I refuse to believe anyone cares about the Horizon Zero Dawn franchise

With a new Horizon game announced this week, one reader is wondering why Sony is making so many entries in the series while others like Bloodborne are ignored.

It seems like there has been talk of a Horizon Zero Dawn multiplayer game for years. Sometimes it’s described as an MMO and sometimes it’s said to have cartoon graphics, and this week we learned that’s because there are actually two multiplayer spin-offs and one of them is the MMO, made by a Korean company, and the other is made by the original developer.

So that’s three games coming up soon, if you include the inevitable real sequel, to add to the first two games, the VR spin-off and the Lego spin-off. And that’s not counting the remasters, PC ports, and DLC. Is it just me or isn’t that a lot for a franchise that I seriously have a hard time imagining anyone caring that much about?

Maybe it’s just me, because apparently it’s selling well, but for me this is by far Sony’s most boring franchise. I’m not saying this is the worst thing, just that it takes a lot of interesting ideas and uses them in the least interesting way. And what worries me is that that’s probably the secret to success.

There was talk earlier this week about Far Cry being a bit of a nothing franchise that has run its course, and I tend to agree with that. In fact, I’d say both franchises were quite similar: big open-world single-player games with forgettable story and characters that just wash over you as you play them.

They are the perfect games to play after you get home from work tired and exhausted and don’t want to put too much attention or effort into anything. I think this is the secret sauce behind many Ubisoft-style games, including Assassin’s Creed, where nothing is really bad, but nothing is done particularly well and absolutely nothing sticks in your head after you’ve played it.

People have been saying things like that about Ubisoft games for a long time and I don’t think it’s too controversial a view, but what frustrates me about Horizon is how much effort it takes to make giant robot dinosaurs, and a really cool post-apocalyptic backstory, as boring as possible.

I don’t know if it’s on purpose, I just suspect, but it’s so consistent that I think it’s fair to assume so. For starters, all the characters are completely uninteresting. The only one whose name I can even remember is Aloy and that’s only because she’s the main one. She’s still completely uninteresting – and always seems mildly irritated when she speaks. Like she doesn’t really want to participate in the game.

A game with giant robot animals and dinosaurs is such a silly idea that I think the game should be much funnier and less serious than it is. The whole concept sounds like an ’80s cartoon, the kind with a rocking guitar lick in the theme song, but there’s nothing like that in Horizon. Everything is taken deadly seriously and while the backstory is good, the actual plots are completely forgettable.

And then there’s the gameplay, which is aggressively excellent. There isn’t a single unique idea in itself and half of the steals come from other Sony games, especially the Uncharted-style platforming and very simple combat and skill trees.

You might wonder why I play the games if I don’t like them, but I got the first one without knowing – it was clearly the first – and then I found the second one cheap and my curiosity got the best of me because I knew the graphics had to be really good. And they are, but it doesn’t really matter after an hour or so, when you start to take them for granted.

I don’t want to upset anyone who loves games, but it does concern me that one of Sony’s biggest sellers is so painfully average. Even worse is the idea that it is this way on purpose, because they know that nothing special is the best way to attract more people.

If you like Horizon, I don’t want to spoil your enjoyment, but to have so many games in the franchise in just eight years seems like overkill when a really good PlayStation exclusive like Bloodborne has only had one in ten years. But I guess you can’t play this one if you’re half asleep and not really paying attention.

By reader Dean James

Reader characteristics do not necessarily represent the opinions of GameCentral or Metro.

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