Horizon Zero Dawn Story Analysis - A Masterpiece of Storytelling

[Music] the story of horizon zero dawn where do you even begin it's a story that's left an indelible mark on me placing the series squarely on my top five list of all-time favorites put there by zero dawn and further cemented by the triumph and even better overall game that is a sequel horizon forbidden west it's a story of mystery and discovery triumph and setback set in a beautiful yet dangerous post-apocalyptic open world where human civilization has fallen into ruin devolved into primitive tribes and nations of limited technological advancement in this version of earth humanity is no longer the dominant force living in the shadows of enormous animalistic machines well we have our work cut out for us it was a strange and yet oddly wonderful concept for an open world game back when it was announced d3 2015 one that generated hype and excitement among gamers but also brought about many questions many wondered whether such a wild concept would click while others wondered if a female main character would be a good cell with sony later admitting reluctance with the idea there was also the question as to whether the studio developing zero dawn gorilla games could pull it off given their last major ip was the kill zone franchise a purely first person shooter series where gorilla had contracted outside writers for those stories then there came the question when both the release dates were finalized as to whether or not it could compete with this game thankfully for xerodon due to the lack of switches available for sale at the time of release it was afforded some breathing room to stand on its own when it was finally released on february 28 2017. upon release zerodon was received with widespread acclaim with much of it centered on the story in writing the world and his exploration and characters particularly protagonist eloy who has gone on to become one of gaming's most recognizable characters and one of sony's most popular among its first party ips i'd argue that in a sense she's the proverbial queen of sony interactive and no i'm not just saying that because i'm a sucker for redheads maybe the game was nominated for a boatload of awards winning quite a few in the process including a handful of game of the years but most of these awards were centered around the game's narrative which continues to be praised years later it's a quality that has improved upon in its dlc expansion the frozen wilds and then expanded on with great success in forbidden west it's that aspect of the horizon series that i want to focus on in the three videos i have planned for this series starting with zero dawn i will add in bits about gameplay when and where it's applicable appropriate or unavoidable as it pertains to the story but beyond that this video and the ones that will come after will almost exclusively be focused on the narrative and its minutia it is my hope in this video and others to come that i can articulate and analyze their stories and game worlds their successes failures and how they've improved from entry to entry and how they might still be improved in the almost certain threqual also it should be said spoiler warning for all of zero dawn's main story as well as some of its side quests as well as cut scenes from the frozen walls dlc and forbidden west i strongly recommend you play the game before watching this video as its story is best experienced knowing nothing now without further ado let's get stuck in now all i have to do is make it all happen [Music] um that now don't like the cold the story begins right from the moment you boot up the game for the first time we're greeted by a man and a child exiting a house nestled amidst a snowy mountain range his name is ross and he's taking the child a girl into the valley so that he can give her a name in some ritual though initial looks may be deceiving rost and the child are not father and daughter this is made more clear later in the cinematic but also hinted at in quick bits of dialogue just before they leave the house here wear this it belonged to my daughter as they descend into the valley proper rost explains that usually it's the mother who would give the child's name in this child's case however there's a couple of problems the child doesn't have a mother and esrosso absolutely puts it [Music] we are outcasts they then begin to cut through the remains of the old ones the decaying ruins of human civilization from long ago ross couches their demise and ruin in the beliefs of their tribe the nora describing them as wicked eventually we come across the game's biggest selling point from it rost instructs the girl to respect the power of their machines to be humble in their presence so far this cinematic has done what i believe to be most important in such scenes to lay the groundwork for the story in its world without overloading the player with too much information this is a game that's built on a sense of mystery and discovery and while ross gives us plain to chew on he doesn't give away too much so as to spoil them what we have learned with definitive certainty will play a huge part in the rest of the game moving forward though what they mean isn't entirely clear as of yet another aspect of the game that's put on display in this sequence is just how goddamn beautiful it is i mean just look at this even now many playthroughs later i still often find myself stopping and staring at the world around me or simply walking through its environments for no discernible reason beyond just soaking it all in while not every aspect of the game graphically has aged gracefully the world most certainly has