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So over the past few days, Guerrilla Games released a story trailer for a game which I’ve been excited for since I saw it at the PS4 Pro conference a few months ago: “Horizon Zero Dawn”. With this trailer, we got a few more story details, but just enough to leave us intrigued without dumping it all on us. Today we get to break it down. The trailer looks phenomenal. I mean, I would certainly hope so, given it was a game that was all over the place during the PS4 Pro announcement conference. Everything looks so clean and crisp. Nevertheless, graphics wouldn’t be anything without a good story. As they say, “Beauty is only skin-deep”.

A little iffy on the “Sole Survivor” trope, but as long as it does something interesting with it…

The trailer opens up on a snowy battlefield, with our hero Aloy (admittedly a really dumb name) waking to see that she appears to be the sole survivor of an attack on her tribe. She doesn’t know who attacked her, and she has to find out. Whether this takes place before the first gameplay video shown to us or after, is uncertain. We are then introduced to what appears to be an enemy type consisting of masked archers. Aloy explains to the tribe elder that she will travel the path to find the attackers. From there, we are introduced to a number of different robot types we will supposedly get to interact with throughout the game. The leader appears to be a very charismatic dictator who uses the Corrupters for his own purposes, and we even get to see the people who work for this leader tinkering with the machines followed by sending them out to corrupt other machines. The rest of the trailer is a bunch of awesome action scenes that don’t really answer any other questions.

I know that graphics aren’t everything, but I still have to say that this looks so good.

This does lead to an interesting question: what is the focus of the story? Well, based on what I´ve seen from the available trailers so far. I would say that the main focus is uncovering the secrets of the earth, secrets that may answer what the Machine Creatures are and what they’re hiding and why. However, this new story trailer gives us the idea that the real story is focused around stopping the leader who is using the machines for his own nefarious purposes. These two storylines may be both important to the game, and whether or not they are woven in well or connected in any way is unknown. One thing I fear from this is that the story may get clunky trying to connect the two or tell them both. Not that it can’t be done well, but it takes some special skill to pull it off.

What is this thing? What does it do? Why is it? Guess I’ll have to play the game to find out.

All-in-all, this trailer truly makes me think. Guerrilla games has been really careful not to tell us too much, and while this is to be expected, I feel as though it’s a bit more secretive than other games. That on its own can be a good sign or a bad sign. We’ve seen a lot from the game, but it just feels like there is so much more. However, until we either get more news, another trailer releases, or the game comes out, there’s not much more to add. What I can say about this trailer as of right now, is that it’s intriguing, but leaves me with more questions than answers, which very well may be the goal, as to not spoil too much, but can be very off-putting for paranoid people like myself. Though, I’m still excited to get to try the game when it releases on February 28th this year.

And with that said, what´s your take on this matter? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section down below!

***Disclaimer***
This is a personal opinion of the writer, and it doesn’t necessarily represent the other writers’ (nor The Gaming Ground’s) opinions.