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How Guerrilla Games' Horizon Franchise Subverts the Sci-Fi Genre

The Horizon franchise embraces the sci-fi genre, but also subverts it by not glamorizing the idea of taking to the stars and leaving Earth behind.

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CS7253d ago

Great article! Great game series!

RabbitFly253d ago

The premise og this article does not make sense. Sci-fi has not glamorized space exploration, sure there are some standouts that do, but most true to genre Sci-fi is usually more about the human consequences of technology/progress. It is most often quite dystopian and almost never celebratory.

As such Horizon's reference to space exploration does not buck any trend in Sci-fi. In fact it follows the trope.

I get that this article was supposed to celebrate horizon. Which it deserves. But the superficial nature of that premise stands out to me.

It's like the author thinks all Sci-fi is like star trek, yet still ignoring how much of star trek, while celebratory of space exploration, still tries to warn of the hubris of man.

kayoss252d ago

The way i interpreted the ending of HFW is that it wasnt space travel that was the consequences of what happened. It was technology that ended up dooming Earth and forcing the survivors to seek out refuge in space. However, it seems like they didnt learn their lesson and because whatever they created became sentient and destroy their "new" world. Forcing them back to Earth. Thats what i got from the ending.

ravinash252d ago

@ kayoss
Sounds like the original planet of the apes... what year did that come out again?

RabbitFly251d ago

The moral of Horizon, and most Sci-fi for that matter, is not that technology is to blame, but mankind.

It Just explores the consequences of the hubris of man taken to it's ultimate conclusion through technology. Which, as is common in the genre, we create the means of out own destruction.

Again, my point is merely that this article uses a false premise to create an eye catching headline, and it annoys me. Because it only works if you are ignorant of the premise. So the author is either ignorrant about this topic and should therefore not have presented such a premise, or the author banks on the reader being ignorrant so the premise works. Either way ignorance is spread.

MrBaskerville253d ago

Haven't played that far, but assume it's something like Dan Simmons' Illium, but probably less interesting. Not a bad thing though, it's hard to compete with the ideas in Simmons Sci-Fi.

MrBaskerville252d ago

In Illium, peoplr have ascended to the stars. But they left people on earth, who primitive lives with some help from old technology. They have machines that can reconstruct their flesh if they die in an accident. When they turn 30(?) they ascend and join their people in the stars. That's what thet think, in reality they end up on a desolate space station where they are killed by a creature that call itself Caliban. The people in the stars have been gone for a long time and all that is left is remnants of their different projects.

MrBaskerville252d ago (Edited 252d ago )

But illium and Olympos is nowhere near his Hyperion series, which might be up there among the best sci-fi ever written. It's Neuromancer tier stuff, if not better.

253d ago Replies(1)
anast253d ago

Blade Runner, Snowpiercer, District 9 and .....there is a metric ton of Earth-bound sci-fi.

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