Part 2 of my coverage of Horizon Zero Dawn's monsters!
I talked about the general summary of the premise of the game in the first part, and since this article is more about the monsters than the story, I shan't repeat myself here. The tl;dr is... well, machines take over the world, reducing humanity into an ancient tribalistic society living in the bombed-out ruins of our 'modern' day world!
___________________________________
COMMUNICATION-CLASS:
While all of the Machines we've talked about in the first part of this review series are mostly 'Acquisition-class' machines, which meant that their primary function is to gather resources from nature, and using, like, drill-bit mouths as weaponry against fleshling hunters is just a bonus. But there are a couple different subtypes... and perhaps the iconic monster from the trailer is the Tallneck here, the one and only member of the Communications-Class unit.
And what a design this is. It looks like a giraffe, or a brachiosaur, with long towering legs and a multi-jointed neck that leads up to a head... but instead of a regular equine or dinosaurian head, the Tallneck has a gigantic Enterprise-looking disc that just visually communicates (heh) that this giant walking machine is one that doubles as mobile signal towers. It makes sense for a race of robots that have taken over the planet to want to keep interconnectivity with each other, allowing all the tiny robot animals we've been talking about (and we'll continue to talk about) to stay within what's essentially the Wi-Fi range.
But what a great design this was! And I'm not just saying about just how spectacular it looks in the original trailer that Horizon Zero Dawn showed off, where the Tallneck herds were the money shot... it really does communicate the quintessential theme of these animal machines from the Horizon-series. They look and behave similarly to familiar animals in our world... but there's just such an alien feel about them. The Tallneck, meant to be more part of the scenery and the immersive world than an actual enemy to be fought and slain -- their functions are similar to the 'fog of war tower' that is popularized by games like Breath of the Wild -- only it really does make so much sense that Aloy climbing up the giant radar-dish signal tower would allow her to download all the information in the map!
__________________________________
COMBAT CLASS:
Sawtooth
With that little detour with the Tallneck, now we're going to talk about the Combat-class Machines first, which... is exactly what it says on the tin. The Machines deploy the Combat-class Machines essentially as security guards for their Acquisition-class brethren.
The Sawtooth is the weakest of these, but essentially serves as a 'wake-up call' boss for Aloy as you play through the story, since they're far more aggressive and far harder to take down with sniper shots. The Sawtooth is based on a saber-toothed tiger, though it's got a mass of random saws and blades in its mouth and a pretty cool set of 'whip-tails' on its back.
Ravager
The upgraded version of the Sawtooth is the Ravager, and the general design is basically more lupine and far more cohesively-built compared to the more ramshackle-looking Sawtooth. I do find it a nice detail that apparently the Machines started pumping out more Ravagers and phasing out Sawtooths, and by the time the sequel game Forbidden West rolls around, Sawtooths are essentially 'extinct' or, well, I guess 'sunsetted' as a product by the Machines.
The Ravager looks cool, of course, because wolves are cool and robots are cool and stuff, but I felt like the Horizon team could've done a bit more? I otherwise don't have complaints about it. Wolves are very intuitive for us to grasp as being big angry scary predators. In addition to being a big metal wolf that can ravage (heh) any threats to the acquisition-class Machines, Ravagers are also equipped with a rapid-fire pulse cannon.
Stalker
Based more on a panther or a jaguar, the Stalker... well, does what it says on the tin. It stalks prey with some stealth camo technology, placing mines all over the place as it sneaks around you. A lot of the Machines we've seen so far seem to be built for efficiency and sturdiness, but I really like how dangeously slender and lithe the Stalkers look like. It's also a bit jarring to see the jet-black armour pieces on the Stalker as opposed to the generally sterile-white armour of the other Machines.
The Stalker's eyes are also really weird, being giant bug-like hexagonal pieces, and it's got two large mandible-like protrusions and a super-long tail. The end result looks a lot less like any real-world animal -- which has been the rule that the Machines have been following but they didn't really have to. The Stalkers are deloyed in dense-jungle locations where their stealth circuitry works best, and have the ability to drop mines -- which will attract the entire swarm of Stalkers to the location when triggered.
There's also a 'rumbling' sound effect that is ever-present whenever your character walks into Stalker territory, and I do like the idea that it's not hard knowing that you're being stalked by a Stalker... but you don't know how the size of the pack. Pretty cool looking. I like this one.
Scorcher
The Scorcher here is only introduced in the DLC, but I thought I should cover it after talking about the other four quadrupedal Combat Machines. Looking a bit more like a wild dog or a hyena, the Scorcher's got a bunch of flamethrowers on its back to burn the shit out of you.