for now we're only given a glimpse but it serves well as a preview for what the player can expect down the road their power i will teach you this one day ross and the child begin to ascend up another mountain first along develop paths then up near sheer rock faces while the ability to climb up such obstacles is almost a requirement in this world i can't help but feel that assuming this is a path everyone takes it's a bit spartan of the nora to make mother's caring infants climb such an arduous path then again this could be just the path ross is taking due to their outcast status the official path being far less rigorous and treacherous upon reaching the top we find what appears to be a place of great religious significance to the nora they also find they're not alone high matriarchy says here seemingly waiting for them the nora tribe has no one leader instead being run by way of committee that of the high matriarchs great grandmothers who have at least three generations of progeny to their name a nor a society that puts them head and shoulders above all others as such seeing tirsa gives ross cause to pause and she could very easily forbid them from performing the ritual thankfully tirsa isn't there to stop them but to actually bless the naming she does so in a hurried manner suggesting that she isn't meant to though she doesn't seem to particularly care i am a high matriarch rost i bless whom i choose and you honor us yes yes now go and be ready to declare go at her insistence ross approaches the end of the overhang child in his hands at tears command he holds her out towards the sun and calls out her name mother this child needs a name by which to know her that your love may warm her life as the rising sun warms all the earth speak her name alone [Music] so that's it we can start the game now right well not quite stop this at once once the ritual is complete another high matriarch landra appears and immediately begins scolding tirsa further adding queens that she wasn't meant to bless the child's naming or that she hadn't informed anyone she was going to landsra then venomously reminds rost of his duty i've done only what you asked to raise it yes we said nothing of love enough lancer is a direct foil to tiersa the two of them almost always biting heads whenever they're on screen together though at first glance it appears to be merely a personal clash between two powerful women as we'll see later it's far from being an isolated disagreement eventually tirsa intervenes pulling lanser away from ross directing her fellow high matriarch's ira away from a visibly upset little alloy where ross sues ailoy as the camera pans away from them signaling the start of the game and wherever you go [Music] the story then jumps forward six years later we see a young aloy spying a group of nora children gathering berries under the watchful eye of a nora mother seeing the love and affection being afforded to one of the children aeloy decides to join in however instead of receiving similar affection she's greeted with sharp disdain from the mother who quickly ushers the other children away aloy is of course still an outcast someone to be shunned by the tribe and this scene reinforces that fact come on [Music] understandably ayla does not take this well and she runs off in a fit of mid-childhood anger not unlike what i did when i realized how much being a millennial sucks oh brother this guy stinks terribly shitty jokes aside you'd have to be pretty callous to think there isn't anything wrong with the way she's been treated by the north thus far i have plenty to say about the nora as a whole later on but needless to say the tribe hasn't been portrayed in the most positive of light so far of course this isn't enough to condemn an entire tribe but what this scene does is lay the early foundations of eloy's feelings towards the tribe as a whole one that continues right the way through the series even as she forms bonds with some of its members not paying attention to the surroundings ailoy ends up tripping and falling down a massive cave thankfully she falls into a pool of water below and is able to pull herself out suffering no noticeable injuries despite doing no less than five barrel rolls on her way down quickly realizing that she's trapped she decides to press on further into the cave in the hopes of finding an alternate way out it doesn't take long for aeloy to realize that she didn't tumble down into an ordinary cave this must be a ruin of the metal world one of the old places this is the first old world ruin we enter in the game and it perfectly sets the tone for what excursions into such locations will be like whereas the world above is flush with color and full of life the ruins of the metal world are bleak dark places devoid of any life leaving behind an unnerving husk of what once was this stark juxtaposition can also be found in terms of space the wider world above is open and free almost limitless conversely the old world ruins below are cramped oppressive spaces interconnected by often narrow corridors with low ceilings entering an enlarged chamber aloy makes a startling discovery for all that is bright and beautiful in this series there is much of this grim depressing and distressing in these games which we'll see more of later on of course this isn't surprising when you consider that apocalypses aren't exactly non-violent occurrences the discovery of this body being a visceral reminder approaching the body aloe makes a follow-up discovery one that will change her life forever [Music] a focus a tiny piece of old world tech that allows the wearer to see things that usually can't be seen doing so in