Horizon Zero Dawn (Official Discussion Thread)

TwistedMetalGear said:
Anyone else playing with keyboard and mouse? I know this game is fine tuned for a controller, but the sprint button (clicking L3, particularly while the analog stick is at full tilt) is absolutely destroying my thumb. I'm in physical pain from clicking it so much.
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Been playing with K/M from the outset....works perfectly fine and is as good as any other well done port. The only change I have made to the default controls is binding dodge to my side mouse button.
 
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/hori...aloys-hair-animation-issues-resolves-crashes/

Horizon Zero Dawn Patch 1.05 released, fixes Aloy’s hair animation issues, resolves crashes

Horizon Zero Dawn Patch 1.05 Release Notes
Crash Fixes
  • Fixed a crash in NetPresenceManager that some players experienced when entering the game or the benchmark from the main menu
  • Fixed a crash where the Steam SDK could crash on initialization when the game executable was started directly from installation folder rather than through Steam
  • Also fixed a crash which would occur if the player pressed ‘Stop’ in Steam immediately after pressing ‘Play’
  • Fixed a startup crash when using Avast antivirus
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when VRAM was about to be oversubscribed
Graphical Improvements

  • Fixed an issue with Aloy’s hair not displaying correctly when the game is running above 30 FPS
  • Shader animations (e.g. hologram locks on doors, GAIA in cinematics, etc.) are no longer locked to 30 FPS, but running at unlocked framerate
  • Fixed an issue with flickering textures in main quest “A Gift from the Past”
  • Also fixed an issue with flickering snow assets
  • Fixed an issue with flickering paintings in Song’s Edge
  • Fixed graphical corruption issues that only occurred on specific GPUs
  • Also fixed an issue where the game would open in windowed mode instead of fullscreen when the player is using another window when booting the game
  • Fixed an issue where the game would not run in the correct resolution when switching from windowed to fullscreen
  • Added an option to turn off “blurry sidebars” in ultrawide resolutions and display black sidebars instead
Other Improvements

  • Allow players to still boot the game even if the version of windows used is detected to be too low to run the game at a stable condition
  • Added an option to turn off controller vibration/rumble
  • Fixed an issue in the storing of the ‘permission to track data’ attribute of the player profile (subsequently re-asking for said permission)
  • Also fixed an issue where the opening cutscene music would not play if the player quits out and immediately begins a new game
  • Fixed an issue where inverting mouse controls also affected dialog tree choice input
 
Ah, pre-coffee I drew a complete blank. Can't wait to play this but have enough backlog right now that I'm waiting on a sale.
 
Been looking forward to playing through this but waiting for 3080. Hoping I can snag one tomorrow. Good thing is it looks like the game should be fairly well patched by the time I dive in. Who knows, might be up to patch 2.0 before I can actually grab a card.

Played through it on the PS4 Pro but really looking forward to playing on the PC in all its glory, especially with M/KB for better aiming like others have pointed out.
 
Looks like they're doing good getting fixes out. Still have sound outstanding ones, but it looks like most of the big ones are fixed.
 
Thanks for the tip about finishing the DLC before the last mission, I'll do that. I've got the "super armor", but won't get the hunter weapons, since the hunts are bugged for me. My weapons seem fine anyway though. I'm not really seeing the point of the bluegleam armor or weapons either, but I could get a few pieces if something is highly recommended.
 
bmg said:
Thanks for the tip about finishing the DLC before the last mission, I'll do that. I've got the "super armor", but won't get the hunter weapons, since the hunts are bugged for me. My weapons seem fine anyway though. I'm not really seeing the point of the bluegleam armor or weapons either, but I could get a few pieces if something is highly recommended.
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The bluegleam armors allow one extra mod slot (extremely useful) and the Banuk bows are the best in the game. Take the time to get them.
 
