There can be no doubt that Horizon Zero Dawn was one of the biggest success stories last year. It was only recently that the game had celebrated its first anniversary since launch and it was revealed that the game had sold more than 7.6 million units worldwide. To answer some questions about the game’s story and development, Guerrilla Games conducted an AMA session on Reddit and answered a lot of the fans’ questions.
The questions were answered by Ashly Burch who voiced Aloy and Ben McCaw who was the lead writer for the game. The questions and answers range from very specific details in the story to even some less serious topiscs. When asked what was the mission or the “end-goal” behind making the game, Ben McCaw replied “In addition to making it a kick-ass story about machines and tribes and epic threats to the world, we wanted it to be personal. We wanted it to be about bonds of love that cross generations, ties that can survive any destructive force. And on a very basic level, we wanted it to be about a woman’s search for her mother. We hope that came through, and from the response, it seems like it has.”
There’s also a lot of content that we didn’t get to see in the game because it was cut. Some content that was initially cut from the base game did make its way to The Frozen Wilds expansion, but some others we never got to see. Among the cut content was a quest line where Aloy visits the Oseram tribe which is a highly patriarchal society. This is what Ben McCaw had to say regarding this quest line, “This question made me take a walk down memory lane! We had a quest line that had Aloy visit the Oseram territory of the Claim at one point. She was definitely going to shake things up a bit.”
It’s evident that there are still a lot of untold stories in the game’s world that are worth exploring, so we’ll hopefully get to hear news of a sequel soon enough.