Before playing this game I watched a complete playthrough of it, and inmediately went and bought it. The trailer from the E3 announcement fascinated me, I think I watched it many times, and showed it to people constantly. But I didn't have a PS4, so I don't know if I expected to play it. I ended up asking for someone to lend me their console in exchange for me lending them the game afterwards.

And this game was massive for me. The landscape was breathtaking all the time, an aesthetic I later found out the developers called BBC documentary sunset visuals, or something like that. The story is such a masterpiece, with this post apocalyptic optimism, the different tribes, the deep characters, the beautiful performances, the character arcs... And the protagonist was voiced by Ashly Burch, who I loved and looked up to so much. There is all these different costume designs for the different tribes, the art scattered around, the architecture, the machines, the mountains where the machines are manufactured, and so much more that felt beautiful and meaningful and intentional.
The different weapons and armors for your character were awesome, I went crazy for all the artistic details. I looked through the profiles and portfolios of every artist from the game I could find, collecting images and videos of all the elements.

I played this game with minimal HUD, no map, no health bars, I just wanted to basically be Aloy while playing the game. No fast travel either. And I did almost 100% of it, just missing the story line of the murderer, which I messed up by moving away slightly too far from the guy at the wrong time and wouldn't let me do it anymore, but I decided to not care.

I have many feelings for this game and all of them are amazing.