some form of augmented reality without getting into the nuts and bolts of it think of it like your smartphone packed together into a tiny device that attaches to your temple showing you vast quantities of data in real time how this works is never explained nor how they could still be working hundreds of years later but at this juncture none of these points matter for at this moment elo is simply awestruck by what she's seeing glowing lights appear everywhere and she takes a moment to gaze upon them before we press on everywhere i'll just do this what falls is our first puzzle door a ridiculously easy one at that but i consider it to be acceptable given that its purpose is to merely showcase one of the focus's capabilities as well as showing the player how puzzle doors will work on the whole i don't really have an opinion on them i generally dislike puzzles in games so i don't mind when they lean on the basic and mundane though i can understand why someone else might be left disappointed after completing the door alloy reaches a junction point of multiple corridors it's here that we encounter our first data point i'll discuss later how zero dawn's data points succeed as lower dumps compared to other games but for now we can ignore this one after going down a flight of stairs aeloy comes across yet another chamber an office of some kind and finds another body also with the focus and another data point you think i want it this way it's the best i can do he's right behind you hi happy birthday isaac daddy sure does love his little big man look daddy can't be there with you and mom but we can still have a party right here we can [Music] show me show me [Music] again happy birthday isaac daddy sure does love his little big man look daddy can't be there with you and mom but we can still have a party right sure we can birthday isaac daddy sure does love his little big man now we could easily dismiss this hologram as just a glimpse into the old world but it's pretty clear that it's much more than that to alloy it's apparent showing love and affection to his child regardless that it's not directed to her specifically and that the man isn't actually there she still feels this love and affection two things that have been denied to her thus far i mean look how happy it makes and how quickly she replays it coming shortly after the scene with the norm mother up top this hologram is giving greater emotional weight and will be called back upon later in the series moving on aloy comes across two more data points and is from here we begin to ask questions of just what happened here the first one doesn't reveal much but the second one ends dramatically with the guy shooting himself so if that upsets whoever finds this too bad i don't know anyone anything anymore by now it's pretty clear that the people of this room didn't get much of a happy ending soon after we enter what appears to be some sort of sleeping area all the bodies within the room contain data points they're content suggesting that these were their final words all while under the influence of something we don't know what that something is but if you return to this ruin later on when eloy is older you can find the answer on a data point in a previously inaccessible office while optional you'd be remiss if you didn't listen to them though vague in their meaning they plant a seed in the player's mind giving you something to chew on while compelling you to ask questions and subsequently push on for the answers exiting the room and traversing a string of corridors aloy here is a familiar voice ross has found her and is more than a little thankful for it the nora vile the metal world considering such ruins cursed places symbols of the hubris and wickedness of the old ones this clearly hasn't been transposed onto eloy for even as she hurries to reach ross he still stops and looks back into the cave with curiosity of course ross doesn't feel the same way reminding eloy that such places are forbidden then he notices the focus what is that on your face nothing [Music] did you find it down there nope give it to me no hey laurie such things are dangerous no seeing that he isn't about to win ross lets the mata go deciding that now is the time to start training aloy on the art of survival come eloy home now starting tomorrow you will learn to hunt for the next 10 minutes or so of gameplay ross teaches alloy about the basics of survival gathering healing herbs crafting ammo hiding from machines and moving in stealth and controlling a machine's intention by throwing rocks we also learned how we can use the focus to pinpoint weak spots on machines which wrankles ross somewhat the canister on its back is that a weakness yes how did you guess that the device it showed me that play thing stop playing games you'll have probably realized by now that this entire sequence so far has been one long tutorial segment supplemented with ample world building and storytelling this is drawing criticism suggesting that it overstates its welcome and isn't interesting while this is true in subsequent runs i think we need to look at the game doing more than teaching players its gameplay systems it's doing that while also continuing to build on the themes established in both the opening cinematic and at the very beginning of this very sequence its effectiveness will largely be dependent on the player but i think it definitely works on a first playthrough after completing baby's first machine hunt both rost and aloy here scream further down the valley we train again what was that rushing to investigate they come across a large clearing full of striders and patrolling watchers across the clearing