animal protagonist post human apocalypse

As the field of game studies grows, videogame writing is evolving from the mere evaluation of gameplay, graphics, sound, and replayablity, to more reflective writing that manages to convey the complexity of a game and the way it is played in a cultural context. Game analysis allows us to understand games better, providing insight into the player-game relationship, the construction of the game, and its sociocultural relevance. The lowly assets we dismiss as backdrop to the action-in short the game's focus on humus, as much as humanity. If Game Studies is often concerned with action and actors-with human characters, and core mechanics-then I want to start addressing 'earth-rotted passivity,' in an interactive medium. The last thing the hero wants to know is that his beautiful words and weapons will be worthless without a bag, a container, a net.' (Haraway, 2016:118) What I intend to argue, however, is that Horizon's protagonist-and a kinfolk cast of AI, dinosaurs, and plants-makes us consider than earthy container, the landscape, in meaningful, ecological ways through the game's self-reflexivity and its focus on 'staying with the trouble' in a world of mess and magnitude. They don't matter their job is to be in the way, to be overcome, to be the road, the conduit, but not the traveller, not the begetter. All others in the prick tale are props, ground, plot space, or prey. This is the cutting, sharp, combative tale of action that defers the suffering of glutinous, earth-rotted passivity beyond bearing.

With its focus on a human, on Aloy, Horizon might seem an unpromising example to encompass these non-human issues-we might expect the hero's journey of Horizon to be what Donna Haraway characterises as (gender notwithstanding) a 'prick tale': '…a tragic story with only one real actor, one real world-maker, the hero, this is the Man-making tale of the hunter on a quest to kill and bring back the terrible bounty. In discussing human-critter relationships in games I am here hoping to add to the excellent work of Krystof Janski concerning animals, Alenda Chang concerning ecology.

Animal protagonist post human apocalypse