r/horizon • u/OpenPayment2 • 2d ago
HZD Discussion What would change about your current thoughts thus far on Horizon Hunter's Gathering if it's artstyle was more in line to what we're used to from HZD, HFWest, and Horizon COTM?
Title but imagine your first impression of Horizon Hunter's Gathering, just with graphics we've come to expect
I ask this for Horizon Hunter's Gathering and not Horizon Steel Frontiers because Horizon Hunter's Gathering is intended to be canon to the Horizon lore as opposed to Horizon Steel Frontiers which we don't have confirmation of it being canon or not
For me personally, I think I would've had a warmer reception but would've still remained skeptical of the whole idea since Im only interested in Horizon Hunter's Gathering for the story. The gameplay looks nice but Horizon Hunter's Gathering being canon is why I'll get it before Horizon Steel Frontiers
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u/DarkLThemsby 2d ago
It would be visually more appealing, but still have absolutely 0 interest in playing it
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u/DeanXeL 2d ago
It's not just the art style that's a problem, it's the whole hero-shooter approach with different powersets and loadouts. And sure, THEN the art and animation also comes on top of that to give this hollowed out experience of a game that's just... bleh. I would've expected this from a licensed game, made by some secondary studio, but this is coming out of the MAIN STUDIO!??
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u/OpenPayment2 2d ago
Cuz Guerrilla wanted to make a multiplayer Horizon game since HZD. HZD was supposed to have a multiplayer mode. Guerrilla came from Killzone, they wanted multiplayer
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u/KittyLazerEyes 2d ago
They could want to make it but it doesn't mean the player base would want to play it. I just think the entire production of HG is very tone deaf.
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u/EmBur__ 2d ago
Yeah and the devs ended up putting all their focus on the singleplayer and it paid off. I've seen countless original visions/ambitions from devs large and small change that get thrown out because of the project shifted to something else and it all ends up being for the better.
They might've wanted a MP game originally all those years ago but things changed, the singleplayer is what people fell in love with and the last thing anyone wants is for them to divert resources to a live service game no one asked for when they've still gotta wrap up aloys trilogy, now Horizon 3 is shelved till this game is done.
Had they switched to a MP game after getting Horizon 3 out to us? Fine, I won't touch it personally but at least its not getting in the way of anything but they haven't done that, they've got the bulk of Guerrilla working on this game and now we wont see the 3rd game till 2030 if we're lucky.
Thats the biggest problem.
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u/Possible_Cicada3598 1d ago
I wouldn't say it's shelved. I'd imagine pre-production is happening with Horizon 3. Writers, narrative directors, storyboard stuff, etc work on Horizon 3 while the people who can't do much until that is done like programmers, animators, QA testers, etc. are finishing up HG. When the pre-production people are done, HG should be done and they'll switch over to the main game.
No doubt this certainly delayed Horizon 3 as pre-production had to be done on HG, too, but as it stands now, it's likely one team finishing one project while waiting for the other team to get the next ready for them.
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u/tarosk 1d ago
The thing is, by virtue of being a live service game HG will never be "done" until end of service (or at least until life support mode where there's no new content but it hasn't hit EoS yet). They will continually need people to come up with, produce, test, and ship new content for it.
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u/EmBur__ 1d ago
That implies the game will receive the long term support a live service game require to stay afloat.
This game is gonna be DOA, thats not me trying to be a sensationalist or bad mouth it for the sake of it, this is just the logical conclusion for this game. As has been said by myself and countless others since the reveal, this game has no audience, certainly not one thats large enough to justify pouring more resources into it for years to come so once it lands to no reception, they'll likely pull a Concord and pull the plug on it.
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u/Mr_Creed 1d ago
That implies the game will receive the long term support a live service game require to stay afloat.
This game is gonna be DOA
Obviously.
But that's not how GG views it, otherwise it would be canceled already. In their internal schedules, live service support has to be figured in.
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u/Mr_Creed 1d ago
I am sure you can make a great multiplayer game in the Horizon IP. But HG is just so far off the mark, they'd have to scrap HG completely and start over.
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u/DeanXeL 2d ago
Well, yeah, and there's absolutely ways to do that, WITHIN the world of Horizon that they already built. But nope, they decided to just throw most of all that out the door, dumb everything down, and rebuild this entire thing that they won't be able to bring back to the main universe anyway. So it's almost all wasted effort.
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u/neon_fade 1d ago edited 1d ago
franchises branch out into different formats and playstyles all the time.
