The latest Horizon Zero Dawn patch teaches Aloy how to walk straight

(Image credit: PlayStation)

In September, Guerrilla Games fixed a bug in Horizon Zero Dawn that kept that kept the lead character, Aloy, trapped as a child forever. Now it's October, and Aloy's growth continues: Thanks to the release of a new patch today, she's now apparently able to walk in a straight line.

Horizon Zero Dawn had a bit of a rough start on PC. Our hardware editor found that it ran quite well on his PC, but our reviewer encountered framerate and stuttering issues, which the day-one patch did not address. Guerrilla acknowledged these problems shortly after the game's release in August, and it seems to be making good progress on that front, as recent user reviews on Steam are "very positive."

"First of all, we want to thank you all for your continued feedback, patience and support. In the past couple of weeks, our team has worked hard on some trickier changes that needed some extra time to develop and test," Guerrilla said in the update announcement. "Patch 1.06 addresses some of these issues with additional crash fixes and further improvements on the game. These include some issues reported by the community, such as Aloy not walking in the direction where the camera was facing when pressing forward."

The full Horizon Zero Dawn 1.06 patch notes are below. Guerrilla said that it's still working on other issues, and asked players who encounter problems not covered in the "known issues" list to report them here.

Crash fixes:

  • Fixed a streaming compute shader crash
  • Fixed a crash on startup related to file paths with non-ANSI characters

Graphical improvements:

  • Fixed an issue where characters would noticeably warp between cuts during a specific cutscene in main quest “The Point of the Spear”
  • Fixed an issue where box graphics would flash during the final cinematic of the game
  • Fixed an issue in HDR where the UI could get overlapped by a black scene
  • Fixed an issue where turning on the Adaptive FPS option gave lower performance results than setting similar results manually

Gameplay improvements:

  • Aloy forward walking direction – Aloy now walks directly towards the direction the camera is facing when you press forward, rather than at a slight angle

Other improvements:

  • Executable details – Properties of the executable now also displays the current version

Known issues:

  • Some players are experiencing an out of memory error during the game optimization process.
  • Some players are experiencing graphical settings issues, such as Anisotropic Filtering or HDR not working correctly.
  • Some players are experiencing performance issues on specific GPUs or hardware combinations.
  • We're aware of and continue to investigate issues that are not yet solved on both the player-compiled lists by u/EvilMonkeySlayer and u/Rampage572 – thank you!
Andy Chalk

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.