Horizon: Zero Dawn, after its revolutionary popularity on the PS4, inevitably followed the trend of other Playstation exclusives being ported to the PC. Though a lot of hardcore console fans are generally unhappy with ports, PC is arguably the best place for them.
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Mods, having been popularized back in the olden days of gaming with Doom's community accessibility, continue to make a profound impact on the way we play. With games like Minecraft and Skyrim taking modding to its absolute limits, and other games benefitting from community performance upgrades and graphical tweaks, the mod world is undeniably one of the biggest sub-sects of the gaming industry as a whole. While Horizon's PC port may not have the insane content additions that GMod popularized years ago, there are still a handful of fun mods to upgrade the experience for players looking to push their game just a little further.
Updated June 15th, 2021 by Russ Boswell: Horizon Zero Dawn dropped onto PlayStation 4 back in 2017 but it's still finding adoration from new and old fans alike 4 years later. This is partially thanks to the stellar PC Port that dropped in 2020, as well as more individuals spending time at home and looking for a fantastic adventure to ease their minds. But as good as Horizon Zero Dawn is on the surface, there are still some annoyances and inconsistencies to be found throughout the game. Thankfully, the inclusion of a PC version has allowed modders to swoop in and offer fixes to some of the title's small blemishes. Some of the best Horizon Zero Dawn PC mods are the ones that create a better gameplay experience overall. This list has been updated to better reflect some of the newest Horizon Zero Dawn mods making their way to the release.
9 Natural Rain
One of the most impressive things players will immediately notice about Horizon Zero Dawn is how beautifully crafted the landscapes are. Each piece of foliage and every contour of the land was meticulously crafted by developers, and it shows in the final product. There are even changing environments and weather, giving players a greater challenge when hunting foes and creating a much more immersive experience overall. Unfortunately, though, the stock rain effects within the game can make visibility rather tough and some players end up waiting out the storm before progressing due to the added difficulty it presents.
Modder Dziggy set out to solve this visual issue by offering players a mod that makes the rain more translucent, giving it a better, more natural appearance than what's present in the base game. The results speak for themselves and the mod definitely helps to improve the gameplay experience when exploring in the rain. This is definitely one of the most useful Horizon Zero Dawn PC mods you'll find on the Nexus hub.
8 True HDR
Aiming to unlock a more true graphical upgrade than other reshades provide, user Vanguard1776 boosts the game from its originally gorgeous graphics to something of the next generation. The purpose of HDR, for those unfamiliar, is to combine an array of effects to amp up the visuals, a method appearing in Unreal Engine's tech demos (calling back to all those old internet videos of Nintendo characters in a hyperrealistic Unreal field with high-def attack FX).
Vanguard has done similar reshades for other games, including Doom Eternal, Metro, Control, Sekiro, and Resident Evil, all of which are inherently beautiful games that are only further amplified with the addition of HDR.
7 NG++ Unlocks
A lot of games seem to have issues with presenting players with fair challenges, and sometimes just become absolutely redundant when requiring several NG+ playthroughs to unlock rare weapons that become unusable anyway after players get burnt out on the hundreds of hours it takes to unlock them.
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Horizon, while not the worst offender, does provide quite a few items and bonuses for repeat playthroughs and harder difficulty runs. Lupercalll on Nexus aims to solve this issue for players who may not want to dedicate so much of their time to the game, while still wanting to enjoy everything it has to offer. This mod provides an NG++ ultra-difficult save file with all rare items and cosmetics unlocked.
6 Hair Customization
A lot of players looking forward to the possibility of customization options were left somewhat disappointed with Horizon's provided options, regardless of Ashly Burch's fantastic portrayal of Aloy.
Solutions in the modding community largely revolve around lewd options and misogynist "reworks" of Aloy's face, making it more feminine or childish. AlexPo21's additional hair colors mod is one of the more tasteful of those available, giving players more forms of expression without offense to Aloy or her wonderful actress counterpart. While his is a minor change, it's still a welcome one, and gives players a bit more freedom over Aloy's visual style aside from face paints and fabric.
5 Cheat Table
For the veteran players familiar with old Gameshark units, Marcus101RR's cheat table is a fun little PC version that works into the game's files to enable God Mode, infinite ammo, and other little cheaty bonuses for fun.
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While this is a relatively simple mod intended for toying with outside of the main playthrough, it can also be a handy tool for creators. With the game's addition of photo mode, as well as its naturally cinematic appearance, cheats like God Mode become an in-game photographer's best friend, as well as a handy buff for video essayists or aesthetic seekers who want a more secure way to traverse the world without being brutally murdered on-sight by its more menacing inhabitants.
4 Reshades
As previously mentioned, graphical upgrades and reshades aren't uncommon in the modding community, with quite a few of Horizon's Nexus pages dedicated to various recolors and same-y realistic shading packs. While most of these don't do much aside from tweaking the contrast to make the game look more "cinematic," or darker and shinier to reflect Zach Snyder's increasing visual deficiency, there are a few pleasant ones that aim to remove the desaturation of the breathtaking overworld and provide a more natural, dynamic visual style.
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BlueBloodBunny's Natural Clover ReShade works with the game's environment to boost the atmosphere at any given moment, removing some of the muddy atmospheric occlusion and replacing it with brighter, more vivid colors and a sharpening filter. This becomes increasingly apparent in the nighttime, when the blues and lights really pop, giving the world a more moody feel without getting too dark.
Here are some other Reshading options for those looking for a little more variety:
3 Model Swap Library
Another solid aesthetic shift mod for players who want a bit of change regarding the player model, xRaq's model swap mod adds 16 secondary characters to replace Aloy's model, complete with facial animations. The models all look and feel just as good as Aloy, with a surprising lack of texture popping and clipping like what one might expect from GMod or Skyrim's model swaps.
The mod includes Talanah, Sylens, Helis, and quite a few more. The creator was also generous enough to include a skip button for the intro logos, a feature that seems to be included in most other mods by courtesy, which says something about the redundancy of said logos and subsequent spite towards their owners.
2 Old CPU Support
Though the crossover between players who want to play Horizon and players who don't have the correct CPU installed may be low, luther_d seems to have solved the issue. The mod is titled "run game on phenom and core2" and really it aims to do exactly that.
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The mod, however redundant it may be to some players, impressively allows the game to run on older CPUs without taking so much as a fraction of the performance out of the question. As stated, the relevance of this mod may be slim, but it seems as though a few players have already found themselves looking into it due to their systems being "just outdated" after the hefty requirements were announced.
1 Additional Inventory Space
As is true for quite a few open-world games, players find themselves frustrated with inventory systems, with some providing too little space and others providing too much and becoming overwhelming. Regardless, there will always be someone around to mod it back to perfection, whether that means overriding encumbrance in games like Fallout or Skyrim, or simply adding more slots.
Often, it's hard to balance inventory management with tasks at hand when it keeps overflowing and players are forced to go out of their way to either stash, sell, or drop items in order to continue on their exploration of increasingly large game worlds. This is an especially big problem in games that break immersion with these systems, and inventory becomes less mechanic and more inconvenient. User julianovento7 solves this issue by multiplying inventory space by 10 in this mod.