Horizon Zero Dawn Review [SPOILERS]

The game begins near the very beginning of our protagonist’s life. As a baby, she is cast out from the Nora tribe and raised by Rost, a fellow outcast, while her true origins and parents are still unknown. The baby is presented before Teersa, a High Matriarch of the Nora, and given the name Aloy. Aloy grows up under the eye of Rost, learning to survive and fend for herself despite being an outcast. During her childhood, she finds a device from ancient times called a Focus. This device allows Aloy to scan and learn more about objects in the world. The Focus comes in handy when dealing with the Machines, hostile robots that inhabit the world, especially since they have become more aggressive as of late. Aloy decides to train to enter the Proving, a tournament of skill for the Nora. If she wins, she will be accepted into the tribe she was cast out from at birth, and she will also learn more about her origins. 

Years later, Aloy has grown up and is finally ready for the Proving. Before the tournament, she meets several people, including some from outside the Nora lands. These people include Erend, a soldier from the far off city of Meridian, and Olin, who is also from Meridian and has a Focus just like Aloy’s. On the day of the Proving, the entrants run a race through a natural obstacle course. Aloy falls behind, but takes a more dangerous shortcut to get ahead and ultimately win the Proving. She is declared the winner, when suddenly the Proving is attacked by mysterious cultists. Nearly everyone is killed, and Aloy is fighting for her life. She holds most of them off, except their leader, Helis, who grabs her and is ready to throw her off the mountain. Suddenly, Rost appears, fighting off the cultist and ultimately sacrificing himself to save Aloy. 

Aloy awakens after the Proving massacre inside the Nora’s sacred mountain, where Teersa explains that she was found as an infant in front of a sealed metal door, which the Nora claim is a godlike figure known as All-Mother. The Nora High Matriarchs then anoint Aloy as a Seeker, allowing her to leave the Nora to explore the world and uncover the true nature of her origins. Aloy decides her best bet is to follow the trail of Olin, which means going to Meridian. In Meridian, Aloy reunites with Erend. The two investigate Olin’s empty apartment, and learn that he was working with the cultists, who call themselves the Eclipse, due to them holding his wife and child hostage. Aloy also learns that the Eclipse are after her due to her apparent resemblance to someone named Elizabet Sobeck. Upon following his trail further, Aloy finds Olin as well as members of the Eclipse. After defeating the cultists and the corrupted Machines they control, Aloy sees a vision of HADES, an entity that is seemingly controlling the Eclipse. 

Aloy then receives a transmission to her Focus from a man named Sylens, who implores her to explore more of the ancient ruins. Aloy agrees to do so, and it is during these expeditions that she learns a great deal about the true nature of her world. Through scanning data points in the ruins with her Focus, Aloy learns that where she is was once known as Utah in the United States over 1,000 years ago, and that the ruins are from a company called Faro Automated Solutions. In the distant past, CEO Ted Faro expanded FAS into building war machines, and top scientist Elizabet Sobeck quit the company over it. Some years later, the war machines went berserk. Due to the lack of a backdoor override and the fact they could self-replicate while using biomass as fuel, the machines became virtually unstoppable. It was at this point that Elizabet Sobeck came up with a plan to save the earth from what became known as the Faro Plague: Project Zero Dawn. 

Aloy heads to another facility, located beneath the Eclipse headquarters, and learns about what Project Zero Dawn was and how the final days of humanity went. Through a recording of a U.S. military general, it is revealed that Operation: Enduring Victory, in which the remains of humanity had to fight off the Faro robots for as long as possible in order to buy more time for Project Zero Dawn, was a falsehood that they were never going to win. Project Zero Dawn was not a superweapons program that would save everyone, rather it was a terraforming program called GAIA that would brute force the codes needed to shut down the Faro robots, then terraform the planet back to an inhabitable state after all life went extinct. As Aloy explores the Project Zero Dawn facility, she learns that GAIA had numerous other subsystems that performed different functions, such as APOLLO, a database containing all of humanity’s knowledge and culture. HADES is also one of GAIA’s subsystems, a failsafe designed to bring about another extinction in case the initial terraforming process failed in some way. It is here that Aloy obtains a copy of Project Zero Dawn’s alpha registry, which finally allows her to enter the door in the Nora mountain. However, she is captured by Helis and the Eclipse. 

