No popular new video game can be released without also being subject to hot takes and “think pieces” that relate their content to contemporary politics. Sony and Guerrilla Games’ latest PlayStation exclusive, Horizon: Zero Dawn, has become just that game. It’s being used as a vehicle for “wokeness” by game journalists more intent on pushing social justice ideology instead of talking about the game’s actual content.
Comparisons between Horizon: Zero Dawn and the 2016 blockbuster flop Ghostbusters arose after several reviewers praised it solely for its female-led storyline, celebrating the strong female protagonist as a win for feminism in video games. Prior to its actual screening in theaters, the Ghostbusters reboot received early rave reviews for starring four women and putting its feminist message front in its marketing campaign.
At the Guardian, game critic Sam Loveridge declared Horizon “the feminist action game we’ve been waiting for,” calling its main character, Aloy, a “Lara Croft designed for the 21st century”—as if this decade’s Lara Croft isn’t designed for the 21st century. Given his remarks, there’s a good chance Loveridge never even played the recent Tomb Raider games.
The writer goes on to praise the game “for what feels like the first time in years, we’ve got a female lead who isn’t sexualized at all.” From smaller adventure games like Life is Strange to blockbusters like Tomb Raider, Mirror’s Edge, and Dishonored 2, few recent titles emphasized the sexuality of their female protagonists, either. If they were sexual in any way, it was simply meshed into their overall character complexity and not their sole quality.
In a game where the player must traverse through a post-apocalyptic and dangerous wilderness populated by robotic dinosaurs hostile to human life, sex is going to be the last thing on anyone’s mind.
Yet even so, Loveridge says Horizon is being released in a time when bigotry, mental illness and gender are the main issues. He says that the game’s occasional tackling of these complicated subjects as part of its narrative somehow makes it a uniquely progressive game—ignoring how BioShock, The Witcher 3, Fallout 4, Pillars of Eternity, Watch Dogs 2, and numerous other games have also done so not just in the recent past, but for many decades.
The A.V. Club’s Claytom Purdom echoes Loveridge’s line of thinking, calling Horizon “woke-as-hell” while complaining about its open-world setting. He says it’s “another one of those ‘map’ games,” with “endless checklists”—the kind where players can immerse themselves in for countless hours and get a solid investment for their money.
While praising Horizon for its presentation of women as capable warriors and declaring it to be more progressive than other games in the genre, Purdom can’t help but wonder if the complexity and nuance of its story, setting and characters aren’t simply a “troll job, a well-intentioned stab at progressivism, a feint, or something else entirely.”
In all his bloviating and speculation over whether the game adheres properly to progressive ideology, the writer says very little about whether the game itself is good—only informing readers about his aversion to open-world games.
In response to these articles, some gamers have responded with cynicism over its content. After all, the last thing they want is to purchase a poorly made product with more politics than good gameplay. It didn’t help that its leading voice actress, Ashly Burch, sparked the discussion when she virtue signaled about Aloy, calling her a “young woman who fights for and beside people of all races.”
Despite the perception created by these agenda-driven game journalists, more critical voices like Jeff Gerstmann praised the game for its story, gameplay—all the qualities that would make Horizon: Zero Dawn a game worth playing—while still criticizing it for its flaws.
Is it any good? Yes, probably. But when it sells millions of copies, it’ll be praised for all the wrong reasons.
Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken media critic. You can reach him through social media at @stillgray on Twitter and on Facebook.
