Horizon Zero Dawn (game)

Horizon Zero Dawn. Guerrilla Games, developer. John Gonzalez, game writer. Sony Interactive Entertainment. Playstation 4, 2017.

Reviewed by Steve Nash, SFRA Review #321 (Summer 2017): pp. 38-39, our source for this entry.[1]

Guerrilla Games’ Horizon Zero Dawn is a third-person, action game [...] that utilises some familiar mechanics from other open-world games, whilst adding an innovative approach to combat, to tell a surprisingly complex (though linear) post-apocalyptic tale. [...] Beyond the initial suspicion of a world in which machines have unburdened themselves of human subservience, there is a philosophically engaged narrative regarding the end of human life and an artificial intelligence [AI] built to rebirth it. Even when this story narrows to a duel between two systems with very different moral views regarding humanity — one seeking to annihilate, the other to nurture — the narrative is never as simple as two distinct artificial intelligences at war, such as the battle between ‘the Machine’ and ‘Samaritan’ in Person of Interest (2011). Here the conflict is between systems within systems, and while there is never any convincing doubt cast upon the player/protagonist’s motivations, the potential for debate is certainly evident. (p. 38)

(We are looking for a Person of Interest video game and cite Person of Interest as a television series.

RDE, finishing, 7Oct21