Horizon Zero Dawn Full Story Recap

the story of the horizon franchise is a lot like a lot a lot there's dense lore a multitude of important characters and plenty of earth-shattering revelations and i mean that last point literally and while the franchise is only really just getting started we've had more than enough happen just across a single game in its dlc expansion to warrant a story refresher so whether you played the original on release in 2017 or you're just jumping in for forbidden west let's break down the story so far the horizon franchise plays out its grand narrative of tribal politics and robot dino animal things in the 31st century in the wake of a cataclysmic robot apocalypse that has wiped out the majority of humanity those that have survived have formed tribes and are living their lives largely devoid of the technological advancements of their predecessors who are widely known as the old ones horizon zero dawn features four of these tribes the nora deeply religious warrior hunters from the south who worship at the altar of all mother a mystical mountain the karja who reside in the bustling cities of the central deserts and revere the sun god the osaram a tribe of practically minded forge men and women and the banuk who are a mountain dwelling tribe of hunters and shaman the tribes aren't exactly all on friendly terms either with the karja being notorious for raiding their rivals under the leadership of the mad sun king jiren scattered across the stunning post-apocalyptic landscapes are animal and dinosaur-like robots known as machines who for the most part peacefully co-exist with the tribes however as the years pass by the machines have become increasingly more violent towards humanity as part of a phenomenon known as the derangement so begins horizon zero dawn horizon zero dawn starts with the franchise's central protagonist eloy as a cute little baby found alone in the heart of a sacred nora mountain the aforementioned all mother poor little eloy is shunned from the nora tribe for not having a mother and is subsequently raised by her surrogate father rost who is also a nora outcast fast forward about five or six years and little eloy stumbles into a cave system that was once a base of operations for the old ones it's here where she discovers a magic little trinket known as a focus a tiny little earpiece that shows her visions of the old ones and vital information about the machines and the surrounding world she puts it to the test by saving this unlucky nora lad from a sticky end at the hands of some striders which are horse-like machines stumbling upon the focus piques ayloy's interest into her own past where she came from and more importantly who her mother is she bombards rost with questions about who she is and he eventually tells her that the only way she can learn about her roots is by winning at the proving a nora tradition which sees young men and women compete in trials if she wins she'll be granted any wish including being reintegrated into the nora where she can start to find out more about herself of course ross tells her that it will take years of training to be ready for the proving so better cue a montage [Music] as eloy comes of age she makes her way to the proving with rost who tells her that she'll never be able to see him again once she wins at the trials for your sake i must go away you will never find me after their sad farewell ailoy makes her way into the town of mother's heart where a pre-proving celebration is taking place a host of delegates from the karja tribe are also in town bringing with them good news the mad sun king is dead killed at the hands of his own son avad who wants to apologize you know for all the murdering and pillaging his people have been doing over the years before she hunkers down for the night eloy strikes up a conversation with olin a carja tribesman who's also sporting a focus olin shiftingly excuses himself before a big brash osseram lad called erend introduces himself and invites aeloy to come and hang out with him in meridian the bustling carjan metropolis he's a little forward our errand don't worry he's a good lad you'll see the next day the proving kicks off and despite some heinous acts of sabotage from her competitors aloy manages to win but just as the winner's ceremony is coming to a close a tribe of cultists thugs known as the eclipse crashed the party bringing down death and destruction on the young competitors aloy fights back killing a whole bunch of the cult and pocketing one of their focuses in the process many of the young nora warriors are killed though and just as ayloy is about to join them rust swings on by and saves her before the whole mountaintop is consumed by a giant fireball taking poor rost with it r.i.p rust we hardly knew you ailoy wakes up in the heart of a mountain sanctuary where she unearths some unsettling truths about her past from the eclipse focus namely that she has a near identical dna match with an unknown woman that could be her mother when she speaks to tirsa one of the nora high matriarchs she's told that the woman can't be her mother because she has no mother you were not born of a woman aloy the mountain is your mother tears elaborates on this maddeningly cryptic message by telling eloy that she was found in the mountain next to their goddess the all mother which turns out to be a great big metallic door but this isn't a goddess aloy it's a door the door immediately starts talking to ailoy like their old mates but due to some form of corruption she can't gain access to the secrets behind it to rid the door of corruption ailoy plots to follow olin's trail back to meridian which means that she'll need to venture outside the borders of the nora tribe to allow her to leave tears and the other matriarchs bestow aloy with the honor of seeker no not that kind of seeker as a seeker eloy is allowed to come and go as she pleases to explore the world beyond the sacred land of the nora and even the ruins of the old ones a feat that would normally get you outcast and with questions to answer and mysteries to unravel ailoy sets off for the karja capital just as she's about to leave though she's attacked by a corrupter a scorpion-like machine that is turning other machines totally rabid aloy makes short work of the abomination and rifling through the remains finds a little doodad which is a technical term that she bolts onto her spear which allows her to override the machines ayloid