My favorite combat system ever made and one of the few games I've played on its hardest difficulty because the challenge still feels fair.

When I first started Zero Dawn I was terrified of even just the Walkers and now I want nothing more than fighting three Fireclaws at the same time lol.

I'll admit I'm worried that the story won't be as compelling as Zero Dawn - I'm in the camp that groaned a little when a post-credit stinger implied a sequel - but having just finished Frozen Wilds for a second time and no impulse to not just speed through the main game now (it's kind of hilarious being level 53 and just meeting Sun-King Avad) for a quick refresher (it'd be my third playthrough) and try to get the Platinum (I somehow never got all allies in the final battle and just tonight got all the Blazing Suns in the hunting trials) I'm just so excited to see how they build on this game gameplay wise.

Plus, the stuff with Cyan and Hephaestus makes me realize that even if there's not a lot more to reveal about how this world came to be the way it was, we really don't know how most of the other AIs have been handling their time being worshipped as Gods or silently whittling away at their assigned tasks. I'll bet there's still a decent amount of history to dig up - I really hope so since I admittedly care very, very little about the tribal politics even if the tribes themselves are well realized.

I also think they got so much better at facial animation and cutscene editing just in the months between the game and DLC, I imagine this game will have the full Sony cinematic feel to it. And I'd forgotten how good the regular writing is, both logs and dialogue. It can be a little melodramatic sometimes but there's a huge amount of pathos and humor - I forgot how funny this game was! - too.

So, yeah. Haven't been counting the days like this since Red Dead 2.


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Oh, I also remembered finding this data piece the other day that I don't remember always being there but it was straight up called The Forbidden West and had some pretty interesting things to say about what this game might have in store:


"Deserts of palest white, others...color of fire...sweeps of blue sand...prairies of tall grass, each blade sharp enough to draw blood."

"At night, unknown animals...glowing eyes...colors of kites and fireworks."

"A lake 100 times the size of Daybrink...the water is...sickening."

""One spoke of drinkers of machine blood, lips and tongues stained, teeth replaced with metal...youths pale as ash, who hunt tirelessly into the night. Still another tribe///digging deep pits...unknowable reasons...another tribe...riding their thin dark boats."

Even forgoing the more specific details, I actually read this and got a little scared, lol. Is this gonna be a game about tribal and biological warfare this time around? Yikes!



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