Horizon prequel game, but horror/thriller genre
I've got this idea that would probably be a good game.
The basic idea is that you would play the POV of various entities in the pre-war horizon world, long before the events of zero dawn. The first chapter would be in Southeast Asia where you catch rumors of rogue robots and you are just trying to go about your day as a subject of the hartz-timor corporation. That chapter would turn upside down when the swan comes into town and you have to flee for your life (civilian horror akin to aliens gameplay) except you die at a point early on when a corruptor pins you down and dissolves you for fuel while your screen fades out to black and red.
Chapter two, now the swarm is large and you're out with an MRB trying to slow things down around vietnam but it's a retreat action and you spend that chapter of the game trying to fight and win while hopelessly losing friends and allies all around you and the swarm approaches until you retreat on a VTOL while watching the jungle get stripped barren by the swarming bots. This chapter ends in a somber defeat tone with the mutilates bodies of your comrads scattering the deck plates as you try to live and fight another day.
Chapter three, Europe and the introduction of nukes and what that horror would look like on the front lines of warfare.
Chapter four, switch back to civil militia on the West Coast as the sludge covered burning robots stalk you though the city streets of downtown LA and buildings get dropped around you while, horus, kopesh, and chariot bots rip people apart and consume them. You die in this chapter as well, but by a falling building.
Chapter five, you're in the witchita salient, last stand kinda move trying to stave off the attack, but you get demolished while retreating.
Final chapter, you're in USRC in the mountains of colorado. You're prepping for the final onslaught of an impending hours assault. Right before the battle begins you get the bombshell revelation that zero dawn isn't a super weapon... There is no hope, and you and everyone else there will die.
You have to chose to fight or shoot yourself in the end... And that's game over.
Black screen, continue the story in zero dawn.
Would be a nice primer for the lore I think and a great way to show how horrifying an autonomous, self replicating, uncontrolled robot army would be. Maybe make it a film or series of short films?