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As Nintendo gears up to take down Palworld for its aping of Pokémon game design elements, another high-profile court case seems inevitable with Tencent’s announcement of Light of Motiram (thanks Gematsu), a game that looks uncannily similar to Sony’s Horizon Zero Dawn.
To be clear, we’re not saying, “Oh, hey, that kind of reminds us of Horizon.” This is more of a, “Oh my good lord, what are they thinking, this is outrageous!” Light of Motiram is one of those cases where you feel safe to type the words “complete rip-off” without worrying about a letter from someone’s lawyers.
It’s so hilariously blatant, that you have to wonder if it’s an exercise in attention-seeking, a deliberate troll of Sony to see if Tencent can lure a court case that the press will eagerly cover, and then pull back and change their designs once the name is in everyone’s minds. Just take a look at this screenshot, for instance:
Yup, there’s Aloy! And those familiar robotic animals. In a post-apocalyptic world, nature taking over sci-fi architecture. And take a look at this closer view of a robot not-Aloy rides on:
For context, here’s Aloy in an official screenshot from Horizon Forbidden West:
What japes!
Motiram’s official site goes an extra step by helpfully highlighting some of its creature designs. Here’s the Agni:
And just by-the-by, here’s Horizon’s Fanghorn:
What a coincidence!
Oh go on, you’ve been good, have another one. Here’s Moratorium’s (honestly, I’ve gotten bored of scrolling up to see how it’s spelt) behorned Yama:
And here’s Horizon’s Broadhead:
I could do this all day.
This is being created by Tencent’s developer, Polaris Quest, and is of course being described as an “open-world survival crafting game,” because isn’t everything? So of course it’ll not have the epic open storyline of the wonderful Horizon games, but rather be yet another tree punching sim using someone else’s aesthetic. And, given that, it’ll likely be spectacularly popular, although there’s no word on a release date yet. You’ve got to assume Sony’s going to be coming for it, and fast.
Although, there’s some irony to that, given it’s Sony in Japan that’s recently teamed up with Palworld creators Pocketpair to create a merch company, right in the face of Nintendo’s fury.
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