I do really like the face of this thing, with the split lower jaw and the multiple tiny robot eyes in the place of a hyena's two regular eyes. Apparently, regular Ravagers are actually vulnerable to fire, so the Scorchers are the Machines' answer to that where they literally breathe fire on you.
Stormbird
I don't actually have a whole ton to say about Stormbird here. It's a very cool-looking robot bird, like Laserbeak from Transformers... but it's also just a big angry metal bird of prey. And it's really cool, no doubt about it. It shoots lightning bolts, inspired by legendary Thunderbirds... but comparing the Stormbirds to other Horizon avian-based machines like the Glinthawk or the Longleg, there's just a bizarre lack of any of the quantities or features that made the Horizon Machines distinct. Place the Stormbird next to a random smattering of Transformers or Final Fantasy robot enemies and I wouldn't be able to tell you that it comes from a Horizon game the way that the Glinthawk or the Stalker or the Charger would have.
All of these seem kind of mean, so I do still want to emphasize that the Stormbird is a very cool-looking robot bird! All the mean-looking angles and the sharp feathers and claws and stuff look great. I just felt like it could've had a fair bit more of its own identity.
Thunderjaw
Where the Tallneck is a Brachiosaurus, the Thunderjaw here is the Tyrannosaurus rex of the game, taking a prominent role in all trailers or posters of the game that's trying to highlight the game's combat sequences. While being rather similar to the T-rex, the Thunderjaw is also remarkably different in many aspects -- particularly its silhouette when not moving. I do really like how they interpreted the dinosaur's powerful spine as, well, two giant spine-like 'tubes' on either end of where the legs are connected. It's a fun exaggeration of a Tyrannosaurus' actual silhouette, and I'm all for it. The infamous tiny T-rex arms are obviously gone, and instead of jaws the Thunderjaw's got a nice array of laser guns, cannons and even disc launchers on his hips.
...which is totally a reference to Beast Wars: Transformers Megatron, which is a Tyrannosaurus rex toy that has disc launchers on his hips. That seems like too specific of a thing to not be a reference.
Anyway, the Thunderjaws seem to serve as de facto bosses of several areas of the game, being powerful, fast and highly difficult-to-kill enemies. And honestly, you can't go wrong with the ultimate Combat-class Machine other than a robot T-rex death machine! A particularly well-worn individual called the "Redmaw" serves as a recurring boss in a series of sidequests.
___________________________________
TRANSPORT-CLASS:
Of course, with all of these extreme focus towards resource gathering, a 'Transport' class is inevitable as a category of Machines. The Shell-Walker here is literally a giant box full of resources with a bunch of scuttling legs and two robotic arms ending with weapons... making it essentially the giant robot version of a hermit crab. It's a bit hard to realize here, but the Shell-Walker actually has a flat 'face' with triple-lens eyes on the right side of the box. The two orange arms end with, respectively, a shield generator and a lightning gun.
These Shell-Walkers kind of mill about in convoys, and will very viciously defend their cargos. I do really like the idea of this mechanical creature that's super-focused at protecting its cargo, but making it look like an adorable robot crab is just a bonus.
Bellowback
Probably the one creature on the game's bestiary that you can't instantly tell what it's supposed to look like. People have gone to speculate on some kind of dinosaur or other, but it's actually... an emu, according to the developers. Okay? The Bellowback's design is pretty interesting, with two bird legs and a giant cannon and a fan of those 'feathers' that spread out from the base of the cannon. Very fun and wacky-looking design. One thing that is perhaps a bit hard to appreciate from these still pictures is how big the Bellowback is. It's basically the size of a dinosaur!
The idea is that the Bellowback specializes in carrying liquid cargo, unlike the Shell-Walker or the Behemoth below, and, again, kudos to the game designers for actually thinking of unique in-universe purposes for these creatures to do. The Bellowbacks are able to utilize these sacs and fluids to actually launch them at Aloy as an attack -- either flammable or freezing liquid, depending on which cargo the Bellowback is specifically carrying. Which... feels a bit counter-intuitive, honestly, since you'd think that the main priority of the Bellowback would be to secure the cargo.
Behemoth
The 'boss' Transport-class is the Behemoth, which is ostensibly based on a rhinoceros but kind of lacks the horn. The Behemoth instead has a vaguely pyramid-shaped mass (with those cool split-apart robot lower jaws that so many of these Machines have) and a bunch of additional greebles that actually act as anti-gravity generators. It's such a weird thing to give to a rhinoceros enemy, but being a Machine whose main purpose is to transport items, it actually, again, makes full sense that the Behemoth here would use the anti-gravity for the admittedly very mundane-sounding purpose of lifting rocks.
