Thanks to its brisk pacing, it almost feels like an open world game designed for people who have grown weary of open world games.

It looks incredible. I can’t wait.

the Ars Technica review was effusive.

But, the Polygon review said kinda the opposite of Cody's quote about pacing and open world game-ness.

And speaking of Polygon, this seems like something Cody would want to read.

From his initial impression of the first game:

• Restraint.

The Dev team seems to have fantastic instincts when it comes to knowing how much of something is "enough". So far, I have yet to come across a single task that felt overly repetitive. Nothing drags on too long for its own good. This comes across in obvious ways, but subtle little ways, too. For example (I'll be as vague as possible to avoid spoilers); I was exploring a specific area, and I reached a point where I needed to activate a thing in the middle of the room. I'm looking around, and I see 3 small towers around the edge of the room. I climb one of them, and sure enough, there's a button I can press. My immediate thought is "so I need to climb these three towers and press all 3 buttons"... because that's how videogames work, right? But when I pressed the first button, I turned and saw that it had activated all 3 towers. This seems like a tiny thing on its own, but the game is filled with examples of this sensibility. Resource gathering is another example. Lots of games feature hunting and skinning wildlife to gather materials. There's usually a little animation to go along with it. The first time you do it, it's gross. The 10th time, it's already taking longer than you wish it would. The 100th time... you get my point. So Horizon just skips that. You kill an animal, press a button and there's a split-second animation of crouching down to pick something off the ground. That's it.
I can't stress enough how refreshing it is to play a game that is so big, yet so respectful of the player's time. The developers realize that repetitive busy work and other time-vacuums are no substitute for actual CONTENT, and are best avoided.

*Stops. Takes sip of coffee. Turns and gives a long, pointed look in Bungie's direction. Continues.*

These little details are so important because the game really is HUGE. With so much to do, any repetitive tasks taking longer than they need to would suck all drive and momentum from the game. Horizon dodges this issue beautifully.

Thanks to its brisk pacing, it almost feels like an open world game designed for people who have grown weary of open world games.

Man, I wanna play this so bad, but between Genshin’s big three-week update being this week, Destiny’s one-good-update-a-year being next week, Apex’s first decent update in a while having dropped last week, Elden Ring vying for single-player attention in two weeks, and Sammy repeatedly wink-nudging me about a Dying Light 2 co-op run (in the middle of our first true Mass Effect franchise experience, no less)…
It’s so hard to justify buying this at launch. What the heck is wrong with devs? You had all of December and January with nothing on the menu!

Sorry Aloy. :(

(It hurts even worse that the first thing that SkillUp does is compare HFW to Mass Effect 2 in terms of how much of a leap it is over the first game.)

I'm excited about the game, but I'm with Korny--there's too much going on to justify a purchase right now. Not least of which, I still haven't finished the first game [hides face in shame]. I'm working on it, though.

I agree with all of that, but I have shit impulse control with buying video games, so I’ll probably buy it anyway. I’m way more excited to play Elden Ring, though.

the Ars Technica review was effusive.

But, the Polygon review said kinda the opposite of Cody's quote about pacing and open world game-ness.

And speaking of Polygon, this seems like something Cody would want to read.

Here's where I'm torn.

The polygon review says it succumbs to the idea of 'more'. And yet, Cruel says the developers seem to know how to create experiences that aren't repetitive. (And so would imply Digital Foundry.)

So who's right?

Who could say? That line is different for everyone.

If the first game is any indication, it’s very clear which content is worthwhile and which is extraneous. I didn’t find all the collectible trinkets on the first game, but it’s fairly clear that’s what they are, so you know you can just skip that mark on the map and move on.

https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/news/2022/february/lego-horizon

AHHHHH

It's PERFECT!

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