#im just thinking. if we get kids invested in keyboard skills again. maybe just maybe they will bring back the keyboards at work 🙃

[kamek]

if all those weird shitty-horror-games-of-the-week are gonna pander to children so hard they could at least make something contributing to society and make a keyboard skills game

[macgyvertape]

HZD liveblog

time to see how badly watching a friend play the first 10 hours and then the internet spoiling the whole GAIA/HADES and clone thing, actually ruined me for the emotional beats of the story

VERDICT: Not really ruined, the clone thing would have been fairly easy to guess early on and HADES’ origins didn’t have a lot of emotional weight

So much of what got me emotionally invested was the environmental storytelling of the old world and the audio/text logs. Like yeah Aloy’s arc and journey was good but the game would have been lesser without them

The “old world” being set in the not so distant future and dealing heavily with themes around nihilism vs hope with climate change and extinction, I found it really compelling with the robot plague being a fictional metaphor of real issues that are easy to get doomerist about

Gameplay wise

spent a fair amount of time adjusting the graphics, and yeah 2 min into controling Aloy i get what people were talking about with controls feeling jank. This is AFTER the patches, glad i waited. Also the agony of minute+ loading screens ocassionally which is why i finished this with so many notes

the notes were great when I took a break midway through playing this game so I could look back

dodging/evading felt really janky at times I don’t ever see myself doing the game on harder difficulties especially since the game is long enough without doing sections slow with stealth or having to take time to go gather resources

My playthrough is ending at around 60 hours, I don’t see myself doing a ng+ anytime soon, but I do hope the sequel eventually gets ported to the PC

Liveblog comments below the cut:

oh shit 3 audio logs in and it seems like the writing and sound design is gonna knock it out of the park. From happy birthday, to a new years party, to suicide by gun.

since i know the flashpoint personality choices don’t effect plot, yeah i chose throw a rock back at that kids head

Wow Erend is a smooth talker.

Its hard not to be really dismissive of all of Nora’s superstitious religiouness like “we will be forgiveness for the sins that brought such misery on the tribe”, due to my own experiences with Southern US religious conservatives

Especially after these past 2 years I just feel derisive of the Nora’s religious/cultural anti intellectualism but considering its very different circumstances when the game was made, I don’t think I really have the knowledge to deeply talk about how this game touches on stereotypes of native groups

I know this is a game, so there is a cost to rendering things, but how does the worldbuilding work? The Nora I don’t think can do a hunter-gather life style because they don’t leave the Mountain area, and it seems outside trade is extremely limited (if it exists) so do they farm and we don’t see it (except for berry picking in the beginning) Like the tumblr post where its like it takes 1 full feudal village to produce a knight, but I guess all the Braves double as food hunting too???? 

I know they went through a war recently but still no wonder having most of a hunting party + a large collection of the youth killed in a short amount of time would push the Nora near collapse.

The Forgotten quest, I did point out that Brom’s issues wouldn't disappear and he walked away. (the tribe continues to have members who are vocal about treating Aloy like shit, do you think 10 years of isolation would lead to them treating Brom any better?)  I'm really sideeying that the first side quest you get is a mentally ill poc man who is killed before and  the voices are driving him to kill again. Hmmmmmm, maybe i'm reading too much into things??? Idk…..

Easily did gold medal on the first hunter trials. Watching my friend play this on PS4 he really struggled here but i guess the difference is mouse+keyboard aiming

Nil’s pretty ripped, kinda hot… 

Playing on normal is pretty easy with combat so im fast tracking my skill points so i can summon a horse. I don’t have time to just run all over the map

Lol the “ring of metal” sports arena is a forbidden place, Varl’s nice 

Difficulty scaling in this game is bad. I’m at level the 20, and at lvl 18 i did cauldron Sigma that had a challenging boss fight (the dodge mechanics), and then I did Underequipped (just by running across it) that had some challenging enemy waves. Meanwhile I haven’t reached the Carja fort and I’m passing by a bandit camp that is lvl 9

Also i upgraded my outfit carrying capacity to 35. I currently have 6, SIX total outfits. This seems like overkill

Did the find the soldiers quest, fuck snapmaws

First thing i do on the other side of the carja fort is kill a lvl 27 stormbird as lvl 21

