To attract more players, Horizon Zero Dawn adds easier 'story' mode

Did you enjoy the story of Horizon Zero Dawn? Did you feel that the game’s combat made it hard to experience that story without dying over and over again? If you did, it seems you’re not alone, as Guerrilla Games has announced a new ‘story’ difficulty mode that directly addresses that problem. 

Games like Mass Effect to The Witcher 3 embraced these easy difficulties in recent years, but seeing it patched in to Horizon Zero Dawn is notable because it seems to be a direct bid to attract new players to the game.

According to a post on the PlayStation blog by community manager Jeroen Roding, “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.”

Roding notes that this difficulty mode drives down the damage inflicted on the player by the game’s robotic monsters and increases the amount of damage the player inflicts in return. If you’re studying how difficulty levels may affect your player experience, it’s notable to see a developer make straight changes to the damage numbers to reduce combat intensity. 

And if you’re looking for more ideas to expand accessibility in your story-driven game, we discussed some solutions a couple months ago on the Gamasutra Twitch channel.