49 Fun Facts About Horizon Zero Dawn

Which studio developed Horizon Zero Dawn?

Guerrilla Games: after years of grim war shooters the studio wanted a break from doom and gloom, and backed the pitch its own director called the riskiest on the table.

Where does Aloy save her progress in Horizon Zero Dawn?

At campfires: every one she discovers also becomes a point she can fast-travel to, so the map gets quicker to cross the more of it she explores.

Which console launched days after Horizon Zero Dawn?

Nintendo Switch: it arrived with a new Zelda, yet Horizon Zero Dawn kept that game off the top of the UK sales chart that week.

Horizon Zero Dawn was its studio's first new franchise since which series began in 2004?

Killzone: only a small prototype team worked on the new idea at first, and the rest of the studio joined once the last big Killzone game shipped in 2013.

Horizon Zero Dawn runs on which game engine, first built for a 2013 shooter?

Decima: Hideo Kojima later chose the same engine for Death Stranding, and it only received its public name when that deal was announced in 2016.

Who voices Aloy in Horizon Zero Dawn?

Ashly Burch: the voice is hers, but the face is not, because Aloy's looks are modelled on another actress, Hannah Hoekstra.

Which star of The Wire voices a major character in Horizon Zero Dawn?

Lance Reddick: he returned for the sequel, and after his death in 2023 the part was recast, with Tim Russ taking it over for a 2024 spin-off.

Who was the lead composer of Horizon Zero Dawn?

Joris de Man: he wrote the recurring themes, including Aloy's, while the other composers took on the soundscapes, the percussion and the tribal songs.

What do Horizon Zero Dawn's tribes call the lost civilisation before them?

The Old Ones: the tribes know little more about them because the archive meant to teach new humans their history was deliberately wiped before they were born.

In Horizon Zero Dawn, what name is given to the machines' growing aggression toward humans?

The Derangement: machines that used to shy away from people grew steadily more hostile, and new kinds built purely for fighting began to appear.

Which matriarchal tribe casts Aloy out at birth in Horizon Zero Dawn?

The Nora: their matriarchs found her as a newborn inside the tribe's sacred mountain with no mother in sight, and that mystery was enough to have her cast out.

Who raises Aloy as a fellow outcast in Horizon Zero Dawn?

Rost: he spends years training her to survive alone in the wilds, then gives his own life to save hers when a cult leader comes to kill her.

In Horizon Zero Dawn, which tournament does Aloy spend years training to win?

The Proving: winning would force the matriarchs to reveal where she came from, but masked killers attack the contest moments after she takes first place.

In Horizon Zero Dawn, what does Aloy wear to scan machines for weak points?

A Focus: Aloy finds the tiny old-world earpiece as a child, and its augmented-reality display lets her see things nobody else in her tribe can.

Which masked cult hunts Aloy in Horizon Zero Dawn?

The Eclipse: its soldiers take orders from a voice they believe is a devil from their own religion, and reawaken the old world's war machines on its behalf.

In Horizon Zero Dawn, Aloy is hunted because she looks like which ancient scientist?

Elisabet Sobeck: the likeness is no accident, because Aloy is a clone of the woman who led the project that brought life back to a dead Earth.

Which AI ran the terraforming system at the heart of Project Zero Dawn?

GAIA: once the old war machines had stripped the planet bare, she shut them down, built animal-like machines of her own to heal it, then reseeded life from stored DNA.

In Horizon Zero Dawn, which subsystem of the terraforming AI secretly controls the cult?

HADES: it was built only as a reset button, to wipe out a failed biosphere so the work could start again, until a signal from outside turned it rogue.

In Horizon Zero Dawn, which secretive guide admits he founded the cult hunting Aloy?

Sylens: he helps Aloy win, then after the credits he is shown trapping the defeated AI for himself so he can question it about who woke it.

Which city does Aloy defend from the cult's siege at the end of Horizon Zero Dawn?

Meridian: the attackers want the Spire, an ancient broadcast tower beside the city, to send the signal that would wake the old world's buried war machines.

In Horizon Zero Dawn, which machines must Aloy climb to reveal the map?

Tallnecks: they never attack and cannot be damaged, so the challenge is climbing one as it walks while more dangerous machines patrol the ground below.

Which T. rex-like machine was Horizon Zero Dawn's earliest proof of concept?

The Thunderjaw: it was the first machine the team built, on the reasoning that if a robot this huge could work, the whole game could.

In Horizon Zero Dawn, what are the underground factories that build the machines called?

Cauldrons: fighting through one teaches Aloy to override more kinds of machine, so each dungeon she clears adds new creatures she can turn to her side.

Which author's studies of how human societies develop shaped the world-building of Horizon Zero Dawn?

Jared Diamond: so many of the team read his Guns, Germs, and Steel that the lead writer doubted any game studio had ever studied one book so closely.

Which two Miyazaki films were early touchstones for Horizon Zero Dawn's setting and story?

Nausicaä and Princess Mononoke: the lead writer named their heroines as influences on Aloy alongside Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor, yet insisted she had no one-for-one model.

