2016 is one of my most anticipated years in a long time when it comes to entertainment, and something I especially look forward to is a video game that might be able to change its genre forever.

Repeating the ideas and behavior of others is very common, and has been so for as long as we go back. It’s often a social thing, though in an industry, it’s primarily a matter of marketing and mass appeal. A good example of this is the amount of open world video games we see these days. Some of us remember how they used to be rare and special, but making them has become easier and easier as technology has moved on. Assassin’s Creed manages to have a new one out every year. An entirely new, huge overworld full of things to collect and places to see, put together in one year. Sounds amazing, right?

Sadly, at this point, they often don’t do much for me. It’s a combination of the linear mission structure (which is fine, I’d just like to see more “open” alternatives) and the long travel times where you don’t really do anything other than moving between the locations where all the fun happens. Prototype 2 is probably my favourite of the genre so far, which sounds like a weird choice, but it made me think about something important: That game does not have a very big overworld, yet almost all of it is densely populated and highly interactive. You can begin spreading chaos everywhere you go, in an instant, which is fun.

So basically, to me, it’s not really about the open world itself. It’s about what you can do in it.

Some people might not agree, and they might enjoy walking long distances and just taking in the scenery, but I fully believe that it’s possible to satisfy these people while also appealing to impatient, action-hungry folks like myself. People who enjoy driving in slow motion as Fanklin in GTA V while flipping off the police. That or making a huge car blockade before throwing a sticky bomb into the middle of it. Good times!

That’s where Horizon Zero Dawn kicks in the door and yells “Surprise, wankers! I’m here to please every crowd I can find!”

In case you didn’t know, Horizon Zero Dawn is an upcoming open world action game by Guerrilla Games (mostly known for Killzone) about a mysterious future in which robot animals and dinosaurs roam the wild, and you play as a woman tasked with hunting these robots in order to gather an important resource. I’ve been looking forward to it since its reveal, but only gradually did I begin to realize how much potential it actually shows within its genre.

Look at that screenshot above! If you ask me, that alone is much more exciting than the promise of a large, open environment, which the developers even seem to agree with. See, in the preview video released during Paris Game Week 2015, senior producer Mark Norris briefly mentions that you can explore everything you see, before moving on to the robot hunting. He doesn’t dwell on it. It doesn’t even get a whole sentence devoted to it. It’s just him going “yeah, you can do that, whatever, now on to the cool part!”.

Being able to go where you want used to be the “cool part”, but Horizon treats it as almost being irrelevant. Who cares where you go? What matters is what you’ll find there, and from what we’ve seen so far, that is mainly going to be huge, heavily armed robot dinosaurs.

To drive my point home, pedal to the metal, I didn’t even notice that this is yet another open world game during E3, even though they never exactly tried to hide it. In fact, it didn’t even cross my mind until people pointed it out months later. I was too focused on the actual robot hunting, which, again, looks absolutely amazing on its own.

Using open worlds as selling points might be a trend that’s coming to an end, and should we be that lucky, I won’t miss it in the slightest. I absolutely do not think a game can be even remotely carried by an open world in itself. It needs proper content, in my opinion. Interesting things that are worth exploring for, or plenty of stuff to interact with in entertaining ways.

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is an interesting example due to the way that one half of the game is significantly better than the other. Exploring the open world and making my ship strong enough to take over every fortress on the map was pretty much the whole game for me. I couldn’t care less about the story missions. They are frustrating, restrictive and straight up not fun compared to the more open aspects, so while I haven’t actually beaten the game, it still feels like I have. Meanwhile, the subject of this blog doesn’t look like it will have that problem, unless it turns out half the game is about running a pottery shop.

Populating a big open world with big things also makes sense the same way it made sense in Shadow of the Colossus. It gives them room to move around naturally, and when said big things are also the objective of the game, it significantly decreases the need for any intrusive HUD elements, seeing big things are generally pretty hard to overlook.

Now, I strongly dislike the idea of almost every game taking place in an open world. Variety is crucial to keeping our industry fresh, and not all games gain much from endless environments. Tight spaces and linear paths definitely have their place, and often make for some of the more memorable games out there (never forget that a linear game often equals a longer journey). But Horizon is clearly open world because it’s the most fitting structure for its content, and not just because that’s all it has to offer, which sadly seems to be the case for many other games in the genre.

My excitement towards Horizon Zero Dawn, compared to other open world games, seems justified for this reason. I simply like the looks of the things you actually do in the game, as opposed to most Assassin’s Creed games, and no amount of beautifully recreated European cities will ever make a difference in that regard.

Some might argue that my excitement is misplaced, and that the game could easily disappoint. 2014’s Watch Dogs, for example, is a game that failed to live up to many people’s expectations. That said, what do games like that sell themselves on? You ask me, it’s about 70 % visual detail, and very little of it comes from unique features. They downgraded the graphics of Watch Dogs, and people stopped being excited. By contrast, it will take far more than that to make me stop being excited about Horizon (the pottery shop might do it, but let’s hope it doesn’t come to that).

Take everything I just wrote, add that Horizon has one of the most interesting video game worlds I’ve seen in actual decades, and it should be pretty clear why this is one of my most anticipated games of 2016 (which says a lot, considering the competition). This is the first open world game Guerilla Games has ever made, and they already seem to be showing everyone else how it’s done. Hats off to the development team. I will continue looking forward to this title with much optimism (as with most other things coming out the same year), and I wish Guerilla Games the best of luck with their efforts.

All praise given, however, I have no fucking clue idea what the title is even supposed to mean. What will they call the sequel, Sky Thirty Afternoon?