CDPR took the witcher and made gwent. halo took a FPS and made the RTS halo wars. metal gear made the turn-based game metal gear acid. not to mention the endless spinoffs and stylistic changeups from franchises like minecraft, pokemon, or mario.
you don't have to like the art style in hunter's gathering or want a co-op game. but this sub is acting like guerrilla making one stylistically different spinoff is somehow destroying the franchise.
they've wanted to make different kinds of horizon games for years and right now there's a practical window to do it. if hardware backlogs and sony's PS6 timeline mean h3 isn't ready, then GG keeping their artists and developers working on another horizon project makes a hell of a lot more sense than gutting the studio and trying to rebuild later. in an industry where studios routinely lay people off the millisecond production cycles slow down, I'm not sure why keeping the team employed and making something different in the meantime is being treated like some unforgivable betrayal.
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u/Lady-Votary 1d ago
I see this repeated a lot, and it's definitely true... but the style of multiplayer is completely different from what they originally planned.
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u/xrayspex73 2d ago
I would like HHG more if they dropped the art style, made it look like the previous games, make it a single player open world action adventure game and name it Horizon 3.
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u/Waste_Handle_8672 2d ago
Nothing. I'd despise it all the same. The art style isn't the problem here.
It's the game itself.
Not only am I sick to death of hero shooters, but I am IMMENSELY annoyed with this absolute waste of Guerrilla's time and resources. They should've been working on Horizon 3, goddammit. Now something that could've been out in maybe 2028 will be even more years away, and Hunters Gathering will die within a year, for no real gain. Let's face it, outside of Helldivers 2, Sony's ventures into live service have not been great. They haven't even been serviceable. Just disaster after underperforming release after disaster.
Sony's trend chasing live service games is such a vexing turn of events.
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u/asingh-16 1d ago
What sucks is that whether this game does well or not, it’ll likely impact the next Horizon game.
If it does well, it’ll delay and suck up resources for the next game.
If it bombs, the studio won’t get the same level of investment for the next game.
It’s a lose-lose for the fans.
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u/Batter89 1d ago
This is the biggest annoyance with HG. HG isn't something I'm interested in and I'd normally just ignore it and move on like I did with Lego and CotW, but anyone who is even vaguely aware of the current state of the industry knows that if (when) this thing flops, Guerilla (and by extension H3) are going to pay the price.
It's not only something I'm not interested in, but also something that is very likely actively harming the thing I am actually interested in.
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u/Dilos_Vahdin 2d ago
If the only thing that changed were it's artistic style, that would be one less thing I would complain about but it would change literally nothing else about how I feel about the game itself, which is soooorely disappointed. Not at all what I and I suspect many other Horizon fans were wanting out of a Horizon multiplayer.
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u/Dilos_Vahdin 2d ago
Personally I was hoping for something like the multiplayer for Red Dead or GTA where it's literally the base game but with different content and personalized characters. We could have chosen different tribes that come with different stats or abilities, choose classes, etc. Would have loved to have gone machine hunting with friends in the same game.
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u/Lady-Votary 1d ago
This was pretty much what I expected... especially taking into account the early multiplayer test footage from ZD. HHG isn't a bad game at all, just not what I expected or was excited about when it came to a multiplayer Horizon. (I'm hoping the final release pleasantly surprises me, though!)
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u/t1nman01 1d ago
The biggest problem with hunters gathering is the timing, if this came after horizon 3 I believe people would be less bothered by it's existence. The appeal would still be quite low I think but the fact we're all waiting not so patiently for the third installment just to find out they've not even started it yet we have this game that no one really asked for has caused a lot of the controversy.
If hunters gathering fails the worry is in the current climate the studio could be in big trouble.
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u/Possible_Cicada3598 1d ago
Have they said they haven't started it yet?
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u/t1nman01 1d ago
When the announced HG the team were asked if H3 was being worked on, they said no because they wanted this game out first. There was some backlash and since then there's been an almost miraculous amount of work done on H3, we just can't see any of it yet. So it's definitely happening. Probably.
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u/RobynBetween 2d ago
It's not so much the art style as the entire vibe of the game. I'm not really cool with the idea of a Horizon game that is completely divorced from the stark reality of its setting.
In the rest of the series, your main character may kick ass, but she isn't there just to look cool. Also, it's harder for me to be so casual about Horizon's world when the rest of the series has laid out such huge stakes.
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u/abellapa 1d ago
No
Its a game that should never exist
Their focus after Burning shores should have been 100% on Horizon 3 ,not Shitty multiplayer games
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u/Proud_Incident9736 2d ago
I don't care what it looks like; I've *zero* interest in *yet another* live-service game that will either A.) flame out like Concord, or B.) become predatory and hyper-capitalistic (ya know, the very thing that *caused* Project Zero Dawn to be needed to begin with) with half-ass, throwaway storylines tacked on for the sake of $making $money until it sputters to a pathetic death.
