There are multiple bows that all look different enough (even in a 2D flat icon) that they can be identified separately. There’s a huge emphasis on iconography to differentiate what the weapons are, which it actually does a pretty good job of. Note that none of the weapons are labeled here. A simple system of assigning favorites or starring certain weapons would work just as well too. After all, players won’t be using the starter weapons once they get their hands on the better ones. At the very least, sort this screen weapon type or weapon rarity. I personally think sorting this list by equipped weapons first would make it a lot easier to navigate, as it gets a little messy when you have twenty weapons in here. The green/blue/purple color blocks indicate item rarity, and the circular position indicators on four of them represent the slot they are assigned to on the weapon wheel. The weapons screen still isn’t very readable at first glance. It’s a smart way to embed the flow into the player’s mental model of how this UI works while keeping them informed about what section of the secondary navigation they’re currently in. Once you tap into a secondary navigation item, note how the labels for all the items in that vertical list collapse and you’re only left with the icon for that category on the left of the screen. You’re never left confused about what menu or sub-menu you’re in. This is done well and properly conforms to player expectations all the way through. In the middle, you’ve got your items, and when you highlight one of them, the right side of the screen is taken up by a detail view of that item. On the left, you’ve got your secondary navigation options for each primary option that you scroll through with up/down. On the top, you’ve got your primary navigational actions that you flip through with L1 and R1. Let’s start with the basic navigational design of the main UI.
This decision also has UI implications when scanning objects with the Focus. It’s clear that this choice was made to ease the tension of combat and provide players with a clear read on their targets. There are other weapons too, but for the majority of the game, you’ll be drawing from one of your many bows and shooting arrows out of them repeatedly in quick succession. The game has a huge emphasis on bow-and-arrow combat. All of that real estate is devoted to the thing you’re aiming at, which is another way the game tells you what to focus on in that moment. This is done so that when you enter combat and draw your bow, you get a clear visual of your target in the entire right side of the screen. Aloy is always on the left side of the screen. It doesn’t matter if you’re walking, running, fighting, jumping, climbing, or sliding off a rope. This is a great example of how removing UI elements ends up increasing player immersion in the game.Īnother seemingly basic decision that has a huge impact on gameplay is the choice to always keep Aloy (the player character) off-center to the left of the screen. It works extremely well, especially with the Dynamic HUD option turned on. The game wants you to look at its gorgeous visuals and it communicates this to you by stripping away all the HUD elements on the screen. If you don’t have a weapon drawn, you don’t see the currently equipped weapon and what ammo type you’ve got in it.
HORIZON ZERO DAWN MAP LOOT FULL
If you’re at full health, you don’t see the health bar. The only thing you get is an objective marker that tells you how far away your currently active quest is.
I spent so much time simply strolling along and taking screenshots of the breathtaking environments. I had this issue with some other open-world games where I felt like I was just ignoring the beautiful landscapes was instead laser-focused on a tiny 2D map of the world. It often feels so counterintuitive to create this sprawling, beautiful world and then have players spend most of their play time staring at a tiny little circle that tells them what path to take in order to get to their next objective. The best decision they made, in my opinion, is to not have a mini-map at the corner of the screen. It’s important to start by acknowledging all the UI and gameplay decisions made by the developers that actually makes the game work.
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