The Behemoth's main crate is located in its belly, and it'll totally ruin your day by either charging at you like a rhino... or launch rocks at you with anti-gravity.
___________________________________
CHARIOT-CLASS:
And now we go to the Chariot-Class Machines, which do contain a lot of story-related spoilers. I try to not talk too much about the spoilers (especially since there's still a non-zero chance that I play the game), but to my understanding these Chariot-Class robots are the originals -- designed by the Old Civilization (i.e. our modern-day society) as machines, until they went rogue. Their protocols to utilize biomass as an emergency energy source essentially got switched to 'always', leading to the near-annihilation of human society as we know it.
There's a lot more that goes to what happened in project "Zero Dawn" and why these Chariot-class war machines all end up going dormant and replaced with the rest of the Machines we've been seeing throughout the game. GAIA's Machines (which are the ones we've been talking about) may be able to defend themselves, but it's not their primary objective and they're far more concerned about terraforming the ruin-blasted planet. Meanwhile, the Charios of the old world are designed to be fully weapons. There's a lot of context that we could go deep into, but I do think that it's quite enough to talk about the three Chariot-class enemies here!
Corruptor / FAS-ACA3 Scarab
The first weapon we're going to talk about here is the Corruptor. Or, since it was originally designed for modern-day humanity, the "FAS-ACA3 Scarab". The Corruptor moniker comes with the fact that a lot of these machines also corrupt and ruin the environment around them with nanobots. When it was designed as a weapon, the Scarabs were actually supposed to be support units, scuttling and hacking other robots and essentially forcing them to switch sides. By the time of Horizon Zero Dawn, this translates to the Corruptors causing the normally benign and only-aggressive-when-attacked GAIA machines to become hostile to humanity.
It definitely looks kinda buggy, with multiple spider-legs and a creepy head that's perched on top of the spider-legs like a tripod and a scorpion tail, but that's the limit of mimicking a real-world animal, unlike the rest of the Machines' minions. All of the Scarabs that Aloy will find are buried, deactivated in the earth until they get activated to fight. It's still an animalistic enemy so I do appreciate that it's kept, but I also do really appreciate just how much different-looking the aesthetics of the Chariot-Class enemies are from the rest of GAIA's robots.
Deathbringer
This one looks a bit like an upgraded version on the Corruptor, and where the Corruptors are approximately car-sized shock troopers, the Deathbringer here looks pretty cool as essentially a souped-up tank. Also known as the FAS-FSP5 Khopesh, the Deathbringer is a walking ancient weapons platform that launches a whole lot of missiles. The Deathbringer is probably the least animalistic of Zero Dawn's enemies, basically being just a bunch of guns on a revolving scuttling set of spider legs.
That does make it both boring to talk about... if only the design of the Deathbringer isn't so over-the-top. This looks less like something from a quasi-realistic sci-fi and more like something out of Warhammer 40K, and I mean that in the best way. I love just how over-the-top this thing looks as a war machine. As the wiki tells me, "the head carries several formidable weapons: a flamethrower, a grenade launcher, a gun turret, a heavy cannon turret, a swarm missile launcher and a repeater cannon turret."
Metal Devil
Only seen partially and part of a major boss fight, the 'Metal Devil' or the FAS-BOR7 Horus are the giant, vaguely giant-squid-monster looking creatures that are the primary harbingers of humanity's doom. Whereas the Scarabs/Corruptors were meant to hack other war machines and the Deathbringesr/Khopeshes are just weapon emplacements, the Metal Devils are building-sized monstrosities that scuttle around and attack with giant tentacles to essentially break bunkers. And it's just really damn big, with many buildings and bunkers in the Horizon world bearing witness to the telltale drill-holes of these things.
The Metal Devils are so big that they're not really fought -- only the tentacles of a partially-awakened one end up being a boss-fight. It's a pretty impressive-looking thing, how this giant thing is basically the equivalent of a slumbering Cthulhu-style Elder God in this setting. Because there are actually a lot of these Metal Devils slumbering all over the world after they ran out of power, and just one being awakened could really fuck up whatever is left of humanity.
______________________________________
Anyway, that's all I have for Horizon Zero Dawn! The game itself does have a sequel in Forbidden West, with its own new batch of brand-new robots. Maybe at some point I'll cover that too... but probably not before I try my hand at playing this game!
No comments:
Post a Comment