Less experienced players now have a way to experience Horizon Zero Dawn’s immersive world and narrative.
While development on the Horizon Zero Dawn expansion The Frozen Wilds is in full swing, we’re still finding time to add improvements to the main game. Last month’s Patch 1.30 added a new difficulty setting called ‘Ultra Hard’ which, as the name suggests, provides a greater challenge for hardcore Horizon Zero Dawn players. Today’s patch adds a difficulty level that does quite the opposite: ‘Story’ difficulty allows you to immerse yourself in the narrative of Horizon Zero Dawn and the exploration of Aloy’s world without having to worry too much about combat.
Among the most noticeable changes, ‘Story’ difficulty boosts the player-inflicted damage and reduces the player-received damage considerably, making the combat encounters manageable for less experienced players. It is our hope that the new difficulty setting will help us welcome more players into Aloy’s quest to discover her identity and the mysteries of the world she inhabits. In addition to the ‘Story’ difficulty, Patch 1.32 includes several fixes as outlined in the patch notes.
If you have a chance to try out ‘Story’ difficulty, we’d love to hear your thoughts! We’ll have more information on The Frozen Wilds soon, but in the meantime, keep an eye on the official Guerrilla Twitter and Facebook pages for all the latest Horizon Zero Dawn related news and developments.
I think this is a great idea for this game. The combat is one of the weakest aspects Horizon’s game play.
Wtf? No it’s not. It’s one of the strongest. It’s literally the main part of the game lol. The two biggest parts of the game are combat and story. If you want to say the combat is weak you need to be more specific like talk about the melee combat which could have been more fleshed out by adding combos or something but that’s not what game is about. It’s not Devil May Cry. The game is a third person shooter before a hack and slash.
Is this a joke, I gravely disagree with you….
When you say ‘great idea’ and ‘weakest aspect’ together in one sentence I’m getting the impression that the combat was simply too difficult for you and it was in fact the strongest aspect since you couldn’t manage killing any robot dinosaurs.
I loved the combat, kind of want to check out the ultra when the dlc finally arrives then.
wait wha??? Combat might just be one of the strongest parts of the game. It’s so intense, especially later on when you encounter badass machines. You may just be a pleb getting your ass handed over time and time again
The whole thing is you have a bow and you have to fight machines whose only attack is to run straight at you. So this makes every freakin’ fight into shoot once, run away a bit, shoot again, run away a bit.. Most fights end up like Dark Souls where you swing once, roll away, etc until they are defeated. Its one sided and poorly planned out. Also, pretty much pointless since I am maxed out on almost all pick ups from quests and drops!
The combat isn’t hard its just infuriating and pointless.
If all you’re using is your bow then you’re doing it wrong.
@OctoWhopper,
You’re doing it wrong :p
@OctoWhopper, while I respect everyone’s opinion, yours concerning the combat in HZD is seemingly blasphemous! I truly mean no harm in saying this, however HZD’s combat is utterly fantastic! In one of your comments you made mention of the bow as if it was your only weapon of choice, which does pain me to think that you never decided to mix it up with Aloy’s impressive arsenal.
I personally got into some serious outnumbered scrapes requiring me to pull out all stops in order to best the variety of robotics beast coming at me from all sides as they will often work together. When you say combat you also have to think about the hack ability which gives Aloy the upper hands at times. Try hacking a Thunderjaw and follow the big guy into battle against some other larger than life beast and the fireworks are incredible. It’s all about how you approach the experience.