So I finally watched my brother play this for an hour or two. My thoughts and his thoughts.
The graphics are indeed amazing. They are not flawless but, amazing on balance. There is a camera motion blur effect right? I didn't like that. And the colors or contrast seemed off, but I'm 99% certain that was my brothers TV settings. I've always set my Tv brightness to pretty high. His was likely much lower so it was more contrast-y.
About the not flawless, well we both noted that far away areas are obscured by fog etc to help draw distance, just like any open world game. I noticed some of the effects look rough at a distance, for example those rockbearers or whatever? The little dust clouds they kick up when going in the dirt look pretty last gen from far away. In general it's the far away graphics that have issues, up close I was most impressed by the textures, amazing. Aloy's eyes also suffer doll eye in all the cutscenes, like she is not focusing right. Any youtube and this is obvious. Also, Aloy facial model looks "weird" when running toward the camera in battle. We still have some issues with hair no matter how far we advance. Aloy's is mitigated because they gave her braids so the only have to render 40 braids instead of ten million hairs, but you can still see some problems here and there.
Interiors look stunning, incredibly rich. The textures are really where they went all out. Another standout point is the jaw dropping battles and effects with big Dino's. OVERALL me and my brother struggled to think of a better looking game, even on PC. I wonder if Witcher 3, utterly maxed on PC in 4k or something, might look better. Personally I cant imagine so. Another game we came back to was Crysis, well Crysis 3 is old, it cant keep up. Overall I'm prepared to say this is the all time graphics champ, even vs PC. Maybe until GTA 6?
I asked my brothers opinion of the GAME, he was mixed. He loved the enemy designs, but he thought the game was too easy and designed for dudebros. He mentioned about difficulty he's the wrong one to ask though. Thing is he plays all his games on hardest setting. He had this one on hardest difficulty as well, and I didn't see a lot of challenge. He kept telling me he was likely to die in a certain battle (he would go fight like, a Thunderjaw just to show me) but he only died like once, ever. He mentioned the heal potions are OP because you can carry so many. Another issue he mentioned that is common to all open world games is, you can cheese most any encounter by just staying really far away and potshotting the enemy to death. He would specifically be sure not to do this to maintain challenge though. Oh he also mentioned the game seems to copy Skyrim an extreme amount, said the world map is almost ripped directly from Skyrim etc. He mentioned for an example of the "dudebro" "easy" design, that anything you can climb flashes bright yellow, rather than you having to discover yourself.
He said in any open world game he just does sidequests and things and ignores the story, just wants to see everything. Then he usually does not finish the game LOL. Did that with Fallout 4, Skyrim, etc. I asked if he thought he would finish this one, he said probably not.
For me the one issue I noticed is I did not see a lot to do. Since I was just watching, he went and sought out a few of the biggest monsters to fight, but there's only a few. It wasn't long and he just had to tell me I've seen the biggest ones.
Anyways I'm not meaning to bash the game so much, it's just fact most games are rehashes and then they add something novel. To me what Horizon adds, besides an incredibly high level of production/graphics, is RIDICULOUSLY impressive giant Dino fights. My brother mentioned there is nothing remotely comparable to those in say, Witcher 3.
The begining is a bit twee, but once you get passed the 'proving' quest it all opens up.