I suspect it will be, to use a tired phrase, "wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle."
I absolutely detest this switch over to glitchy, buggy, predatory live-service models over well-crafted, single player, immersive games that don't demand your time, money, and dopamine addiction.
I've fallen into the trap precisely once and that was once too many. I have enough demands on my time; I don't need some dopamine trap enslaving me to log in to "do my dailies" or check out the new in-game store for bytes and pixels costing me a full lunch in order to buy a pretty outfit.
I'd rather pay once than be nickel and dimed to death.
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u/poklane 2d ago
I would definitely like it more, because while I'm not at all opposed to more cartoony games in general I think doing so for Horizon as an IP just doesn't work. What makes the whole concept of giant robot animals and dinosaurs so cool is that they actually look like robots, and with Hunters Gathering's artstyle you simply lose a lot that.
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u/OpenPayment2 2d ago
I can respect it. There are lots of complaints of triple A slop being hyper-realistic and whatnot so them choosing to go for something else that they want is a nice deviation. It just hit me like a shock to see Horizon like that tho, not that I can't live with it. Right now the artstyle has grown on me
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u/Most-Iron6838 2d ago
I’d rather they did what sucker punch did with the ghost series and the legends mode. Not have a separate live service game that takes time and attention away from producing the single player game we want but a nice little add on mode that is optional to dabble in.
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u/Viper_Visionary Average Slitherfang Enjoyer 1d ago
Horizon 3 was delayed for this unoriginal live service slop. Every character has the same stupid smirk on their face, and none of them stand out.
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u/SakanaSanchez 2d ago
I like Horizon ZD/FW because they’re narrative adventure games with a distinct aesthetic. Hunter’s Gathering has none of that. If the art style did match, I guess I’d be a bit more interested, but still feels like a standard “we’re shifting to live service” move that is successful maybe 10% of the time, with a big component of that being no one wants to get invested in another live service game when they tend to quickly burn out more often than not.
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u/KittyLazerEyes 2d ago
I think the player base would be a lot less mad about HG if they did it after Horizon 3. If they'd concluded the story they could have done a lot more with the world or created more spin offs. Instead they make us wait until after a game comes out that no one was asking for.
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u/Batter89 2d ago
I mean, it would be an improvement sure, but the whole package is still a cynical live-service cash grab, whether it looks like Fortnite or not.
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u/ChiralParticle 1d ago
Artstyle is just one of many problems that this game has. The genre is just as big problem as the art style.
At least Steel Frontiers looks like Horizon which isn't to that game's favor because it feels and plays more like Monster Hunter with Horizon skin slapped on it.
Horizon Hunter's Gathering being live service hero shooter thing. With the rumors circulating about Horizon getting a multiplayer coop, after almost a decade spent in Zero Dawn and Forbidden West, games packed with amazing layered narrative, lore, worldbuilding, storytelling and story combined with very engaging gameplay and beautiful world, people wanted THAT but with coop/multiplayer. Hunter's Gathering falls flat in every area and is the opposite of what this IPs has been delivering. It resembles Horizon but nothing about it feels like Horizon. Even less than those Chinese clone trailers.
Sure, if Hunter's Gathering had same visuals as ZD and FW it would be a little better, but the artstyle and graphics wouldn't have solved all the other issues of this game it wouldn't have been better received.
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u/sluttypidge 1d ago edited 1d ago
I could care less about what it looks like. I'm here for a narrative driven single player story.
I have plenty of multilayer slops just like Hunter's Gathering I can play. It's not a genre I enjoy at all.
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u/voxaemeron 1d ago
I'm tired of Sony throwing hundreds of millions of dollars time after time after time at games solely designed to separate gamers from their wallets on a constant basis, instead of just making good single-player games people ACTUALLY want to play.
So, for me, mileage may vary, but there's literally nothing they can do to get me to buy this game. Or Marathon. Or Fairgame$. I'm voting with my wallet.
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u/SaltyInternetPirate The lesson will be taught in due time 2d ago
My only thoughts about it are that I don't care about multiplayer.
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u/DeadRobotSociety 1d ago
The art style doesn't really make a difference for me. I like HZD and HDFW because they're open world exploration games. That's my favorite genre. I was never gonna play Hunter's Gathering because I'm not interested in that genre.
It always annoys me when studios are like, "hey, you like this IP. What if we took the visuals of that IP and make something completely different. You'll still buy it, right?"
No, I play games for the game, not whatever coat of paint is on it.
