Discover why Horizon Zero Dawn, despite its checklist design, stands out as an open-world game.
In recent years I’ve come to accept that I just don’t love open-world game s. It’s partially because my life has only gotten busier and I have less free time to spend on games, so I gravitate towards shorter experiences. But it’s also because open-world game design tends to be boring and repetitive in my opinion. This isn’t a new opinion, either; much has been written about the so-called Ubisoft-style open-world game and its tiring checklist design .
However, there is one open-world game in recent years that has grabbed my attention, and no, it isn’t Breath of the Wild. Rather, it’s the game that one overshadowed in many people’s minds: 2017’s Horizon Zero Dawn. What’s shocking about my love of this seven-year-old title from Guerrilla Games is that there’s nothing groundbreaking about its open world. Quite the opposite, in fact. This is a “checklist game” through and through. It has its version of towers you need to scale to reveal sections of the map, which then highlights all the various side content you can lose yourself in
Horizon Zero Dawn Open-World Game Checklist Design Gaming