Porter_ said:
The bluegleam armors allow one extra mod slot (extremely useful) and the Banuk bows are the best in the game. Take the time to get them.
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Does the bluegleam armor have 4 slots? My current vendor armor already has 3 as I recall...time to start up the game and check it out.
 
Porter_ said:
the Banuk bows are the best in the game.
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This is arguable as they have a long draw-time and need to be at max draw to deal their full damage/stats, unlike the regular bows. I went back to the base game bows after a while of using the DLC ones.
 
I've got one piece of armor with 3 slots, the rest have 2. Since I got the Shield-Weaver armor awhile back, I haven't paid attention to other armor. I'll have to take a closer look at the DLC weapons.
 
So looks like I am about halfway through the story quests but only about 10 hours in. Do the later story quests get much longer? Been doing all the side quests that pop up, but it seems like this game is going to be shorter than I thought.

Seems a bit hard to get bones for better armor and the like to. I have so many modifications but no real use for them. And it seems like after a few hours into the game I have all the weapons I need, the things the vendors sell are all the same as the ones I already have? Do they give better options late game?
 
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Drexion said:
This is arguable as they have a long draw-time and need to be at max draw to deal their full damage/stats, unlike the regular bows. I went back to the base game bows after a while of using the DLC ones.
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Yeah, I have mixed feelings on the Banuk bows. I think for a DPS build you are better off going with Shadow/Lodge weapons.
 
MavericK said:
Yeah, I have mixed feelings on the Banuk bows. I think for a DPS build you are better off going with Shadow/Lodge weapons.
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It’s pretty fun to sneak up on a scrapper (for example), notch two arrows with the Banuk powershot bow, and kill it in one shot
 
Is there a way to buy items like fatty meat? I am in a city called Meridian, and it claims there is a "Hunting Good" merchant on the map but I can't find one that sells anything related to hunting.

This game does have a lot of problems with resource gathering. Sometimes I forget there are other aspects of the game because you spend more time chasing after animals and plants than fighting the robots. Seems like they wasted a good opportunity. The onset of the game sets and interesting stage, but then the story just dies. What happened to underground areas to explore what happened in the world? I see dozens of collectibles for audio or text logs but outside of maybe 10 I haven't found any since the start of the game.
 
Flogger23m said:
Is there a way to buy items like fatty meat? I am in a city called Meridian, and it claims there is a "Hunting Good" merchant on the map but I can't find one that sells anything related to hunting.
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Set a waypoint flag on the merchant using the map interface.

Flogger23m said:
This game does have a lot of problems with resource gathering. Sometimes I forget there are other aspects of the game because you spend more time chasing after animals and plants than fighting the robots. Seems like they wasted a good opportunity.
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I don't find the resource gathering anywhere near as cumbersome and annoying as games like Farcry Primal for instance where you needed to travel to specific parts of the world to gather resources, and even then you needed to randomly trawl through the world in the hope of finding rarer resources to craft certain items. In comparison with HZD I haven't gone out of my way to collect non-robot resources but rather just grab/kill what I see on the way to a particular quest or objective, and then just eventually find I have enough material to craft an upgrade.

Flogger23m said:
The onset of the game sets and interesting stage, but then the story just dies. What happened to underground areas to explore what happened in the world? I see dozens of collectibles for audio or text logs but outside of maybe 10 I haven't found any since the start of the game.
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If you are only in Meridian then you have a lot more exploration to do, with more underground areas forming part of the overarching campaign. The plot also becomes far more interesting as you progress to more of the ruined areas. You will find uninteresting audio and text logs randomly scattered around the world, but most of them are concentrated in the campaign areas from my experience. There are also the underground Cauldrons which are worthwhile distractions, because of the cool aesthetic and level design, and the fact that you expand your capabilities to seize control of more robots.
 
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Yeah I've pushed through more of the game. It does pick up again thankfully. Is there any place to buy hunting related items like animal furs? I need a few fox furs and I've gotten two so far, but I've kill so many of the little things with no new skins.

