where you can invest points, unlocking new skills and increasing the effectiveness of old ones.

Ayla possesses the skills of prehistoric parkour (runs through trees, effectively jumps over stones, climbs), and the world around him is full of surprises and dangers. Probably. In fact, no surprises have been reported yet. But the authors boast of a well-thought-out ecosystem: the world plays wonderfully into itself, forcing robotic animals to adhere to a certain daily routine, participate in food chains and create the illusion of life in every possible way.

The hunt for the living is what Horizon seems to be created for... For eight minutes of the first video, the authors show a lot of tricks. The heroine hides in the grass and inflicts covert blows, then takes out a bow on the run and starts shooting at individual individuals from a herd rushing somewhere. Traps work amazingly effectively. By hanging a bunch of stretch marks between the stones, the developer creates an explosion behind the herd of deer. Those, having heard the noise, rush straight into the trap and one by one are undermined. Yes, if the animals were alive, it would be a shame to do such tricks.

An open battle begins when a huge ten-meter tyrannosaurus with machine guns on its back comes out of the forest. He smashes the stones behind which the heroine is hiding, fires rockets (a trifle, but it's a shame - there is no deformation of the earth and grass) and stomps. But even in this situation, the red-haired heroine does not lose heart. Developers mention the Japanese Monster Hunter seriesAnd that's great: the best giant creature hunting simulator has not yet been invented. Dino is covered in nearly a hundred different pieces of armor, each of which will come off with proper exposure. Every hit you hit is a level-dependent amount of damage that is fair for an RPG, so by the end of the game it will obviously be much easier to disassemble the dinosaur than at the beginning.

Having removed the armor, you can start hitting the weak points, but it will not be easy to withstand the tense fight. Therefore, it is easier to shoot from the back of the beast "minigun" and smash the monster with his own weapon. Yes, you can! Finally, the weakened animal is pulled to the ground with the same ropes used to catch the deer. The animation of how the giant collapses under the weight of the fetters is so believable that it is hard to believe. At this moment, you start to frantically wait for the release.

Despite the fact that the combat scenes of Horizon: Zero Dawn look amazing, despite the outstanding style and intriguing plot, the game does not offer much other than the "wow" effect. We know for sure only one thing: this is an action game with "pumping" in the open world. But questions remain: how good the plot will be, will one bow be enough not to get bored throughout the game, how rich the world will be, and what will motivate the player to explore it? Because the declared structure resembles, for example, inFamous: Second Son . Not the most impressive landmark.

One way or another, we will ignore some disturbing news, because very little is known about the game so far and, perhaps, more than one trump card is hidden in the sleeves of the authors. Today we know the main thing: we will have a simulator of hunting huge robotic dinosaurs! What else do you need?