Horizon is one of the most popular new series of the past decade in gaming, but I think most players would struggle to name a character beyond Aloy. I'm sure there are a few names you could scream out as a gotcha: Erend, Rost, Talanah, Nils, Beta, Rikaj, Sylens, Petra, Avad, Varl, Heleck, Janeva, Kindiv, Yan. Those guys, right? Yeah, two of those are fake and I bet you can't tell which ones. I loved 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Zero Dawn and liked Forbidden West🐲, and most recently I had a nice, occasionally impressive, time with Call of the Mountain. I'd call myself a fan of the series. But it can't write a character if their name isn't Aloy, and that's beginning to look like a huge problem.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Call of the Mountain is a huge swing from Sony. When most triple-A series come to VR, they translate the base version for virtual reality, putting you in the shoes of a protagonist you have already controlled inside a game you have already beaten. I'm 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:going to play Resident Evil Villag🍌e VR, but I know what I'm going to get is 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Resident Evil Village. Call of the Mountain is different. It uses the setting of Horizon and some of its familiar touchst💫ones (using a bow and arrow, craftingꦉ elemental ammo, climbing), but is far bolder.
It has you play as an entirely new character - former Shadow Carja Ryas - and features a separate quest with its 🍷own self-contained storyline and a fresh perspective on the world. It's limited by its linear narrative and constant climbing, but it's a brave attempt to make a Horizon VR game that isn't just Horizon, but VR. There is an Aloy cameo, but it's minor and largelꦗy inconsequential to the story. However, her presence in this moment, and the lack of it elsewhere, underlines Horizon's biggest stumbling block.
Ryas is not an interesting character. He's not quite an everyman - he's a disgraced soldier who tried to do the right thing but ended up making things worse - yet his quest is generic enough for us to insert ourselves into. This is similar to Aloy. None of us can relate to being an outcast from birth because ౠthe religious sect we were born into thinks we are an unholy spawn, nor to being the genetic clone of one of the previous wave of humanity's best scientists. However, Aloy sets out on an adventure to prove herself and to defeat an irredeemable evil, and that immediately grounds her. Likewise, Ryas must save his brother and find redemption - it's a smart hook.
From here though, nothing much happens. The two people who are transporting Ryas when he is still a criminal, the elder who sends him on this quest, and the few MacGuffin-fixers we meet along the way are perfunctory in their personality, never subverting or even offering an interesting interpretation of their tropes. When we finally catch up with our brother, he too holds a generic grudge that requ🎐ires a needlessly in-depth knowledge of Horizon lore to understand fully, and any misgivings you have about each other are gone by the next cutscene. Ryas is challenged by his brother to think about his actions, but he mumbles "I'm here now" and any mistakes of the past are erased without what might have been an interesting exploration.
The one exception to this is the game's villain, though we see too little of her for that to matter. Get this for a killer set up though - the villain wants good things (yay!) but ♓she wants them in the wrong way (d'oh!), meaning 👍we cannot support her in any way or listen to anything she has to say. Darn.
Modern mass media fiction is full of villains whose ideas are completely correct, but also, they blew up a guy, so dump those thoughts in the trash and stick with the status quo. As usual with these villains, Call of the Mountain's is superb but we meet her too late, spend too little time with her, and she never develops. She might at least have stood alongside the likes of Rost and Erend as half-way decent supporting characters in The Aloy Show, but with how Call of the Mountain treats her I think she is as 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:doomed to obscurity as Janeva.
Sony is betting big on Horizon. This is the third game the series has had, and it also crossed over into 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Genshin Impact. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Last of Us, for all its remakes and television adaptations, only has two. Post-reboot, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:God of War is also only on two. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Bloodborne looks increasingly like a one and done, as does 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Days Gone, while 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Ghost of Tsushima's sequel is a way off yet. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Spider-Man will get a third later this year, but that's the only one of the modern exclusives to boast the catalogue of Horizon, and it’s hardly fair given they’re games based on one of the world’s most popular superheroes. There's a lot of faith in Aloy and a lot of love from fans. For it to continue to ﷺdeliver long term though, the rest of the cast must step up.