Wow the tallneck surrounded by the birds, actually difficult, reloaded several times. Adds just keep getting aggroed, until i waited to override a sawtooth and have it fight for me

My mount stopped and stood in the talknecks path and just got crushed, lmao

Whelp 12.5 hours in i finally reach meridian

Feel kinda sorry for Olin reading his journal

So the Carja have a whole religion too, that is easily interpreted to mean whatever they want. Namman seems to be the only reasonable religious official in this game so far

Did the rustwash tallneck right at level 23, just by riding past all the enemies and jumping on it

Did the last bandit camp pretty easy, now all base game map unlocked

Finally tracking Orin down, and i get the “Unknown Caller” and I immediately recognize Lance Reddick, I’ve listened to a lot of Zavala voicelines the voice is very recognizable

Didn’t want to play Aloy as someone who will kill for revenge in cold blood, not for someone like Olin. Chose the heart option to tell him to redeem himself. 

Time to fight another Stormbird since one attacked me when i fasttraveled to hunter quest, damn igniting the blaze cannisters does OP damage but also wow that bird wrecks my shit if i get close to it while grounded

I really like the robot strategic dismemberment. Shoot off their weapons, their plates, shoot the blaze cannisters to make them go boom. I’ll never play dead space but I enjoy this

Finally went to Rost’s grave, it was actually touching

Did another Cauldron, and in between just running around the map and wow i do a lot of combat -> gather -> upgrading loop. 

Im starting to consider the hunters lodge quests with their annoyingly precise quests, padding

Im fucking sure im not gonna do all the collectables edit: in the end i wound up doing the metal flowers without going too far out of the way and I wanted to get all the vantages. Didn’t finish the rest

Was wondering about farms with the Nora, here are farms right in Meridian’s walls!

Doing the Fatal Inheritance quest at lvl 30, I remember watching my friend play and him spending like an hour on this getting wrekt. Yeah I’m overleveled and my gear is purple

Looked up where to find the power cells: I don’t need that power cell shield weave armor, but i will grab the powercells as i go along i guess but not going back for any

Meeting up with Erend for main quest and i think its funny there recorded like 5 extra voicelines for if you take ur time looting and not talking to him

This feels very Witcher 3, use ur extra senses to play CSI, highlight some tracks then follow them to a fight. Like i know more games do it but 

Got the message “i advise you against visiting sunfal…” from not!zavala. But nothing seems to happen as i ride on by

Stealth through Maker’s End and killing the big machine was super easy. The enemies dont notice corpse and sniping with Shadow Sharpshot bow is EZ

Love how Aloy just yells “mysterious stranger did u see that” and is salty about no answer

Got the voice log where Ted Faro is like “use the back door” and the coder is like “you explicitly forbid any and all backdoors” and Faro is “well figure it out”

I don’t like Ted Faro already he’s every shitty management boss who has is the buisiness man on a tech dev project but  knows nothing of tech

Oh so they made the smart AI robots able to self replicate and able to eat biomass to better sell weapons. And the pivot to weapons after solving climate issues was Faro’s idea. Fuck Ted Faro, literally every hologram makes me dislike him more

Not!Zavala is Sylens, and actually a+ writing here with how Aloy’s priority questions are different and how hes salty her first question is his name

Chose the Heart response to Sylens dialogue and what a HOOT his “i don’t care” response was. Same VA as Zavala is somewhat influencing my enjoyment of the character but also this interpersonal conflict is fun

Rescued Olin’s family with him, i like this outcome vs rescuing his family and telling the wife I killed Olin out of revenge

Ok im doing the “A Daughter’s Vengence” quest and its too easy that combat is annoying instead of fun.

