Topic: What PS5 Games Are You Currently Playing?

Expand

@MaulTsir Yeah, that’s spot on about the world building in HFW. It’s such a unique mixture of modern day references, especially with the setting being here in the U.S. with locations I’m familiar with like Las Vegas and San Francisco, and then also being Sci-Fi. The setting is ancient/historical, modern, and futuristic/post-apocalyptic all at the same time and there really is not another backdrop like that out there. The mixture of old and futuristic, wooden spears and arrows with lasers and technology, tribal and simplistic with large corporate conspiracy, thatched huts with space travel… it’s fantastic. The writing gets a bit convoluted, especially with the cloning and the all the complex personalities and AI subordinate functions. I felt that the first game got so complicated with its storyline that I just got lost, and this game seems to have kept the interwoven storylines a little easier to follow. The dialogue is much better organized and delivered, and plot points receive their due attention before jumping to the next major twist.

With a story and lore as detailed and entangled as this, there’s inevitably been several points where I have to just suspend disbelief and just not focus on points that are clearly unrealistic and at times, even silly. But that’s the issue with any Sci-Fi that tries to stay rooted in believable science and technology and yet has to weave in the imaginary and fantasy elements — some things are just going to end up illogical. Like why are all these structures clearly hundreds of years old, and yet the batteries and electricity for all the devices are still perfectly operational. I mean, the “old world” of the game is still the future for us, so much of the technology is supposed to be futuristic but yet the people were still driving regular looking current day cars and buses, and using what appears to be current day cell phones, tablets, and military equipment. In a near future world where space travel is accessible, holographic gliders, shields, and weapons, human cloning is perfected, and complex AI that can build entire ecosystems, and yet, people still drove around in their Chevy sedans, and buildings still had turn valves for their plumbing that look like 1950’s design. 😅

And why, in 2026, can I not even do the simplest of electronic transactions without two-factor authentication, a zillion passwords, and biometric validators and yet apparently in the not too distant future, one can get access to the highest level of global security through electronically locked doors and databases with a simple voice recognition or with a simple key that you find in the room next door. 😂 But I get it, what fun is there if Aloy travels across the continent to find a secure data center and then the story ends when she tries to log into the server and it asks for a code that was sent to Elizabet Sobeck’s Microsoft Authenticator on her cell phone. Or if Aloy is in the heat of battle and goes to scan an enemy and her Focus has run out of battery and needs to be plugged in overnight to recharge. 😂 We have to keep the game fun and playable, but sometimes I just have to shut off my logical brain.

I also have to suspend disbelief with the language they use (and again this is not unique to Horizon and applies across the board to Sci-Fi) where the people talk in the same vernacular and even slang that we use in 2026, despite hundreds of years of the passage of time and an apocalypse causing a complete rebooting of human civilization. It’s like if you traveled back in time and visited 1826 and talked to people would their language and phraseology sound the same as today? Of course not. Especially in the more remote and secluded parts of the world. But I get it, in order to make the story relatable and understandable we can’t have the people talking in an odd reformed version of future evolved tribal dialectical English. They have to talk like they just walked off the street in 2026. 😅

Regarding Aloy’s personality, I will admit that there’s some inconsistency in some of the interactions. I’ve seen a few of those times when she comes across rude or patronizing. It’s a contrast to the humility she showed by being an outcast in her origins in the first game. Now she’s ‘the savior of Meridian’ and people are constantly treating her with either awe or criticism for her fame and notorious deeds. I guess I can see how that might creep into a person’s psyche, similar to how celebrities nowadays will have a shift in their personality when they become famous and suddenly are too good for their former lives. So I give Aloy a little leeway to be pompous from time to time, and even though she comes across annoyed and ‘unheroic’ sometimes, I can see a reality where that would be accurate. But like you I prefer my heroes and heroines to be noble, charitable, kind, and more the silent type. My issue is when she will be a little pompous and impatient in one interaction, and then 5 minutes later will treat another character differently and act all motherly and caring. I’ve seen that happen and the inconsistency is hard to rationalize. Part of it I try to explain away by considering that her origin and DNA of being Elizabet Sobeck, who I imagine to be like many powerful and brilliant academic and accomplished people — they tend to be pretty condescending and brash to regular folks. And yet Aloy has a humble beginning and an altruistic side, so there’s this constant conflict of her scholastic DNA and her meek upbringing.

The interaction with Beta is a similar issue. That clone is so different — an anxious, timid mess and one who Aloy is quite annoyed with, and yet they have the same DNA. I think it’s an interesting narrative theme about how experience and environment sometimes trumps our genetics, as far as what kind of people we can become

I’ve carried on way longer than I intended, but suffice it to say I’m getting a ton of enjoyment from HFW. 😄

On the subject of what I might play next, what do you think of GoW Laufey? I forget how you got along with Ragnarok, but I think you were pretty high on it. Are you fully pumped for the new one? Hearing that it’s coming within the next 8-10 months has me feeling pressure to get Ragnarok done sooner rather than later, just in case I want to jump into Laufey at launch. So if it’s not my next main game, it will be soon thereafter. I just have to decide if I can justify doing two large first party games in a row.