Horizon Zero Dawn Breakdown of New 20 Minutes of Gameplay

In the newest 20-minute Horizon Zero Dawn open world gameplay trailer, we can spot many of the new things. We’ve made a list of things we found the most interesting. The game looks rather polished, and the night setting is just breathtaking.

Horizon Zero Dawn – what we know so far

• You can quick save and manually save at the bonfires. They also serve as waypoints.
• The night footage looks simply amazing. The trees, the fog, the moonlight, everything about it… It is like the game was made for the PS4 Pro. It’s going to be fun to enjoy its day and night cycles and dynamic weather system.
• The many markers all around the compass UI on the top of the screen show many things. You can manage these marks through UI HUD options.
• Side quests have a green exclamation mark, bonfires their sign, flowers too, killed machines that you haven’t looted yet…
• We can spot various dialog choices. The one dialog choice that completes the conversation has a mark on it as well. Whether this is only a cosmetic feature or not, it is a good thing.
• There is melee sword combat. Aloy’s swings feel a bit weird, as you can only discern a few of them. What makes the melee swings more powerful are the stealth kills and critical hits.
• Melee and range kills bring the same amount of Machine Kill experience. You get bonus points for stealth kills, destroying different parts of machines… Every unusual method that you use to kill an enemy awards extra points. For example, if you kill an enemy stealthily, or destroy its weak part before it dies.
• You can keep track of your HP with a red bar in the upper right corner. It is called the life meter. Below it is a green meter called medicine pouch. As you search for spices and herbs, it increases your medicine pouch bar and you can use it to fill up the life meter. The green health icon in the lower right corner flashes rapidly if you are on low health. This option uses the medicine pouch meter.
• Yellow ropes are indicators that you can use them to climb on trees. Walk over them to somewhere else, and so on.
• There are critical spots at certain machine locations. Aloy’s skill, where she focuses on enemies, reveals their vulnerable spots with a distinct yellow color. You can tag the enemies and track their movement from afar. This action also shows their patrol routes for some reason.
• Canisters sometimes don’t explode immediately, you’ll have to wait for it a bit.
• There is an eye icon on the top of the screen. It reflects your stealth. If it’s closed, the enemies don’t acknowledge you.
• To get the mount we saw in the trailers, you’ll have to find and override Striders by approaching undetected and holding the appropriate button when necessary.
• To speed up the mount, you have to tap a certain button, and another to slow it down.
• You don’t have to re-do the “taming” process every time you get off the mount. You can call the same one several times. You can also attack while on the mount.
• There is more than one machine you can hack and use as a mount.
  

  

• Crafting influences things like: modifying weapons, outfits, creating traps, potions, ammo, increasing carry capacity and travel options.
• You can change the difficulty anytime in the game. You can customize your HUD the way you like, turn it off completely, turn off pointers, and so on.
• The Ability skills tree has 36 talents you can learn. They are separated into three columns, Prowler (stealth approach increasing time slows duration, gives silent strike…), Brave (combat enhancement increasing critical chance, aim…) and Forager (utility tree, increasing gathering, healing…).
• Vendors throughout the map sell weapons, outfits, resources, traps & potions, ammo, treasure boxes etc.
• Climbing on top of giraffe-looking machines called tallnecks allows you to hack it. This action removes some fog of the map, and it serves as a recon point, revealing some points on the map like herds, corrupted zones and more. They are not meant to be hurt, but only pacified.
• Corrupted enemies will always be hostile. Some of them act differently from a non-corrupted version of itself.