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Given that so many video games at this year's E3 are set explicitly during the end of the world, it feels fitting that one of the most apparently beautiful takes place 2,000 years after it.
Horizon Zero Dawn is a game about what happens in the centuries after all of the city-destroying viruses, nightmare invasions and machine wars have been and gone. Left behind in this world are only a few human survivors, a lush and verdant landscape, the ruins of enormous skyscrapers and... well, robot dinosaurs.
Described as a post-post-apocalyptic adventure, Guerrilla Games' open-world title has been a surprise highlight of E3, precisely because of how distinct it appears against the moody, fire-drenched palettes of so many other triple-A titles.
Admittedly the first 30 seconds of Horizon's introductory trailer were fairly standard fare -- presenting warring tribes and varied landscapes, potted with ruins left behind by the "Old Ones" (meaning us) -- and failed, at first, to electrify Sony's audience in the same way as various beloved sequels.
But spend more time with the game and you start to realise that something unique might be brewing inside this Dutch studio -- surprising, perhaps, given it is more famous for by-the-numbers sci-fi franchise *Killzone.*Those games were set in almost the definition of video game Armageddon, but their new work is a post-apocalyptic world you actually want to explore, and not just survive.
Set around two millennia following an intentionally-vague apocalypse, the game focuses on Aloy, a woman whose tribe is essentially living in a new Stone Age among many other tribes, "some as powerful as kings". Although they scavenge for remnants of the long-lost high-tech society, Aloy's people are only able to turn those pieces into more basic weapons and tools (a bow may appear to be constructed from robotic limbs and armour, but it really is just a bow) and instead rely on hunting gigantic dinosaurs, from whom they harvest a type of biofuel and other resources like weapons and armour.
And the world is stunning. From these first glimpses at their work, it appears that Guerrilla Games has really pulled off something special with Horizon. Fields of tall grass are potted with industrial junk and oozing puddles left behind by the robots. In the mid-ground brachiosaur-sized machines graze on trees, while in the distance wrecked, hulking shells of buildings appear like mountains against a hazy sun. Everything is alive, but the life itself is mechanical and intelligent. It is unsettling in the way of the very best sci-fi, and there is much more to come. "We really don't want to explain too much about the story," Jan Bart Van Beek, Studio Art Director at Guerilla Games, told WIRED.co.uk at E3. "We want players to go into their world and find the answers for themselves."
A truly beautiful world should reveal itself over time, the team insists. "We're never going to tell you where for example the dinosaurs game from," added lead producer Lambert Wilterbeek Muller. "Although this sounds like a prepostorous situaiton, this is not a fantasy, this is science fiction. Everything is explainable and that's one of the journeys the player will take."
Because this is a video game, that's not all you'll be doing. Obviously combat plays a big role, both against the machines and other humans, and there will be traditional "quests" and open world mechanics like crafting, loot collection and others to keep players busy.
Whether those elements are interesting of themselves is unclear at this year's show, given so little of the game has been shown. But what is clear is that this is a refreshing new take on the apocalypse, at a conference and in an industry dominated by depressing new ways to make it happen.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