Should I start playing the DLC right about now? I have been to most major areas of the map, still have sidequests and the like to do and by the looks of it a good 5-6 story missions. Sounds like you can upgrade your spear so that would be fun to take back to the main game.

As an FYI, if you want to take screen shots it looks like you have to manually disable the HUD first. Not sure why the Photo Mode would show the camera controls by default but they do which is odd.

I've had one crash and one hang on load so far. Hopefully that is all I see.

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Blade-Runner said:
Horizon Zero Dawn has sold 716K units on the PC according to Superdata

https://www.dsogaming.com/news/hori...-716k-units-on-the-pc-according-to-superdata/

A game of this caliber deserves much higher sales IMHO, especially now that stability and performance wise it feels pretty solid after being extensively patched.
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It's an old PS4 game and I suspect those that wanted to play it did so on PS4. This is what happens with old console exclusives. I say that as a PC owner of the game.
 
DooKey said:
It's an old PS4 game and I suspect those that wanted to play it did so on PS4. This is what happens with old console exclusives. I say that as a PC owner of the game.
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By that logic GTA V and RDR 2 should have sold poorly, yet they still did incredibly well on PC....especially GTA V.
 
Blade-Runner said:
By that logic GTA V and RDR 2 should have sold poorly, yet they still did incredibly well on PC....especially GTA V.
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The difference though is that GTA V PS3/XB360 was released on 9/2013 then on 4/2014 on PS4/XB1 then on PC at 4 2015. This was a game that people knew was coming to PC at some point but no one knew exactly when so PC people waited for the PC version because it was a Rockstar property.

HZD was released on 2/2017 and the PC version was released 8/2020 and before that IIRC this was the first Sony owned console exclusive title to be released on PC, so many PC people bought and played it through on their PS4 because no one thought it would ever be released on PC.
 
Finished this game. It was okay, bit better than average, but nothing ground breaking. Except for extreme overt feminism, nothing new about this game. I did enjoy the world though, quests were semi varied enough but the game fell victim to the standard inventory nonsense that so many do.

Blade-Runner said:
Horizon Zero Dawn has sold 716K units on the PC according to Superdata

https://www.dsogaming.com/news/hori...-716k-units-on-the-pc-according-to-superdata/

A game of this caliber deserves much higher sales IMHO, especially now that stability and performance wise it feels pretty solid after being extensively patched.
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Launch was trash though, which probably hurt sales a good bit. That isn't bad at all though. I am sure it will hit 1.5 million sales total. Which isn't unusual. Consoles makes up 70% or so of the sales typically.

That being said the game as of now is pretty much patched to the point most major issues are gone. I still only had 1 crash and 1 loading hang. A few minor issues, but nothing abnormal. For me it was better than Witcher 3 and Mass Effect from a technical perspective.

And here are some better screen shots. The world art can look pretty nice. No editing, just max settings. Looks fairly good. Characters and clouds aren't state of the art, but looks pretty solid elsewhere.

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Solid number, considering the bad press on its release.
Blade-Runner said:
GTA V and RDR 2
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You cannot compare games with online components to a purely single player game. Games with multiplayer mechanics tend to have longer legs and higher numbers of people double dipping into multiple gaming platforms.
 
We also did a Horizon Zero Dawn performance analysis and found it to be more demanding than Death Stranding, despite using the same engine. Blame the port, or the open world design, or whatever. The 3090 is the first GPU to fully eclipse 60 fps at 4K ultra — meaning even minimum fps stays above that mark. Performance is also 16% higher than the 3080, and minimum fps (99th percentile frametime fps) is 25% faster than the 3080, suggesting this might be a game that's actually making use of more than 10GB — or that it's caching more data into VRAM to smooth out the occasional stutter, more likely.

https://www.tomshardware.com/amp/news/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3090-review?__twitter_impression=true
 
