Horizon Zero Dawn patch fixes 'several' issues, but there's a lot left to be done

Horizon Zero Dawn on PC is really good—unless you happen to be one of the apparently very many people who have run into the technical and performance issues that have plagued the game since launch. As we noted earlier this week, it ran fine for Jacob, our senior hardware editor, but our reviewer experienced issues with stuttering and wonky framerates when he tried it at 4K, even with a muscular CPU and 2080 Ti graphics card.

Developer Guerrilla Games said on Steam shortly after Horizon Zero Dawn's launch that it was aware of the problems and investigating them, and followed up on Twitter a few days later, saying that it is "still working hard to address the issues with Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition for PC that have affected some of you since launch." 

Friday's 1.01 patch "addresses several issues" with the game, including one that could prevent saving. It's a fairly small update, and Guerrilla said it's still working to fix a number of other "high-priority issues," including:

• Some players are experiencing startup crashes. Patch 1.01 fixes a few, but not all, of these crashes.
• Some players are experiencing GPU-related hangs during gameplay. The improved diagnostic data collection added in Patch 1.01 is aimed at making it easier to track these down.
• Some players are experiencing graphical settings issues, such as Anisotropic Filtering not working, 4K not displaying correctly, 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 all issues in this list on Reddit as well. Thank you to u/EvilMonkeySlayer for compiling this for us.

Those are on top of already-known problems with the game, including anisotropic filtering settings that don't work, stuttering at various points, animations that are locked at 30 fps, and a problem with the shader compilation process that can cause crashes when hard drive space is too low.

There's a lot of work left to be done, in other words, but as the famous saying goes, the journey of a thousand miles wasn't built in a day.

Guerrilla asked that users experiencing problems with the game continue to report them here. "Although we are not able to get back to every report, we sincerely appreciate the continued support from our community," the studio said. "We care deeply about creating an enjoyable experience for everyone playing Horizon Zero Dawn, and we will continue to work on further enhancements based on your feedback."

The full patch notes for 1.01 are below.

Crash/Hang Fixes:

• Fixed an issue where the game would crash if the SteamUI didn’t initialize properly on startup.

Functionality Issue Fixes

• Fixed an issue where Concentration and other slowdown mechanics wouldn’t work for everyone.
• Fixed an issue where Windows/Steam profile names containing special characters would prevent some players from saving the game. We are still investigating other saved game issues as well.
• Fixed an issue where Windows/Steam profile names containing special characters would prevent some players from saving screenshots in Photo Mode.

Other Fixes

• Added improved diagnostic data collection when submitting a crash report.
• Fixed several backend issues.
• Fixed a video corruption issue for specific hardware. We’re continuing to look at other hardware configurations as well.