Rumours are emerging that Horizon Zero Dawn is getting a remake/remaster, just five years after it launched. The Horizon games have both flattered to deceive - both have massive, gorgeous settings with a killer concept at their heart, but both peter out into uninspiring open worlds that follow dated conventions with thin characters, shallow quests, and a lot of busywork. There’s no justification for it being remade, but frankly, we all deserve it.
Horizon has been quite unlucky as a series, I will give it that. Zero Dawn was followed out of the gates by Breath of the Wild, which completely reimagined what an open world game could be. Next, Forbidden West launched at the same time as Elden Ring, the only game yet to successfully take BOTW’s formula and build on it. But then, if we give HZD the excuse of not being able to see BOTW coming, what answer does HFW have for the fact it too is way off Zelda’s imaginative worldbuilding. My previous articles will show that I am by no means a Zelda fan, but I have to appreciate what Breath of the Wild did. Forbidden West only has itself to blame for not learning from it.
Still, we’re not talking about Forbidden West, but Zero Dawn. I’m a fan and defender of Zero Dawn. Many games try and fail to create a hook as cool and digestible as ‘robot animals’. Aloy, though more irritating through her constant narration in Forbidden West, is a solid lead who builds on Lara Croft while remaining distinct.
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I was prepared to look past the limitations and older gameplay conventions because this was a studio’s first time building a game with this level of scope, and it seemed to be the victim of circumstance. Not just with Breath of the Wild, but with the hardcore gamer fanbase seeming to reach saturation point with marker-filled open worlds, even if the general public still seem to tolerate them. However, with Forbidden West, we see each of these issues again, only on a grander scale. The sequel is not much better, it’s only bigger.
There are zero reasons for a remake to exist, and that’s precisely why we deserve it. The game is on PS4 with a performance patch that takes advantage of the PS5 hardware, and it’s on PC too. HFW offered little in the way of improvements, so it’s not even like you can pretend to get excited over HZD with HFW gameplay. Maybe Aloy can even go prone! We have not only tolerated meaningless remakes, but gleefully celebrated them, for far too long. This is where all roads lead. Beyond Horizon is not a cult hit like Bloodborne, nor a relic in need of revival like Sly Cooper. It’s all about profits per square inch. Ghost of Tsushima will get a remake in the next few years.
Far too many of us have made excuses for these remakes. Mass Effect’s remaster, which fundamentally damaged the artstyle and did nothing to offer quality of life improvements, was defended because it was in the lead up to the next Mass Effect - a game so far out we don’t even know if it’s called Mass Effect 4 or Mass Effect 5 yet.
The Last of Us offered improved gameplay and visuals, except the gameplay was a lie (or at best an exaggeration), and the visuals were a sideways step into realism at the cost of art direction. Of course, there’s a new TV show to promote, but why should we be excited for a billion dollar corporation treading water in order to gouge us ahead of turning our medium’s brightest light into a self-indulgent shot for shot television remake?
Remakes of this nature have always been cash grabs - in a world of agonisingly long development cycles, these spit-shines can be made cheaper and faster, and fans will still splurge on them despite the lack of any meaningful upgrade. We have shown, time and time again, that we’ll pay for a thing we already own if you put up enough billboards about it. Nobody was asking for a Horizon Zero Dawn remake. But too many of you are still going to buy it, and that’s why we’re getting it.