Marees said:
We also did a Horizon Zero Dawn performance analysis and found it to be more demanding than Death Stranding, despite using the same engine. Blame the port, or the open world design, or whatever. The 3090 is the first GPU to fully eclipse 60 fps at 4K ultra — meaning even minimum fps stays above that mark. Performance is also 16% higher than the 3080, and minimum fps (99th percentile frametime fps) is 25% faster than the 3080, suggesting this might be a game that's actually making use of more than 10GB — or that it's caching more data into VRAM to smooth out the occasional stutter, more likely.

https://www.tomshardware.com/amp/news/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3090-review?__twitter_impression=true
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To be fair, Death Stranding has a beautiful world, but there's barely anything in it. Horizon has a ton of enemies, machines, animals, etc. densely packed into the open world.
 
MavericK said:
To be fair, Death Stranding has a beautiful world, but there's barely anything in it. Horizon has a ton of enemies, machines, animals, etc. densely packed into the open world.
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Mainly, more vegetation. I know there are fairly empty parts in HZD, but not as much as Death Stranding. Although Death Stranding does have nice terrian detail and it is supposed to be a dead environmentally.

Given the graphics quality, on my PC it ran pretty well. Could've been a bit better in some parts, but for the graphical quality it seems like my frame rates roughly lined up with the performance in other similar games like Assassin's Creed Odyssey.
 
Now that I have a 3090 in my machine and I'm happy with the level of stability of the game, I've started seriously playing. I can confirm that the card can do 4K/60 with no FPS drops. That's both in the benchmark and in real world gameplay. It's definitely a good looking game. IMO it doesn't look as good as Death Stranding, but it's a totally different art style and the world has far more going on. One reason Death Stranding looks/runs so nice is because there are like 3 textures onscreen at a time and the world is mostly empty. Still, it's borderline photo-realistic at times. For what it's worth, if you have a 20-series Nvidia card, you aren't missing that much in Horizon. I was pulling 60 FPS with the details cranked and render resolution at 90% with a 2080Ti. A few detail adjustments or setting of 80% should pull similar numbers with a 2070 and such. With the art style in the game, it's not that noticeable.

Anyway, I like the gameplay in Horizon. It's challenging, but without being another "Souls" type of game. It's a little like the Witcher and/or the last two Assassin's Creed games. You can play very stealthy, ranged, or melee focused. All work, too. There's a lot to see and explore, and even the empty sections often offer little surprises. I'm not super far, but I'm having a blast. No more crashes, either.
 
Game isn't that demanding at all (when I played it a few weeks ago). I get around 50-70 frame rates with an RTX 2070, but I only play at 2560x1440. There is one valley I did pretty much just run through but it didn't look like there was much. Still missing most of the world note pads. Found most of the story ones and lots of them just laying around but there are more to find. So I may run back to that valley and see if there were any other places I just ran through once. I did go to every major area.
 
I managed to get myself into a situation where FPS definitely plummeted. Charged into a bandit camp in the middle of a rainstorm. There were probably 15-20 enemies around along with an NPC helping me out. Lots of smoke and fire effects, too.
No clue what my exact FPS were, but they were probably around 30 until I managed to kill off some of those bandits. Rare situation, but just an instance where even the mightiest hardware can't keep up with things. My video card fans tend to really fire up whenever there are more than 4-5 enemies onscreen.

I'm still really enjoying this game a lot. The Witcher meets Assassin's Creed (with a little bit of TLoU 2's visuals) is a solid description thus far.
 
Domingo said:
I managed to get myself into a situation where FPS definitely plummeted. Charged into a bandit camp in the middle of a rainstorm. There were probably 15-20 enemies around along with an NPC helping me out. Lots of smoke and fire effects, too.
No clue what my exact FPS were, but they were probably around 30 until I managed to kill off some of those bandits. Rare situation, but just an instance where even the mightiest hardware can't keep up with things. My video card fans tend to really fire up whenever there are more than 4-5 enemies onscreen.