journeys west and catches back up with her old pal errand who takes her to olin's house to pick up his trail and get some answers the trail leads aloy to a dig site in the desert where olin is helping the eclipse unearth more corrupters to wage war and reclaim meridian from the new sun king you see it turns out that the eclipse are a splinter group of the karja led by this pasty looking lad called helis and they worship a metal demon known as hades more on him it later and they've been blackmailing poor olin to help them with their nefarious plans to regain power the eclipse also want alloy dead because she looks like the woman that she dna matched with a trivial fact that came about because olin found a picture of the woman at a place called maker's end before she ventures to make her zen though ailoy assists errand in uncovering the details behind who murdered his sister ursa using her focus alloy detects foul play at ursus murder scene i suspect fail play is my terrible southern accent i'm really sorry it turns out the body in the meridian morgue is not aaron's sister dun dun dun and after a quick conflab with his majesty the sun king avad aloy and eren are sent after an osram terrorist known as derval who's thought to be behind the deception the pair tracked down ursus captors to the mountains in the north where they discover aaron's sister shackled and near death after a brief reunion between brother and sister ursa succumbs to her wounds in the makeshift prison the pair discover a plot to blow up meridian so they hightail it back to the capital there they find a warehouse of highly flammable green blaze think game of thrones is wildfire and foiled deval's plans to destroy the city only that's half the plan as ayloy tracks the terrorists to the throne of the vad where she foils an assassination attempt on the king's life and with that little side adventure sewn up she begins her journey north to maker's end on route to maker's end eloy starts to hear a mysterious voice in her head a voice that guides her and helps her towards her goal of infiltrating the facility that she finds ailoy discovers that maker's end is actually faro automated solutions a manufacturing plant designed to build huge military machines that can help nations keep the peace the scientists behind this endeavor are dr ted farrow and dr elizabeth sobek aloy's mysterious doppelganger and they've built these machines with ai so smart that they can replicate themselves the catch though is that they need living matter to be able to replicate which is the biggest red flag you can think of i mean why would you build that come on does the terminator franchise not exist in this world or what to absolutely no one's surprised there's a malfunction with the ai which sends the terrible sentient robots on the path towards an all-you-can-eat buffet of planet earth which ailoy learns is what happened one thousand years prior after learning about all this doom and gloom aloy finally meets the man behind the mysterious voice who turns out to be a guy called silence played by the absolute legend that is lance redick do you really have no idea how monumental are the discoveries you just made eloy and while she's initially hesitant to team up with him aloy eventually agrees to work with silence as he seems to have a lot of the answers that she's searching for silence who's keen to uncover more info surrounding the old ones sends ayloy on a mission to sneak her way into another old world ruin she sneaks underneath the eclipse stronghold of sunfl and enters the ruin which turns out to be the base of operations for something known as project zero dawn but what exactly is project zero dawn well first the bad news turns out the old ones knew they were doomed and never planned to save themselves from the impending robopocalypse zero dawn is not a super weapons program and it will not save us nothing will save us the good news though they instead sought to set in motion the ability to rebuild the earth in the post-apocalypse to this end a team of scientists led by dr sobek created an ai known as gaia who they would engineer with the required knowledge and power to deactivate faro's all-consuming murderbots and revive the decimated husk of earth gaia would create an ecosystem of machines in order to revive the planet before growing a new race of humans to populate her rebuilt world the team broke gaia down into 9 sub-systems that were all designed to do different things among them was apollo a huge directory of all human history and culture which was designed to give the new humans a head start in the old technological rat race but there was also a program known as hades one in the same as the metal demon the eclipse are in league with which it turns out is a fail-safe software designed to wipe the slate clean if gaia was to ever screw everything up deep within the zero dawn ruins haloy makes her way into the long vacant office of dr sobek where she finds the key that will allow her to bypass the corruption she encountered at the all mother door but just as she's about to leave she's ambushed by helis and his eclipse goons and knocked unconscious aloya wakes in a cage in the coliseum-like arena at sunfall where she is pitted against a horde of machines and corrupters as a blood sacrifice just as it looks like she's got her work cut out for her she's rescued by silence in a proper fist pumping the air moment god i love lance redick [Applause] after her near-death experience ailoy ventures back to the nora tribal lands where she encounters the eclipsed soldiers who have already started to invade ailoy makes it through the invading troops helping the nora tribe to fight back in the process before she gains access to the all mother after making it through that big metallic door goddess aeloy discovers that the ruin is another base of gaia all mother it turns out is in fact a facility designed to rebuild and repopulate humanity there ailoy learns that an unknown signal triggered hades to kickstart his doomsday protocol and take complete control of gaia to stop this gaia ultimately made the call to self-destruct her core ai and in the process blows up half a mountain and more importantly terminates all the ongoing terraforming processes on planet earth but even more of a bombshell unless you saw it coming from a mile off is that eloy is actually a clone of the good dr sobek gaia's plan for ailoy was for her to restore her ai programs and destroy hades