Horizon Zero Dawn this is the new IP from the developer Guerrilla Games the company made this after Killzone 3 they were looking for new ideas for a game and came up with 40 different concepts and among these Horizon Zero Dawn was included which game director Mathijs De Jonge considered the most risky of all the concepts presented. The game was first pitched by art director Jan-Bart Van Beek, after the game was pitched a team of 10 – 20 began to design a prototype for the game and approximately 20 different stories were written for the game. The team were exploring many different concepts including different player characters John Gonzalez was among the team who was previously the lead writer for Fallout New Vegas. The main elements of the story and the main protagonist Aloy remained intact from early development, however Sony would later admit that they were reluctant in the main character being female and so they conducted focus testing to see if the decision would be marketable.

 In this scene from Horizon Zero Dawn Aloy roughly aged 6 at this point begins her training for the proving to join the Nora tribe as this training montage happens Aloy makes a mistake and almost gets attacked by a watcher which is one of the weaker enemies in the game Rost her father figure has to save her, however later Aloy becomes more independent as she falls short of a ledge and Rost offers to help her and she gains the strength to pull herself up. We then see Aloy run along the beams and take a leap of faith through the air as this happens Aloy grows into a young women, after this we see another watcher attack Aloy however Aloy slides underneath the watcher and strikes it with an arrow as she looks back Rost has his bow aiming at the watcher ready to take the shot. This is a great way to bring this full circle he now realizes that she can defend herself and is ready for the proving. This game is very nice looking graphically and the different scenes within this montage work well with different lighting starting with the sun setting behind Rost and Aloy and the shadows cast upon their faces. We then see the shadow over Aloy as the watcher is jumping to attack her as the sun is high in the sky throughout the montage the sun is beaming down and we see a nice representation of daylight with the great skybox in this game. There are some great fine details within the lighting such as when Aloy takes a leap of faith and swings her arm in front of her you see the shadow of her arm on her face. The beams of light of a setting sun cast down over the water as she lands look amazing and really make the look of the nature background pop out as well as the reflection of the mountains as Aloy dives into a lake.  Nearing the final part of the montage when Aloy takes down the watcher and you see her looking back over her shoulder, the watcher lying on the ground with the glaring setting sunlight beaming down upon it works really well to emphasize the shadows beneath the watcher makes this really pop out of the screen. The music throughout this montage really works well to emphasize a fast paced scene, we start off with a subtle tone of violins which get faster pasted as the montage moves on, the music makes you think will the character make it with the speed picking up as the scene moves forward and then slowly fading out at the end of the montage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kM6HpamAEWE

 During the animation process of this game the team wanted to make the animations fit who Aloy was as a character, one of the goals was to make her feel like a real human who had to work on survival and not to be an action hero who executes every move they make perfectly every time. So as the team were working on the animation for Aloy they would have a foot slip as she lands a jump or when Aloy is performing a stealth kill especially on bigger machines she would really have to work to bring the machine down showing visible resistance. Through these simple and subtle animations the player can connect to Aloy more as she isn't able to perform super human things giving us a character that is flawed but capable to survive in the wilds.

Anna Cicone. (2018). BEHIND THE ANIMATIONS OF HORIZON ZERO DAWN, WITH NIEK NEERVENS. Available: http://www.cgsociety.org/news/article/3260/behind-the-animations-of-horizon-zero-dawn-with-niek-neervens. Last accessed 29/08/18.