Since this review turned out to be so incredibly long, I've gotten rid of the original review, it's not important. I've got it saved to my notes for posterity.
Except this part.
I bloody knew Ted installed a back door in Gaia, so he could gain that omega clearance, man what a guy right? He got a guy named Hank Shaw to do it for him. I'm looking forward to learning more about this.
New Review!
Did it end up feeling like a sequel in the end? Not really, it still felt odd and out of place. I guess I was expecting something else and when that wasn't delivered well disappointments.
The overgrowth disappeared with a Gaia subordinate function, so that lessened the stark greenery. The colours got better out west as well. The water in San Francisco and along the coast was stunning. Swimming in it was really cool and fun. Out far west the graphics really started to shine and on top of the Sunwing from the sky looked incredible.
Free climbing was okay, nothing to write home about. Jumping and grabbing ledges, drones etc was a crap shoot, I fell so many times, Aloy would just bump into the ledge or drone and slide off it, like it didn't exist. Still having massive problems with this to this day. Drop down from grab areas is also clumsy, fell all the way back down many times.
Tribal people continued to use words that just blew my mind on who taught them those words lol.
Aloy chatting to others got better, but was never 100%.
Chats continued to be hilarious at times.
I was apparently using the controls wrongly, but I've still been having issues closing the weapon wheel or getting out of attack stance. I don't have the slow down enabled, but at times it feels super laggy. I got barrelled from one end of an area to another around 7 times until my health was 50% before I could finally get out of the wheel.
Story mode still has really intense machine fights, some don't let you get up forever, they just keep knocking you down over and over again, really aggravating. Concentration mode honestly doesn't slow down time enough to get any real good shot in combat. The extra R1 skills are also only ever good when a machine hasn't seen you. Can hardly ever make use of it in combat due to how slow it is.
Got used to the camera.
Underwater controls continued to be tanky in some situations. The breathing underwater apparatus made them completely redundant though. As in their tanky but who cares? You can't drown anymore.
I didn't get anywhere near as emotional as in HZD, the others despite the urgency still didn't seem all that concerned to speed things up. Everyone always felt super chill.
The map is smaller, but more densely packed and with 7 Horus's! Granted the model is just reused for all of them. They also don't look 300m long in this and the tentacles are quiet literally shorter.
So 3rd game intense spoilers. The Zeniths don't want Earth, their running away from a rogue AI with all the collective minds of the other Zeniths inside. It's a failed project left to rot in prison and now it's angry af and on its way to Earth to destroy it. It destroyed the Zeniths in a matter of hours even with their insane tech. So I'm not exactly sure what we hope to achieve as tribals.
Sylens also appears to have felt something at the end and stayed on Earth, instead of getting on the spaceship to escape Nemesis.
Gaia has almost all her subordinate functions returned even Apollo! Thank you Zeniths for that. I reckon we'll need it, to do something with Nemesis. I feel if we trap it again that'll be the worst idea. Maybe we could befriend it or something.
Flying on the Sunwing is beautiful, it feels fluid and just gives this sense of eternal peace, I love that they added it.
I have yet to honestly try overriding the other machines and mounting the Clawstrider.
We lost a lot of potential content shown in the trailers. We don't fight a Tremortusk in San Francisco. If you go there to that location there's a high level Spino instead. The buildings can crumble if he attacks them though. I'll need to go over the trailers at some point, but I think 90% of it changed from what I can remember off the top of my head. Well maybe not changed, maybe it was created for demo purposes only. They didn't want to ruin the actual game, so they showed fake stuff instead.
Thebes Ted's bunker was cool, he had the same long life tech as the Zeniths, but it turned him into a growth stuck inside of a geothermal tank. We didn't get to see what he looked like though and this honestly sucked. For him the treatments mutated him instead. He was in the bunker with his daughter and the doctor and his daughter I believe. Kanya found out he killed the alphas and feared for her life. He murdered the others in the bunker too I believe. Memories on Thebes are a little rusty.
I was disappointed there wasn't very many war audio points this time around or audio points in general. Not many holo points either. I liked the old game for that better. Gave you a sense of dread and loss.
Every main character friend had focus fun in this. Everyone had a focus given to them essentially. This was honestly really cool.
Having Gaia around to talk to was honestly a dream come true.
When in your base you can talk to your friends "a lot" this gets tiring after awhile, when your stuck in conversations that never seem to end. Before every mission, during and after I noticed.
Another Elisabet clone! This was different. She was the complete opposite of Liz though. Aloy figured it was because she had no father or mother figure. She was created to serve the Zeniths and kept locked up and alone.
The machines all of them were amazing this time around.
I FIGURED IT OUT! BELOW.
I figured it out you know, what the issue was with this game. It had no soul, no feelings, it missed the mark on data/audio points. I went on HZD yesterday, immediately felt drawn in, all I did was stand around for 15 mins. Than I listened to some of the audio stuff and realised that HFW just lacks feels. I went to Dimmed Bones and waited for daylight and just looked over the surrounding areas and realised that HFW also has way too much fog. You can enjoy the scenery more in HZD as there is very clearly less fog. I took maybe 20 extra pics. I eventually got so embraced by the emotion, I had to get off as it was killing me honestly. I felt everything anew again, the loss, the temporary victory and the dread, it was amazing, but yeah all too much at the same time. I will 100% have to redo the entire game and get the feels back that HFW removed completely from within me. Now that I know the 2nd story though, some certain parts of HZD feel weird to me, I'm not liking that at all. I have severe doubts that will ever change or go away with time.
I think I'll end it there, but honestly a lot of it was severely improved over HZD. But yeah I do miss some things and even miss the intense story emotions. But oh well, it is what it is.
