Didn’t think I’d ever be touching this game again, but I decided to get it during the Steam Summer Sale this year.
Seriously, how long has it been since I played this on my PS4? 3-4 years now. …WOW. Thought it would’ve been longer than that! That’s just nuts! So that means this PC port came out probably 3-5 months after when it was a PS4 exclusive?
Now this is the ‘Complete Edition’, including the latest bug fixes and the Frozen Wilds DLC. And I must say, the end of the DLC helps to (somewhat) answer some unanswered questions of the base game.
So, how does the game fair from the PS4 version? How’s the control mapping? How’s the graphics and the FPS?
Let’s say it shows the age of my GPU. When focused in another window and then going back to the game, the framerate tanks here and there as the game loads. There were also a few instances where apparently I was moving so fast the game threw me into the loading screen and then brought me back.
A few ‘hitches’ here and there when NPCs talk to Aloy. Just going to say the game wasn’t
as “buttery smooth” as it was on my PS4. Quite sad. However nothing major. All machine fights were pretty smooth with the occasional micro dips in framerate.
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Getting the game to run was a pain. First time I launched, the game appeared in my secondary monitor. And when telling it to appear in my primary, I suddenly had 1FPS that didn’t stop (even with restarting the game) until I had to Alt+Enter twice to force the game into Windowed mode. The only other issue was the lengthy 1-3 minute loading
screens (sometimes even when fast traveling).
Other than those issues, gameplay’s still as brutal as it was before. But remembering I beat on my PS4, I wasn’t about to use cheats to play it now. But remembering bits and pieces of the hell I went though (Corruptors, Deathbringers, Thunderjaws and Stormbirds always puts an “Oh man..” thought in my head).
The new machines in the Frozen Wilds… they’re even worse to fight. Can’t ‘cheese’ them. They have similar attacks to Ravengers, but do their lunge attacks a lot more frequently.
They’re very ‘jumpy’ and love charging head-on into you, giving you hardly any time to line up a shot. Even using the Ropecaster on them is risky, as the Frostclaws alone have managed to break out of my attempts to tie their ass down. They’re insane and can be seen as minibosses (IMO).
Stalkers are still annoying to fight, but I’ve learned a few Tearblast arrows gets rid of their main bullshit attacks (sniping and cloaking). At least it’s easy to know when Stalkers are around with the red proximity mines.
And well, that’s about it. Took about 4-5 days, but I beat it. I also completed (not 100% completed though) the DLC.
Spoilers are just below.
So this discusses the AI introduced into this DLC. Once known as ‘Spirit’, now officially known as ‘CYAN’. The wiki lists her as “Mini-GAIA” the fact she’s overseeing the Yellowstone caldera (to prevent the Supervolcano from erupting).
After Aloy ‘defeats’ the Daemon (aka HEPHAESTUS, another rogue subsystem of GAIA. The one that helped GAIA build the machines she needed to help get Earth’s atmosphere back to the way it was), CYAN answers some burning questions. And what she reveals is quite interesting.
Yellowstone National Park was shut down for this ‘Firebreak’ project, and a lot of crazy theories rose from it (one being how the government was creating mutated creatures).
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Ted Faro (infamously known for the ‘Faro Plaque’ that ended life on Earth) actually funded the Firebreak project. This was way before he created his ‘Peacekeepers’. He also helped reverse the very thing that affects us to this day– “catastrophic climate
change”. BIG OOF. :/
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HEPHAESTUS isn’t destroyed, infact it wasn’t even there to begin with. CYAN received a message. Being quite lonely, she assumed it was from “human survivors more advanced than the Banuk”. It had a trojan inside, that quickly took control of her before she could defend herself.
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CYAN assumes why HEPHAESTUS is “pissed”, is because its machines are hunted and killed. But to say “OK, then lets just stop hunting machines” isn’t going to change anything– the damage is already done. But the only way to fix this is repair GAIA.. a likely plot into Horizon Zero Dawn 2.
And that’s a ‘maybe’ all in itself. Some people theorize saving GAIA isn’t going to
stop HADES and HEPHAESTUS (and any other rogue subroutines out there), that restarting anew is the only way (which means wiping out everything all over again).
Maybe HADES is the ‘good guy’ here? Quite interesting.
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A speculation to the device found that’s part of a base game side quest, where Aloy discovers docile machines in a Banuk camp, could had been from the explosion
of GAIA trying to stop HADES.
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Aloy asks about the Metal Flowers. CYAN assumes they came from a scientist that worked on one of the subroutines for GAIA.
As for the poetry, CYAN assumes it came from its creator.
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Before leaving, Sylens chirps in happy that you found all of this data for him (once again doing nothing as usual). He kindly reminds you that both HEPHAESTUS and HADES “both want you dead”.
He continues on saying “one day, we may have to stop it”. Like in the next game, huh? Then Aloy tries to bring dirt she discovered about Sylens (of working for a ‘Banuk Conclave’), which he tries to shut her up.
Huh.. what are you hiding, dude?
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And that’s officially from me. I’m really curious on what will happen in the plot when the next game Horizon Zero Dawn 2: Forbidden West comes out on PC (probably sometime in 2023 or so).
Hopefully we’ll discover why it’s ‘forbidden’. Though I might do something fun and make
a Top Tier list for machine difficulty in the base game and the DLC. I’m pretty sure the new machines will be getting an ‘S’ ranking, while the Watcher might be getting the lowest.