Horizon Zero Dawn’s racial diversity is no mistake

Polygon: "I’ve spent so much time watching people use “lore” as reason to forgive uninspired writing or character design that I was unprepared for Horizon Zero Dawn to invert the familiar formula. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen a fantastical story that set up “implausible” diversity and then followed through with an explanation."

[moegooner88]

GG put so much effort into making the lore and universe as authentic as possible. Even as someone in the science field myself, I was often blown away by how far they went to make the scientific research logs as believable as possible. Something that many reviewers strangely didn’t point out.

[Hardiman]

It's rare I seek out all data logs in games but finding them were on of my favorite parts in the game!

[nitus10]

I haven't played HZD "yet" (on my "to do" list) although I have played Oblivion and Skyrim. One feature I did like was the ability to collect and read "books" and "papers" which IMHO added to the mythos of the games.

[Gazondaily]

Because those reviewers may not be in the science field like you to be able to recognise/ appreciate it?

[moegooner88]

You don’t have to be a specialist to realize how much work went into the research behind the game. The author of this Polygon article points this out, ironically, the Polygon review didn’t mention any of this.

[gangsta_red]

That's because Polygon is funded by scientific researchers.

[KwietStorm_BLM]

Reviewers leaving out depth and lore? Nothing strange at all about that.

[Hardiman]

The level of detail that went into the lore, characters, cultures and narrative is top notch!

It's rare for a brand new IP to feel so fleshed out and established. It still blows me away that a studio that specialized in FPS delivered such a compelling open world action RPG!

[RGB]

Another laughably bad SJW piece by a failing website.
The Witcher is based on folklore around the European nations in medieval times.
Wars of the Roses is an actual documented history war between two royal houses in Northern England.
Horizon is great, I love it, stop putting bullshit agendas into entertainment. Let creative minds dictate what they want from their creations. Make your own massively impressive fantasy world if it's that important to you ffs!

[TampaJoey]

Crybaby Snowflakes try to hijack everything to push their BS.

[_-EDMIX-_]

Exactly. Its like...not sure if they've took a peak at America before, but its not just 1 demographic.

[Redemption-64]

And the creative minds at GG wanted to show diversity in their game, which you seem to have a problem. What is wrong with an article pointing out a fact in a game? What is SJW about diversity in a game?

[ThatGuyDart]

I think the OP was criticizing the author not because of the praise for Horizon but it's slander of The Witcher series and I agree with his/her genreral premise.

Video game devs should be allowed to freely create any type of concept and world they want and whether these works have diversity or not is purely up to them. Some are free to not like The Witcher for its lack of diversity but to say "it should have been such and such way" is invalid. No The Witcher is fine as it was created, so was Horizon Zero Dawn.

[Angerfist]

The whole diversity agenda is an obsession about race. Thats what is the problem.

[RGB]

10 downvotes because people are snowflakes or can't read... Nice.

I love Horizon, I have no issue with it using diversity as part of it's story, nor would I care if it was all white people. It played great, had a cool narrative and characters weren't forced in my opinion, Horizon is my personal Game of the Year.

I am however annoyed at the article BS attempt at expecting diversity in medieval Europe and especially Northern England, total BS to change literal history (regarding the Wars of the Roses) to hit agenda quotas.

[Redemption-64]

I actually do believe the witcher does luck diversity, and NO, i am not talking about ethnic, am talking about culture, Crusades and more. Medieval period began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Now please don't misunderstand, the Witcher is a very beautiful game, i was just expecting more given the time period. Now the devs at CD project can just say they didn't want to include that, and that is ok, i see nothing wrong with that, but as i said, it lucks some elements that were present during that time period.

[_-EDMIX-_]

@ThatGuy- ohhh

Ok.

That doesn't make any sense to slander The Witcher because of that especially considering the fictional place that The Witcher is set in.

The diversity or lack thereof inside of The Witcher make sense based on the narrative and I would say it's diverse in regards to the species that the world narrative support in terms of elves, Dwarfs etc.

Horizon zero Dawn is diverse based on its narrative because clearly it is going to be set in a specific region in the world that was diverse in the first place.

Both games have the demographics they have to support a specific narrative.

I completely agree with you that video games should be able to support the concepts that they support.

Both games have the demographics they have for different reasons.

[Redemption-64]

@RGB
I misread what you wrote

[Pintheshadows]

I actually don't mind it in Horizon. It makes sense that there would be loads of races if we have had to rebuild after our civilization ends in the shadow of a ruined city. Horizon's world suffers from Tribalism instead.

[TheOttomatic91]

This is a Polygon article which means it’s mandatory to take it with a grain of salt.

[bluefox755]

You can tell when playing the game the developers were obviously pushing the diversity angle. The thing is, the game is actually good and it can get away with forced diversity. If you make a bad game, it sticks out like a sore thumb.