Sylens helps Aloy escape the Sun Ring, and she heads back to the Nora, and helps them fight off an invading horde of Eclipse cultists and corrupted robots. Aloy is then finally able to open the door inside the Nora sacred mountain, and it is here that she learns the true nature of her own existence. Through an audio recording from GAIA, she learns that a mysterious transmission caused HADES to go rogue. GAIA tried to self-destruct to stop HADES, but failed and lost control of its machines, causing them to be hostile. As a final failsafe, GAIA used Elizabet Sobeck’s genetic material to create a clone that would be able to destroy HADES and restore the terraforming functions. That clone was Aloy. It is here that she has an existential crisis, realizing that she has no parents and her existence is entirely a function of GAIA. However, she still has a task at hand, and must secure the master override to stop HADES before it can destroy the world again. 

Aloy is bowed to and deemed the Anointed by the Nora upon leaving the mountain facility, but she is furious at them for doing so, citing the hypocrisy of them bowing to her after they cast her out and treated her horribly for her whole life. She then goes to retrieve the master override, and it is here that she learns the final fate of Dr. Sobeck and the rest of the Project Zero Dawn team. Near the end of the project, the secret facility’s location leaked, and would be discovered by the Faro robots if the door wasn’t shut fully from the outside. Dr. Sobeck went out to do so, and ultimately sacrificed herself. Meanwhile, after the rest of the team finished the project, Ted Faro decided that in order for humanity’s mistakes to not be repeated again, their previous knowledge must not be preserved. Faro then destroyed APOLLO and killed the remains of the Project Zero Dawn team. This is why humanity is in the primitive state that it is in during Aloy’s time. Aloy gets the master override, and Sylens then reveals that he founded the Eclipse after being tempted by HADES and his promises of knowledge, but HADES turned on him as he realized the truth.

At this point, the final battle is here. The Eclipse begin a siege on Meridian, and HADES-controlled robots lay heavy fire upon the city. During this final battle, Aloy encounters Helis once again, and finally gets her revenge for what he did at the Proving, avenging Rost and all the others who lost their lives that day. Aloy then fights through the battle, reaching the Spire where HADES is transmitting from. After defeating a massive Deathbringer robot, Aloy uses her spear to stab HADES and use the master override, shutting down the machines and saving humanity. Afterwards, Aloy goes to the final resting place of Elizabet Sobeck and listens to one final recording. In a post-credits scene, Sylens captures HADES in a containment device, intending to interrogate it further about the transmission that made it go rogue in the first place.

Horizon Zero Dawn had a great deal of things that I liked about it. The story was very intriguing, and I often went out of my way to find as many data points as possible to uncover the lore of how humanity destroyed and ultimately revived itself. It was a haunting experience to hear the accounts of how the world ended from the Project Zero Dawn team, all the way up to their tragic end at the hands of Ted Faro, who may be the biggest villain in all of this.  I found Horizon Zero Dawn to be a very unique take on a post-apocalyptic game, taking place in the 22nd century while also being very nature-focused. Aloy is also pretty likable as a protagonist, and I was able to empathize with her at many points throughout the story.

I also liked the gameplay of Horizon Zero Dawn. It’s an open-world game, a genre that has somewhat been done to death over the past twenty years or so, but it’s still an enjoyable one when done right. The game offers a beautiful world to explore, and more importantly plenty to do in it. As you traverse the world, you can gather resources to craft items such as weapons, health potions, and outfits. I liked the outfit feature as it offered a degree of character customization while also providing different benefits, such as the Banuk snow outfits offering increased freeze protection. There are also a number of side quests throughout the game, providing additional activities besides the main story to complete. 

The main enemies in the world are the Machines, which are very powerful and can easily kill you if you don’t know what you’re doing. Each Machine is like its own boss fight, with weaknesses to find and exploit in order to kill them and stay alive yourself. Some Machines are much more powerful than others, with heavy hitters like the Thunderjaw and Rockbreaker taking a lot of effort to bring down. 

Another feature I absolutely adored was the Photo Mode. I’ve played a few other games that had this feature, such as the Forza Horizon games, but it’s absolutely perfect for Horizon Zero Dawn. There were countless points throughout the game that I had to stop and take a photo of the beautiful world around me. The game holds up really well graphically. I played it on a PS4 Slim at 1080p and I was still very impressed at how it looked. 

To conclude, I loved the time I spent with Horizon Zero Dawn. The story, worldbuilding, gameplay, and graphics were all very impressive and well done. If you haven’t played it yet, the game is pretty accessible. Since the PS4 game sold so well, there is an abundance of copies out there, and I was able to get a copy of the Complete Edition (which includes the DLC), for around nine dollars. Additionally, the game is available on PC via Steam, and there is also a remastered version of the game on the PS5 and Steam that came out in 2024. I would highly recommend Horizon Zero Dawn, and I now consider it one of the better new IPs of the last ten years. I look forward to revisiting this game when I get to the DLC expansion, The Frozen Wilds, as well as eventually playing its sequel, Horizon Forbidden West.