 I think i will just stop doing stealth because on Hard I’m too much of a glass cannon, and i don’t have time to stealth takedown 5 machines when i need to clear a site for parts

Doing the Banuk side quest and whats with the cords/wires interwoven in their body. I’m surprised that wouldn’t result in infection/toxic shock

Lots of voice logs in the Grave-Hold actually well written great worldbuilding. You hear a lot from Ames, then you hear from his wife where she says that the letters she get are AI written and don’t refer to all the awful events as the military is obviously losing, and civilians  know “the lights will go out”

Then i realize all the audio logs from Ames in that room say “edited” and have a lot of “...” gaps, meaning stuff was scrubbed 

Love how Aloy is like yeah Sylens i know the Earth isn’t flat (also I can’t tell if the continents look different to deliberately show tectonic drift or how sealevels rose)

Oh wow that Kopesh can demolish the catwalk instakilling me

Got a plus 51% handling time to slap that on my Sniper Bow

Ok so I get it now, thx to internet spoilers. The robots WON. Dr Sobek just had the US military kidnap scientists to build a vault system (reseeding life was the part i was spoiled on), and had the Military arm all the civilians and lie to this that the war would be winnable with a “superweapon” Zero Dawn. But no, everyone died

Ran across a thunder jaw while trying to hunt foxes. It would have been a rough fight if not for the armor arrows knocking off 2 heavy weapons and destroying the tail doing crits

Where is Nil, im doing a side quest to clean out bandits from a scrap site and I just remembered I haven’t seen that dude despite his promise to fight bandits with me

Okay Heap of Trouble quest heavy weapon segment was fun, also the quest giver Petra is cool af

Level 36 and i finally FINALLY get a fox skin for carry capacity increase. Holy shit that took too much farming

I wiped out the last bandit camp and got a “farewell” quest from Nil, googling shows he was supposed to help out with 2 other bandit camps but i guess the game is bugged and those quests didnt’ trigger. Glad I can watch it on youtube

Nil seems so sad I didn’t kill him. Of course i wouldn’t, he’s a weirdo but a fun weirdo and i bet he’ll show up for the final battle as a cameo. Thats how these big AAA games with “rpg elements” go. 

Bet people online are thirsty af for him (who am i to judge)

Wish we got a hide helmet option, I like the look of a lot of the lower tier of armor but not enough to buy extra versions for cosmetics

Bow life and tripwires here

I just acquired 4 mugs on my travels, turned them in and i just got a collection of resources. Not worth it IMO

WHELP my game crashed fighting Ravagers, this is the 2nd time the game has crashed in combat

Chose the compromise option with the hunter quest, like didn’t seem the good choice to fight the large group and kill them

I really like Talanah, her helmet chinstrap though looks uncomfortable

Wow Brin is kinda accurate with the machine blood predictions, but also like suffering from severe heavy metal poisoning atleast

Avad the king seems very open with Aloy, wow

Blameless Marad seems to be what's keeping the sun king going

I have the Warbow and Tearblaster, and for fucks sake gotta go find fish bones again

Just hit lvl 40 rescuing Ersa

I kinda hoped Ersa would live but that would be too much happy ending for this game

So serene is pretty self deprecating, the way he talks about always being drunk makes me think its borderline alcoholism if not flat out. 

Kinda surprised there isn’t more substance abuse in this world, but I guess its hard to get substances to abuse

Well except for machine blood guy

Right about here is where I gave up farming for resources and just lived with small carry capacity for new weapons and bought resources from merchants

The Carja have prison, and like a reform system, wow that takes resources especially in a very fragile society. Sucks that like Carja don’t allow women to be soldiers unless they can literally maim the opposition until they shut up

Back on main quest line: I really like the “i serve my own interest” type antagonists especially when they are competent and especially when the team up to help to against another antagonistic force

Really Aloy spends so much of the game alone, its good variety to see her interact with a person who also understands machines but they don’t get along. Motivation to help others with Aloy vs motivated for himself Sylens

Wow maybe Helis wouldn’t have become a fanatic if his wife and child hadn’t died in childbirth. Stereotypical angst BUT its one of those preventable deaths if medical knowledge had been preserved  (can’t believe i wrote this before the big Ted Faro crimes against humanity reveal)

Chase segment was GOOD

I like Vanasha

GLAD THE GAME TELLS ME I’M AT A POINT OF NO RETURN

I really liked the Uthid questline, though at the end even as lvl 43 i was spamming heals

Doing the other quest, Vanasha has a six pack she’s shredded

I like finding text entries that talk about how fucked the world was even before the killer machines, talking about mosquitoes going extinct during a period of time people just call the “Die off” with whole new pandemics. Really feelz too real rn

Its definitely at the top of the list for good worldbuilding writing, shame just so much of it is hard to find over the entire open world