I'm still really enjoying this game a lot. The Witcher meets Assassin's Creed (with a little bit of TLoU 2's visuals) is a solid description thus far.
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That doesn't seem like a case of hardware being the limiting factor at all, though. There are some added effects/fidelity over the console version, sure, but I have a hard time believing situations like this with ports aren't a symptom of poor optimization or outright engine limitations.

These games aren't that advanced.
 
I've discovered something interesting with the crashes in this game. I'm talking about the kind where the game itself actually announces to you "The game has crashed - sorry, would you like to send a report...etc." They seem to only happen to me if I've been using my PC for long periods of time prior to playing. Adobe programs, web browsing, playing other games, etc. The trick is, if it happens once, it'll keep happening and the crashes start happening quicker and quicker. Rebooting fixes everything.

Performance-wise, the bandit fort alarm is what caused my performance to plummet earlier. They all do that, too. It'll go from 60fps to 30 almost instantly. It stays like that until that fire is totally obscured. Then it normalizes.
 
Domingo said:
They seem to only happen to me if I've been using my PC for long periods of time prior to playing. Adobe programs, web browsing, playing other games, etc. The trick is, if it happens once, it'll keep happening and the crashes start happening quicker and quicker. Rebooting fixes everything.
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Some kind of memory leak ?
 
Marees said:
Some kind of memory leak ?
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I'd assume as much. If not the game, maybe with one of the Adobe Creative Suite programs. I lean toward the game because I've never gotten game-specific crash notices before with any other game, and Horizon does has a crashy reputation.
 
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Follow-up: It's definitely Horizon. I can replicate it. It happens when I play Horizon, followed by any other game, then Horizon again. Usually within 15 minutes of that second playthough. If I don't reboot, it'll crash again...but within just a couple minutes this time. Rebooting alleviates this issue.
Seems there are tons of crash reports on Steam. Some of them are almost certainly user error, but there are quite a few people that are getting repeatable crashes or can't even get past the texture pre-load. The dev claims a 1.06 patch is incoming with more crash fixes. Luckily my issue isn't that bad, but it's a little annoying. I don't reboot my PC all that often anymore.
 
I have to admit that the difficulty in this game has surprised me. Some enemies and scenarios are pretty damn tough. Maybe not From Software tough, but higher than 90% of other games. I think some of it is the challenge of finding weak points (or new weapons that hurt certain foes more) as well.
Early on I'd just kill everything just like I was playing AC or Dark Souls (dodge/spear), but I can't do that anymore. Some of the normal enemies patrolling around are like respawning bosses. Plus, my spear has seemingly gotten less effective the further I've gotten. It still knocks down pretty often, but those vital attacks just aren't doing all that much anymore.
 
I found it very reasonable. Only a few times in the game were enemies notably difficult for me. Typically as you level up and get better weapons it becomes easier (obviously). The biggest machines will require a good bit of time, but the only one I had issues where I had to leave was due to not having enough ammo on hand and only 1 bar of health. Went back, grabbed some leaves, crafted and bought more ammo. Returned, it was over in a few minutes.

I probably played on the standard difficult though.
 
Flogger23m said:
I found it very reasonable. Only a few times in the game were enemies notably difficult for me. Typically as you level up and get better weapons it becomes easier (obviously). The biggest machines will require a good bit of time, but the only one I had issues where I had to leave was due to not having enough ammo on hand and only 1 bar of health. Went back, grabbed some leaves, crafted and bought more ammo. Returned, it was over in a few minutes.

I probably played on the standard difficult though.
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I guess that's what I'm experiencing. I'm running into enemies I'd almost classify as bullet sponges. Even hitting their vitals with what they're supposed to be weak to isn't hurting 'em like I'd expect. I'm not exactly dying much or getting clobbered, but I'm using up a boatload of resources and having to high tail it a lot. It feels like a departure from the earlier sections where I was killing enemies in 4-5 hits. It's like everything got stronger, but I didn't.
 
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