In Horizon Zero Dawn, whose company built the war machines that destroyed the old world?

Ted Faro: his combat robots could copy themselves and fuel up on living matter, so once he lost control of them they stripped the planet of life.

Which 2010 game's similar red-haired heroine briefly put Horizon Zero Dawn on hold?

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West: the studio went back to pitching other ideas, until co-founder Hermen Hulst urged everyone to return to the robot-dinosaur concept.

Horizon Zero Dawn was developed in which European capital?

Amsterdam: the team briefly discussed setting the game at home in the Netherlands, then chose North America for its varied landscapes and recognisable landmarks.

Which toy brand retold Horizon Zero Dawn's story as a family-friendly game in 2024?

Lego: the spin-off plays the end of the world for laughs, and unlike the solo first game it lets two people play through the story together.

Which Horizon Zero Dawn weapon harpoons machines to the ground?

Ropecaster: enough anchored lines will pin even a huge machine in place for a while, which buys Aloy time to aim at its weak points.

Which former lead writer of New Vegas wrote Horizon Zero Dawn's story as narrative director?

John Gonzalez: he ruled out magic from the start, so every mystery in this world of tribes and robot beasts had to have a scientific explanation.

Which label did previews and reviews use for Horizon Zero Dawn's lush, ruined world?

Post-post-apocalyptic: the catastrophe is a thousand years in the past, so the team painted a green, colourful world meant to stir adventure and hope instead of gloom.

Which open-world RPG did Horizon Zero Dawn's makers study to judge how dense its map should be?

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: the art director measured the gaps between its points of interest and concluded that players must stumble on something new at regular intervals.

What is Horizon Zero Dawn's expansion, released in November 2017, called?

The Frozen Wilds: its new region can be entered long before the main story ends, but the machines there are tougher and hit harder than those in the base game.

Horizon Zero Dawn's expansion is set in which tribe's territory?

The Banuk: Aloy joins the nomadic hunters and shamans to find out what is corrupting the local machines, in mountains that were once Yellowstone National Park.

Which studio co-developed the 2024 remaster of Horizon Zero Dawn?

Nixxes Software: the port specialists went well beyond sharper graphics, re-recording more than 10 hours of dialogue and rebuilding the conversations with new motion capture.

In UK sales, Horizon Zero Dawn replaced which game as Sony's biggest new franchise launch on PS4?

No Man's Sky: the space game had set that mark in 2016 despite a launch so troubled that players sought refunds from Sony long after the usual deadline.

Horizon Zero Dawn left PlayStation exclusivity in 2020 with a port to which platform?

Windows PC: Sony told investors that bringing its own games to PC would grow its profits, and more PlayStation exclusives soon followed this one across.

In 2022, a live-action Horizon Zero Dawn series was announced for which streaming service?

Netflix: the show never reached the screen, and in 2024 it was reported to be no longer moving forward after complaints about its showrunner became public.

Which award did Horizon Zero Dawn win from eight nominations at the 2018 BAFTA Games Awards?

Original Property: it was the game's only win of the night, and Best Game went instead to a short indie story, What Remains of Edith Finch.

At which gaming show did Sony officially unveil Horizon Zero Dawn in 2015?

E3: the announcement was no shock to close followers, because concept art of the studio's robot-dinosaur project had leaked the previous September.

What is the sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn, released in February 2022, called?

Horizon Forbidden West: six months after her victory the living world is failing again, so Aloy heads west to find a backup of the system that can repair it.

Which film studio was named in January 2025 as PlayStation Productions' partner on a Horizon Zero Dawn movie?

Columbia Pictures: Sony's studio had already turned Uncharted into a 2022 hit, and an October 2025 court filing said the Horizon film aimed to shoot in 2026.

Which collectibles in Horizon Zero Dawn each hold a poem?

Metal flowers: a specialist merchant swaps each complete set for a box of rewards, so the poems are worth hunting down.

Which instrument was invented for the world of Horizon Zero Dawn?

The Braumdrum: it began as a concept drawing nobody knew how to play, so the audio team asked two of the composers to film a mock tutorial for it.

Which Bethesda RPG inspired Horizon Zero Dawn's emphasis on emergent player freedom?

Fallout 3: its sheer scale caught the art director's eye in 2010, just as the studio was looking for a way out of making linear shooters.

In Horizon Zero Dawn, which title frees Aloy to leave her tribe's lands and hunt the cult?

Seeker: the matriarchs anoint her so that none of the tribe's borders or taboos can stop her, a licence its ordinary hunters never receive.

Which pair of additions did a July 2017 patch bring to Horizon Zero Dawn?

Ultra Hard and New Game Plus: the free update gave players who had finished a reason to start again, with new trophies and face paints to earn second time round.

Horizon Zero Dawn's art director said going open-world meant swapping 'rollercoaster rides' for designing what?

Theme parks: his earlier shooters carried players along one fixed track, while an open world needs something worth finding in every direction, a change he said excited the team.