Horizon Zero Dawnwas once the most beautiful console game ever made.Guerilla GamesleftKillzonebehind and emerged with a vibrant open world adventure and a compelling lead character in a setting that combined the tribal with the robotic in ways nothing had managed before. It was enthralling, and judging by the millions of copies sold, a massive success.
Forbidden Westfollowed in its footsteps several years later, while a third title and online spin off are currently in the works, but in order to fill that stop gap and bolster its lacking exclusive library, Sony has released Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered. It’s a revival that doesn’t need to exist, and solidifies a returning hubris to thePlayStationbrand that it can offer recent titles in a slightly new coat of paint and act like it hung the stars.
Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered Makes A Pretty Game Even Prettier
When you break it all down, however, what Nixxes has accomplished here is impressive, but it doesn’t push itself far enough to put the original game on par with its ambitious sequel. It’s showing its age in animation, mission design, cutscenes, and a lack of quality of life changes a remaster like this should really have taken into account.
Sony is charging $10 for existing owners to upgrade to this new edition whether you own a physical or digital copy of the original. Otherwise it will run you $49.99 on its own.
Let’s get this out of the way immediately - Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered is gorgeous. We weren’t given an opportunity to test out the game onPS5 Pro, but it still commands a visually arresting presence on the original console, whether on the Visual, Performance, or Balanced presets.
A concerted effort has been made to make the open world feel more alive with deep flowing water outfitted with lifelike reflections, dense foliage that gives off the impression that nature has long taken over this once bustling human landscape, while the characters that populate it feel more alive than ever. It has never looked better, but by increasing its exterior beauty, the remaster only serves to highlight how Horizon Zero Dawn has aged in other areas.
Characters can feel stilted while walking about the open world, especially in larger cities like Meridian, while the way wildlife both robotic and natural react to Aloy in combat feels weirdly archaic in comparison to Forbidden West. It would have been wonderful to see the sequel’s gameplay advances implemented into Zero Dawn, but the majority of additions are nothing but cosmetic. Fortunately, the several new hours of motion capture data do a decent job of turning dialogue exchanges into more than just two talking heads snapping at each other.
If you have a variable refresh rate display, my advice is to opt for the ‘Balanced’ preset. Like a lot of first-party releases of the past few years, it strikes a balance between a clean 4K image while running a stable 40 frames per second. The best of both worlds.
The camera has been pulled out, allowing Aloy and other characters to express emotions with arm and body movements, occasionally moving about the scene instead of standing rigidly in place. You will see some animations repeated during the more generic side quests, but key narrative milestones and big set pieces have received a surprisingly robust overhaul.
Character models look stunning with immense detail on both body and clothing, with Aloy receiving a special upgrade that makes her somewhat moreattractive and radiant. You can enter photo mode and spend several minutes picking apart the finer details, most of which are far more consistent across the experience than before. Zero Dawn has never looked better, but it’s never felt older.
But It Doesn’t Take Things Far Enough
With every impressive visual enhancement, I was brought back down to earth by outdated quest design, a garish user interface that is cumbersome to navigate, and an open world template that has grown stale in the past seven years. Obviously, you can’t expect Nixxes to add considerable new content or overhaul the foundations in a version of the game most of us will be paying $10 for, but the lack of meaningful quality of life changes are harder to forgive when Forbidden West exists. If the aim was to bring Zero Dawn in line with its successor, why do so many of its more obnoxious elements sit entirely untouched?
The user interface felt overstuffed and poorly organised in the original game, with Forbidden West taking massive steps to overhaul how it looked and felt to navigate. In a remaster, you expect those advancements to be retroactively applied, but it’s nearly identical to the original. You will see the same lack of care in the icons and such found on screen, which should have received greater refinement instead of sticking with the outdated base design. A decision not to offer similar overhauls to the combat system, climbing mechanics, and constant interaction with its open world makes Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered feel strangely antiquated.
Seven Years Later, The Original Game Shines Through
I’ve bounced off Zero Dawn and Forbidden West multiple times in the past, so I viewed this remaster as an opportunity to confront my biases and step one more time unto the breach.
The end result was successful, and despite the remaster highlighting numerous ways that the experience has aged poorly, it’s still enjoyable enough to play. The luscious world is a treat to explore and filled with collectibles to find and secrets to uncover, while the encounters with its robotic wildlife are both challenging and varied to tackle. Aloy has many weapons and pieces of equipment at her disposal, and combining them to blow machines to bits is still incredibly satisfying. If you’re a Horizon superfan and want an excuse to revisit where it all started, this is a perfect way to do it, and arguably the best way to play this game now.
Unfortunately, I still find Aloy as the lead character and her heroic journey to be generic and unfulfilling. Her introduction and journey to become a Seeker who will eventually save the world is compelling in theory, and the surrounding lore is fascinating, but it’s executed with such banal predictability that it’s hard to feel invested. Aloy becomes so obsessed with who she is and where she comes from that she forgets to develop a personality outside of that.
Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered continues its tradition of launching in lockstep with highly anticipated RPGs by releasing on the same day asDragon Age: The Veilguard.
Supporting characters don’t do enough to alleviate this shortcoming, so despite trying my damndest, Horizon Zero Dawn still doesn’t light a narrative fire under me. It’s depressingly dry, predictable, and doesn’t align with an open world that otherwise bursts with creativity. Those who didn’t gel with that side of things won’t have their minds changed by this cheap and cheerful remaster, but it remains engaging enough on a mechanical level that I still had fun.
Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered doesn’t need to exist, yet here we are, and considering the $10 upgrade fee, its presence could have been significantly more barbaric. Passionate fans looking for an excuse to replay Aloy’s debut adventure with lovely visuals and a fresh list of trophies will find this remaster a no-brainer, but for a more sceptical soul like myself, it’s hard to look past the lack of quality of life improvements that only serve to highlight how far things have come since Horizon Zero Dawn first arrived, and how hard it’s become to look back.
Reviewed On PlayStation 5
WHERE TO PLAY
Horizon Zero Dawn has received the remaster treatment. The PS4 game’s visuals have been overhauled for the PS5, and ten hours of dialogue has been re-recorded to bring the first Horizon game up to the same standards as Forbidden West.