[spicelicka]

I think it's more than that. It is set in a fictitious time period where it's entirely possible for it to be as diverse as it likes. Even games that are set in a fictional past are criticized because people take issue with locations and cultures having "incorrect" diversity. This is a game set in the far far future, many countries are diverse now so this future makes sense anyway.

[generic-user-name]

I think Horizon is an example where the diversity doesn't feel forced and thanks to the story it makes sense.

[ginsunuva]

It was still a bit weird that half of everyone is of a single race, and the other half is mostly one other race, with like 10% other

[NotanotherReboot]

The forced diversity was one of 100 reasons why I didn't like this game

[Pintheshadows]

Is it forced though? I really don't think it is in this case. The characters just happen to be from different races. Makes sense. Think about Denver for a second. A massive city. Think about all of the races present. Think about propagation of the human species after Armageddon. The tribes would be made up of all manner of races. And race would take a back seat to survival. No one gives a shit about skin colour when machines are trying to murder you. Instead this world has sunken back into to tribalism. And the game deals with that in a rather excellent manner.

This to me was part of the science fiction texture, part of the world, that made me like Horizon so much. Every facet was considered. I don't think anything in this game was just thrown in for it to be there.

To be honest I like the idea that Aloy is an outcast because she is ginger. Maybe everyone in Horizon's world just hates gingers. They'll explore this in Horizon 2.

Articles championing like this though, I agree, are bollocks. If I may make an observation, perhaps articles like these have ruined your enjoyment of games rather than the games themselves. I really can't blame you if that is the case.

If you want an example of really forced diversity, you should read some modern Marvel comics. Iceman for example. Now that is forced.

[generic-user-name]

Were the other 99 reasons all that it wasn't on Xbox instead?

[_-EDMIX-_]

I have no clue what you mean by forced because pretty damn positive America has a lot of diverse demographics.

[Angerfist]

Polygon and newnormative are SJW Blogs trying to subvert our hobby. Ban those sites

[SharnOfTheDEAD]

You can never, and I mean never win with these people. Nothing is ever good enough.

[EatCrow]

Nobody that isn't racist looks at different kinds of people in a company or game world and says.. Oh look diversity! It's almost as if they've never seen it before or that it's some holy grail outside of this world when diversity is inside all people even of the same race. So when companies come out touting diversity in game or staff... They're pretty much clearly stating that they see a clear distinction between race... That they are looking strictly at skin color. Which is very racist.

Nobody really cares about diversity as long as it is not forced. Cuz then it's an eye sore.

[CrimsonWing69]

It felt a little forced to me.

[C-H-E-F]

Ehh you should've put spoiler alert not everyone has this game and you spoiled alot of the PLOT that the player should experience themselves. I mean you litterally jumped into the last 3 hours of the game.

However, there's so much more to the game than this, Not sure if many of you noticed is that GAIA (GAEA) is, modeled after the goddess of Mother Earth she was said to be the mother of the titans, she is also a black character in the game. Scientist have already said that black people were the first to humanoid species on this planet. So that means, the person to bring humanity to where it is today had to have been a black woman. white people come from the sub-human species the neanderthal as you play the game, you see that barbaric genotype manifest in the civilizations where the whites live in abundance (alot of them are the bandit characters). You see the class, dignity, of the black/colored characters (reminds you of ancient Afrika, the Egyptian era). In almost all of the societies where there were black people they were lead by a black woman (except the mountain people and your archenemy) the black woman, is normally the one that creates structure in the black communities, the black man enforces the structure as is so evident with this game. I can go on and on, but you can see this in the game, they really break down the science and the evolution of man (humanity) it's nicely coated under many layers within the game. This game was beautifully crafted I don't get why it wasn't able to win anything from the VGA, perhaps the wrong people were reviewing the games for the awards.

[VariantAEC]

We know humans came from Europe, the out of Africa theory has already been disproven. Humanoid fossils much older than those in Africa have been found in Europe. The fossils are 7.2 million years old. Far older than those in Africa.
https://nypost.com/2017/05/...
There have been many new findings just in 2017 that could very well destroy the belief that humans got their start in Africa including a 5.7 million year old footprint in Europe and a 300,000 year old skull in Morocco. Granted Morocco is still in Africa, but way way farther north and east in a country that if not separated by a narrow channel would literally touch Europe. Also as I mentioned the tooth and jaw found in Europe plus that old footprint suggests that our ancestors came out of Europe.

[DragonKnight]

"Horizon Zero Dawn’s racial diversity is no mistake."

And no one but people who dedicate their lives to focusing strictly on unchangeable characteristics actually cares.

[Bebedora]

The only mistake is the reviewer making it political. ffs. Just ruins it and belittles the game rather than anything. Disrespectful.