only the nora tribe kind of got in the way of that plan and well if it weren't for alloy stumbling into that cave by blind luck none of this would have happened but maybe that's just me being cynical with the weight of all that new information on her shoulders ailoy heads north to visit the decimated remains of gaia and lo and behold there are yet more bombshells waiting for her to discover first is the tragic ending of her new sort of mum dr sobek who eloy learned sacrificed herself to protect gaia's location from the plague of faro's motorbots secondly that ted farrow who by now is in pole position for the role of world's greatest sabotaged the apollo program thus eradicating all of the key information designed to teach the next generation of humans but hey at least he probably got rid of twitter in the process and nfts it's like it's like it's been erased [Music] erased from existence and consequently this is the chief reason why the current crop of humanity is regressed to tribal societies and thirdly once ailoy has attained a master override from gaia's remains which will delete hades forever she comes face to face with silence for the last time turns out that he's the founder of the eclipse as he's the lad who discovered the wreck of hades and half the reason why everyone's in this mess in the first place damn this game likes to keep dropping big bombshells why are you telling me this now because your success depends on knowing this silence isn't entirely a bad egg though he's figured out what hades ultimate plan is which he shares with eloy telling her that the rogue ai is prepping a signal to revive all of pharaoh's old murderbots which are lying dormant under the earth on top of that helis and the eclipse are preparing to launch an attack on meridian where they seek to gain access to the giant spire tower that is located there a tower that is perfect for broadcasting haiti's signal ailoy hightails it back to meridian to warn anyone and everyone that matters and with the help of errand and the sun king of ad she's able to muster up the support needed to set up defenses against the incoming army of eclipse soldiers and corrupted bots depending on how many side quests you completed along the way ailoy is joined by any allies that she has made and with their help she overcomes and kills helis before defending meridian from the horde of deadly machines despite their best efforts hades is still able to break through and after nearly being crushed to death aloy pursues the rotten ai to the bottom of the spire where she drives a lance straight into the egotistical robot ending his nonsense for good horizon zero dawn comes to a close with ayloy making a pilgrimage to the final resting place of her sort of mum dr sobek where she honors the memory of the woman who pretty much single-handedly saved humanity what a top lass but wait there's one of those sneaky little post-credit stings that shows that hades isn't actually dead as we see a glowing orb of red light rising from his metallic corpse and flying off into the horizon to be snared by none other than our old mate silence who traps the ai in some kind of lantern hello old friend remember me [Music] we've still so much to discuss okay so technically the frozen wild actually takes place before the final fight that goes down at meridian at the end of zero dawn but i've included it here because if i'd have chatted about it earlier it would have completely derailed my recap of the main story of zero dawn and besides i found it a little weird that when i returned to zero dawn right before that final battle aloy had an opportunity to go and explore a whole new region and get stuck into a whole new side adventure despite knowing about the impending end of the world but maybe that's just me anyways the frozen wilds takes ayloy to the far mountains in the north to a post-apocalyptic montana and the remains of the yellowstone national park a place now known as the cut there ailoy encounters the banug tribe who are battling a daemon that hails from a mountain known as thunder's drum and is causing machines to go mad after an unsuccessful attempt to destroy the daemon the tribe shaman area has disappeared and with eloy unable to investigate the disturbance without the blessing of the shaman she heads off in pursuit of herrera she eventually finds aurea in a mountain top satellite facility which has been transformed into a banuk shrine and the pair agree to work together after eloy is able to make contact with an ai spirit at the banug revere due to banuk tribal laws before they can travel to thunder's drum ailoy must challenge the chieftain arya's brother aratak and replace him as the head of the tribe bit of a ballsy move for an outsider it's a bold strategy cotton let's see if it pays off for him long story short aloy beats aratak at the challenge by gaining his trust when they are ambushed by frost claws giant bear-like machines that belch ice and she has proclaimed chieftain ailoy and orreya head to thunder's drum and infiltrate another old world ruin where they learn the banuk spirit is actually an ai called sion whose sole responsibility is to make sure the yellowstone national park doesn't explode from you know all the tectonic activity going on it's also revealed that the daemon is in fact another subsystem of gaia known as hephaestus a subsystem designed solely to build more machines ailoy and arreya battle through hephaistus's corruption before arreya sacrifices herself in order for them to destroy the facility eloy makes it out with air attack and cyan reveals to them that hephaestus is still alive but in hiding ailoy relinquishes control of the banuk tribe back to aratak and ventures back to meridian to crack on with saving the world but as you know we've already covered that and with that bring on horizon forbidden west thanks so much for watching this story recap of the horizon franchise i hope you enjoyed it and are like me looking forward to seeing where the story goes next [Music]

Channel: GameSpot

Views: 509,010

Keywords: horizon zero dawn, story recap, playstation 4, playstation, guerilla games, horizon forbidden west, horizon, horizon 2, horizon story so far, horizon story recap, horizon horizon story explained, horizon lore explained, horizon zero dawn story, horizon zero dawn full story, horizon zero dawn full story recap

Id: Nopfzl_oIdw

Length: 18min 22sec (1102 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 13 2022