Millions of gamers are exploring Horizon Zero Dawn this week, now that Guerrilla Games’ first open-world RPG is finally available on PS4, but many are hesitant to make any major decisions (during in-game dialog) before finding out how it might impact their playthrough. The bad news is that your dialog choices don’t really matter in Horizon Zero Dawn. The good news is that you’re now free to make whatever conversational choices you feel best fit Aloy’s current situation. And you can do so without (much) fear of reprisal.
As you’ve probably already noticed, conversations in Horizon Zero Dawn tend to assume one of two forms: investigative, in which questions/comments aim to elicit more information on a given subject, or disputes, telegraphed by the Brain, Fist and Heart icons identifying the tone of Aloy’s potential responses. The Brain denotes appeals to logic and reason. The Fist identifies more combative responses, frequently angry or threatening. Finally, the Heart represents more compassionate answers, those typically considered “Good” in other games.
As we said, the dialog choices you make in Horizon Zero Dawn don’t seem to have a significant impact on the overall story. They don’t even typically have much of an impact on the conversation, past the initial response from the NPC in question. That’s not to say player’s choices won’t have any impact at all. There are a handful of scenarios when Aloy can accept/deny quests from her allies. And those occasionally impact whether or not you see those characters later in the story. But those changes don’t significantly alter the plot of Horizon Zero Dawn. Player choices are more akin to the choices in every Telltale game since The Walking Dead. You decide which faces stick around for most of the journey, but don’t have any real control over the major twists and turns.
On the plus side, that means there’s nothing stopping you from being just a little meaner to the characters you hate or nicer to characters you love. Maybe you can’t decide to install Aloy as the new Machine Queen, final ruler of whatever bits of Earth she decides to preserve. But you can at least be an asshole to Lance Reddick when he gets testy. And that’s something, right?
For more Horizon Zero Dawn help:
'Horizon Zero Dawn' Tips And Tricks
'Horizon Zero Dawn' Tallneck Locations
'Horizon Zero Dawn' Vantage Point Locations
'Horizon Zero Dawn' Cauldron Locations
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Horizon Zero Dawn is currently available on PlayStation 4.
Be sure to check back with iDigitalTimes and follow Scott on Twitter for additional Horizon Zero Dawn coverage in 2017 and however long Guerrilla supports Horizon Zero Dawn after launch.
