One of the coolest features of Horizon Zero Dawn is the Override ability, allowing players to tame the robotic creatures that inhabit post-calamity Earth, making them allies. There have been some complaints, however, about the fact that once tamed, protagonist Aloy doesn’t have the ability to command them to take actions. They simply stop targeting her and begin to target threats to her.
Horizon Zero Dawn producer Samrat Sharma recently shed some light into the design decisions that led to this restriction, in an interview with Kotaku. “If you look at the function of the machines, they all have a certain purpose within the game,” he said. “You hacking them doesn’t change what they exist for, it just changes their allegiance. They stop looking at you as a threat and they look at the others who attack you as a threat. That’s the override. You haven’t changed their essential function: if they’re a watcher, they watch out; if they’re a steed they’ll run fast and if you’re on their back, so be it.”
It seemingly never even occurred to the team that players might want more flexibility in that system, and according to Sharma, nor should they. “I don’t think there was a time when we thought here’s a bigger system here, where you can point to stuff and give commands,” he said. “Everything that made sense within the lore of the world, within the story we were trying to tell, we kept. Anything that distracted from it we put to the side…it would distract from the ethos of what we’re trying to tell you in the story, it wouldn’t add to the story–it would take away from it.”
The position Sharma is taking on the restrictions to the Override system are lore-related, rather than being based in resourcing or gameplay design. “Horizon Zero Dawn for us is about discovery, and Aloy is about discovering the world around her and finding out her story,” he said. “She wants to help people, she’s empathetic to people, which I hope comes across in the narrative, and she’s genuinely curious in this world and she’s curious about where she comes from. Her interaction with the world is informed through that lens. She’s not a chaos agent, in this game, at least. She’s not here to sow discord, to create chaos, see what happens, and benefit from that. She’s here to find her way in the world.”
Read the full interview over at Kotaku.
In other Horizon Zero Dawn news, here’s what’s in the 1.03 patch for the game, you can listen to the entire game soundtrack for free, and check out our 9/10 review.