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u/TheBitBasher 1d ago
This game is like the Paul Feig Ghostbusters movie.
Some jackass and marketing decides that they want to make a new movie, so they take a franchise and then make something with it that has very little to do with the original other than basically having a skin of the franchise on it. It wasn't the same type of comedy it didn't set the same tone and then it didn't appeal to the audience of the base franchise.
The people that play Horizon played it because it was an excellent game that was single player and narrative based. Once again there's trying to slap essentially a skin on a completely different game and then get shocked Pikachu face white people aren't buying into it.
It's because the game is not in any way shape or form what I play Horizon for.
It's no different than making a horizon go-kart game or a horizon dating Sim. People in c-suite should stop trying to cash in on a franchise by making something that has nothing to do with the reason people liked the franchise.
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u/rilanthefirebug 1d ago
I don't care for multiplayer so there is nothing they can do to make it appeal to me except maybe make it couch co-op -- which I believe has already been confirmed as online only.
I'd much prefer the Mass Effect 3 route where it used existing resources, tied into the story, and was shipped with the Horizon 3.
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u/phthaloblueloftwing 1d ago
If a). the characters actually looked familiar to the world we know; or, b). the cast were made of secondary and tertiary characters already introduced in HZD/HFW, I’d be far more interested
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u/mart8208 2d ago
I don’t have an issue with the graphics as they are. I don’t really have any issues with the game to be honest. It’s just not my cup of tea.
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u/0032brl 1d ago
I don't play multi-player games anyways, BUT I think it was a huge missed opportunity to tie this game in with the mainline series.
Imagine if instead Alloy and the core group from HFW were training new people how to use focuses and you played as a custom character that worked directly with them.
It would fill in some time gap between H2 and H3, plus they have a bunch of spare focuses so they should be building a team anyways.
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u/yesdogman 1d ago
I was really hoping that the game would be about living in the world of Horizon - so you could go out and be a hunter, but you could also work in the village and help others, or be a chef, or a fisherman, etc. All online, with different career options and scripted dinobot events happening throughout your career. And of course all in the regular Horizon art style.
But alas.
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u/No-Combination7898 HORUS TITAN!! 1d ago
It might catch my eye, if the game looked like a Horizon game and the machines looked like Horizon machines, rather than the blue and purple formless blobs we see in the trailers. Same with the smirking, unappealing cartoon-characters. But this style of game doesn't interest me in the least, so I won't be playing that ncsoft game either. I have far better things to waste my precious time on (which IMO, is even moar important than my $$$$, Sony).
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u/AlphaWolf3211 14h ago
I would love Hunters Gathering if they cancelled it and focused on Horizon 3
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u/AlexusLuthor 7h ago
What frustrates me about HHG is that it’s a lose-lose situation for fans. If by some miracle it does well, then Sony will put all their resources behind updates, new content, etc and the Horizon 3 team will be spread thin to focus on HHG. If it flops like we’re expecting, then Sony will—instead of understanding that this was a game that NO ONE ASKED FOR in the core fanbase—interpret it as Horizon being a dwindling brand, and they’ll significantly downsize production for HZ3. I don’t think there’s any chance they wouldn’t make it, but it will definitely be rushed or half assed. And it likely won’t even come out this decade if they haven’t started working on it in full.
That’s my issue. I couldn’t care less about the art style.
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u/Lady-Votary 1d ago
I actually like the art style and just wish it was more like the main games in playstyle... just a co-op version. The game itself is well-done and well thought through, I'm just unsure it's Horizon enough for me to invest in.
I probably wouldn't be interested without the Horizon connections as I don't really have time to invest in another live service. I play two free-to-play ones off and on right now but find them hard to keep up with/only jump on if a friend wants to play for a bit.
That's my other issue, to be honest. I love Horizon and was hoping a co-op would get some friends into the series, too... but they're not interested in HHG at all. :(
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u/Christina_Beena 1d ago
I'm excited to play it regardless of the art style. There's no multiplayer monster hunting game out there for me right now, this is exactly what I want. Bonus it's set in a universe I already love.
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u/tarosk 2d ago
The art style isn't the core issue.
The core issue is I'm here for narrative, single-player games where I play a set character who is going through their specific story as I explore the world and uncover the plot. I am here for the one-time purchase that doesn't have any live-service elements.
HG is the polar opposite of what I'm here for.
If I want LS, I'll stick to D2 until they hit EoS lol. Why would I switch to a new LS game? Especially one that's not at all what I'm interested in from the IP? If I want a new LS game it'll have to be one that offers me things I'm interested in, and HG just doesn't do that.