Fuck the Spurflint trials, too much random chance and bullshit. Its not worth my time to do them

I really like how the Zero Dawn facility is laid out. All the notes talking about just the human resource problems from snatching people around the globe and telling them how little time is left until extinction. The logs talking about the different options people had, and you can find one of those small solitary confinement rooms

The tragedy of Operation Enduring Victory, all the lies that were told and the people sacrificed just to hold off the robots for a little bit longer to try to build Zero Dawn to bring humanity back after total extinction; like its good writing the way they build up to it

Herres: “please note I am sorry and i wish you well” good shit

Sylens with the big heroic moment! Promptly undercut by him being so dismissive of the first message Aloy saw with her focus, then an apology for being needlessly cruel before.  On that note, damn Sylens really has got a lot of intel this whole time

A lot of feelings about how so many messages in the game are left by people uncertain if someone will survive to see them but hoping none the less. 

Also the children raised by AI with obvious limitations forbidden from accessing the rest of the space, the area only takes a few minutes to get through but its great environmental storytelling. So roughly 700 years later they are the present day Nora

Sylens really expressed that horror, they could look down into space they couldn’t access and raised by AI who obviously had gaps until they were sent outside since there was no more food

All the feels: Rost’s tragic backstory, Aloy hugging Teersa 

LMAO ran across sidequest “death from the skies” i think that previous point of no return wasn’t as NO RETURN as I thought but I did notice where dialogue would have differed

Listening to peoples final messages as they’re sealed in GAIA with no return, then Elisabet’s sacrifice, its genuinely moving. You meet them not to long ago in the Zero Dawn facility but the logs serve to really flesh out the characters and flesh out that time was up, especially since some of the people met before chose suicide

FUCK TED FARRO, WHAT AN ASSHOLE LIKE HOLY SHIT I HATE THIS GUY, LIKE HES THE REAL VILLAIN HERE DONT THINK IVE HATED A VIDEO GAME DUDE MORE

Without Elisabet there to “manage” him he fucked the world over a second time, classic entitled rich white dude talking about the fucking “innocence of man” after he ordered the Faro war machines that he refused to understand the risk of no shut off

I don’t think I’ve been angry at a fiction man, I had to get up and go get myself a drink to take a moment

Like the horror of seeing their preserved corpses and the holograms overlaying it for that <min it’s very good at building up suspense because you KNOW something is wrong 

Like the way he STUTTERS on talking about women there, the way that all the deaths from basic preventable things that he doesn’t even care about like CLASSIC SILICON VALLEY FUCKBOY

NOT to mention not just the MURDER OF THE ALPHAS, but like all the deaths becuase the work wasn’t fully completed aside from Hades going rampant. 

That Sylens founded the eclipse isn’t a super surprise, he obviously regrets what his ignorance served more so than just assisting them one time

Its very funny to do the Dervall quest and see Avad in his grief make a pass at Aloy then apologise for it immediately in the next quest dialogue

I do appreciate all the people showing up for Aloy (it’s cute how many of them flirt)

Chose the heart option with Helis, i kinda do pity him but not enough to not kill him

Crying at the ending where Aloy visits Elisabeth grave and there’s the pan out with the triangle shape of the flowers like all the other flowers GAIA had created

That post game Sylens scene, maybe I ignored how he literally said he would use Hades again if it gained him knowledge cause I just liked the character so much. Feels like I just got Solas’d and he’ll be the big bad of the next game 

Doing DLC Dam quest, Gildrun really made it enjoyable hes just so enthusiastic. Wish i could have found a mirror to give him. Just people finding joy in music over and over

The DLC old world narrative seems to be Blevins is peak stereotype  asshole middle manager

Really appreciate how i can safe spot snipe all these towers

Remembered those 3 hunters as what they were willing to fight for

I enjoyed the main DLC story, told Cyan to be honest with the Banuk. The sibling relationship arc was well written as were the tie ins to the larger Zero Dawn plot

OF FUCKING COURSE Sylens was snooping in and chimes in at the end

Theres that vibe where “only you get that warning” like Sylens definitely treats Aloy as better than everyone else who lives in ignorance

I upgraded to bluegleam bows, I’m not going to bother to do so for all my armor