Except this part.
I bloody knew Ted installed a back door in Gaia, so he could gain that omega clearance, man what a guy right? He got a guy named Hank Shaw to do it for him. I'm looking forward to learning more about this.
New Review!
Did it end up feeling like a sequel in the end? Not really, it still felt odd and out of place. I guess I was expecting something else and when that wasn't delivered well disappointments.
The overgrowth disappeared with a Gaia subordinate function, so that lessened the stark greenery. The colours got better out west as well. The water in San Francisco and along the coast was stunning. Swimming in it was really cool and fun. Out far west the graphics really started to shine and on top of the Sunwing from the sky looked incredible.
Free climbing was okay, nothing to write home about. Jumping and grabbing ledges, drones etc was a crap shoot, I fell so many times, Aloy would just bump into the ledge or drone and slide off it, like it didn't exist. Still having massive problems with this to this day. Drop down from grab areas is also clumsy, fell all the way back down many times.
Tribal people continued to use words that just blew my mind on who taught them those words lol.
Aloy chatting to others got better, but was never 100%.
Chats continued to be hilarious at times.
I was apparently using the controls wrongly, but I've still been having issues closing the weapon wheel or getting out of attack stance. I don't have the slow down enabled, but at times it feels super laggy. I got barrelled from one end of an area to another around 7 times until my health was 50% before I could finally get out of the wheel.
Story mode still has really intense machine fights, some don't let you get up forever, they just keep knocking you down over and over again, really aggravating. Concentration mode honestly doesn't slow down time enough to get any real good shot in combat. The extra R1 skills are also only ever good when a machine hasn't seen you. Can hardly ever make use of it in combat due to how slow it is.
Got used to the camera.
Underwater controls continued to be tanky in some situations. The breathing underwater apparatus made them completely redundant though. As in their tanky but who cares? You can't drown anymore.
I didn't get anywhere near as emotional as in HZD, the others despite the urgency still didn't seem all that concerned to speed things up. Everyone always felt super chill.
The map is smaller, but more densely packed and with 7 Horus's! Granted the model is just reused for all of them. They also don't look 300m long in this and the tentacles are quiet literally shorter.
So 3rd game intense spoilers. The Zeniths don't want Earth, their running away from a rogue AI with all the collective minds of the other Zeniths inside. It's a failed project left to rot in prison and now it's angry af and on its way to Earth to destroy it. It destroyed the Zeniths in a matter of hours even with their insane tech. So I'm not exactly sure what we hope to achieve as tribals.
Sylens also appears to have felt something at the end and stayed on Earth, instead of getting on the spaceship to escape Nemesis.
Gaia has almost all her subordinate functions returned even Apollo! Thank you Zeniths for that. I reckon we'll need it, to do something with Nemesis. I feel if we trap it again that'll be the worst idea. Maybe we could befriend it or something.
Flying on the Sunwing is beautiful, it feels fluid and just gives this sense of eternal peace, I love that they added it.
I have yet to honestly try overriding the other machines and mounting the Clawstrider.
We lost a lot of potential content shown in the trailers. We don't fight a Tremortusk in San Francisco. If you go there to that location there's a high level Spino instead. The buildings can crumble if he attacks them though. I'll need to go over the trailers at some point, but I think 90% of it changed from what I can remember off the top of my head. Well maybe not changed, maybe it was created for demo purposes only. They didn't want to ruin the actual game, so they showed fake stuff instead.
Thebes Ted's bunker was cool, he had the same long life tech as the Zeniths, but it turned him into a growth stuck inside of a geothermal tank. We didn't get to see what he looked like though and this honestly sucked. For him the treatments mutated him instead. He was in the bunker with his daughter and the doctor and his daughter I believe. Kanya found out he killed the alphas and feared for her life. He murdered the others in the bunker too I believe. Memories on Thebes are a little rusty.
I was disappointed there wasn't very many war audio points this time around or audio points in general. Not many holo points either. I liked the old game for that better. Gave you a sense of dread and loss.
Every main character friend had focus fun in this. Everyone had a focus given to them essentially. This was honestly really cool.
Having Gaia around to talk to was honestly a dream come true.
When in your base you can talk to your friends "a lot" this gets tiring after awhile, when your stuck in conversations that never seem to end. Before every mission, during and after I noticed.
Another Elisabet clone! This was different. She was the complete opposite of Liz though. Aloy figured it was because she had no father or mother figure. She was created to serve the Zeniths and kept locked up and alone.
The machines all of them were amazing this time around.
I FIGURED IT OUT! BELOW.
I figured it out you know, what the issue was with this game. It had no soul, no feelings, it missed the mark on data/audio points. I went on HZD yesterday, immediately felt drawn in, all I did was stand around for 15 mins. Than I listened to some of the audio stuff and realised that HFW just lacks feels. I went to Dimmed Bones and waited for daylight and just looked over the surrounding areas and realised that HFW also has way too much fog. You can enjoy the scenery more in HZD as there is very clearly less fog. I took maybe 20 extra pics. I eventually got so embraced by the emotion, I had to get off as it was killing me honestly. I felt everything anew again, the loss, the temporary victory and the dread, it was amazing, but yeah all too much at the same time. I will 100% have to redo the entire game and get the feels back that HFW removed completely from within me. Now that I know the 2nd story though, some certain parts of HZD feel weird to me, I'm not liking that at all. I have severe doubts that will ever change or go away with time.
I think I'll end it there, but honestly a lot of it was severely improved over HZD. But yeah I do miss some things and even miss the intense story emotions. But oh well, it is what it is.