they find a boy who they saw earlier in the valley running the brave trails hanging by his fingertips desperately trying to regain his hold surprise he fails and falls into the clearing alerting the already jumpy striders unfortunately ross states he can't do anything it's only a matter of time before the machines find that boy and kick him to death but if i shoot it'll cause a stampede and it will trample him however with the use of the focus aloy can see the path the machines take and jumps down into the clearing anyways but not before ross grabs her bow this next section offers nothing in the way of story instead simply being an amalgamation of everything you've just learned about stealth now with the added ability to highlight machine paths though i don't have any footage to show i will add that if my memory serves me right if you get caught by either a watcher or strider it's an automatic game over and you have to start again beyond that it's a fairly bog standard sequence you reach the boy and lead him back to rost who has repositioned himself on the east side of the clearing the boy understandably is more than a little grateful for alloy's efforts a trio of nora braves soon arrived with one of them immediately berating the boy for speaking to them because shunning outcast isn't just some societal trait of the nora it's against tribal law to even speak to them punishable by being made outcast yourself you'll even learn later on in a couple side quests that outcasts aren't even allowed to speak to one another themselves the brave then goes a step further and she is motherless just like anyone would be in her shoes aylor doesn't take to being called motherless all too well and storms off in a huff along the path home with rost not far behind while meandering on the path home aloy is greeted by a familiar face [Music] stay away no mother remember that long-haired youngin from before his name is bossed here he is being an ass with a shitty grin to match i won't dig into him too much because let's face it some children are just plain jerks at that age let's give him a chance to mature into a fine young brave but not before he throws another rocket ali's head this time however alloy definitely catches it it's here that we're introduced to flashpoints their explanation on screen is pretty much the long and short of it they are simply a means to allow the player to express aloy's personality however they like within the confines of these three choices to be clear these are not decisions with choice and consequence and will not determine how the main story or side quests end what happens with these choices are confined to their assigned story beats allowing for some limited role playing while they do allow a limited amount of variance over multiple playthroughs and often have great bits of dialogue attached to them they don't offer much more than that i don't hate them for i'll never say no to giving players choices but i don't think anything would have been lost by their exclusion in this instance i chose the brain option or insight having eloise throw the rocks she caught back at boss knocking the rock he just picked up out of his hand eloy looks on with satisfaction though this quickly evaporates once the other children are called away and ross catches up he immediately attends to the wound on aloy's forehead which begins this conversation i'll get it why [Music] why am i an outcast hey this is not the time who was my mother hey lloyd i've told you before that's not for us to know you were just a newborn when the matriarchs brought you to me so the matrix they know it's not so simple but they know hey lloyd we are outcasts so how do i make them tell me the matriarchs there is a way perhaps so tell me it will be dangerous how it would take years of training i don't care how do i do it tell me the proving the tribe's rite of passage held every year those who pass become braves but to the one who wins the matriarchs grant a boom yes whatever the winner wants then i'll do it whatever it takes [Music] i'll win the province i see we'd best get started then your training will be hard and it'll take years start training yes follow from there we get a well-crafted cinematic sequence showcasing eloy's subsequent training i love the cinematic how it starts with alloy struggling to master the skills necessary for the proving then gradually improving before when she's a young adult finally mastering these abilities and executing them flawlessly while ross looks on with pride it also serves as an excellent narrative transition capping off the end of the prologue with a flourish while almost seamlessly guiding us into act one act one begins almost mirror to the prologue beginning right after the previous cinematic we see ayloy exiting the same house as we see in the opening calling after rost if you remember from the beginning of the prologue it was ross to his calling aloy's name as she slinked away from home now it's seen the roles are reversed nevertheless eloy pushes on down the path leading from the house wandering aloud where rost is gone he said we'd go hunting this morning why isn't he here where has he gone to haloid talking to herself is something she does a lot both in zero dawn and forbidden west which has been the source of criticism by some as simply being annoying and unnecessary i personally disagree with this sentiment partially because i connect with this on a personal level i too talk to myself a bit especially while i'm working as i find verbalizing information often helps me process it far more quickly and efficiently there's also another layer to this that which i hope is obvious apart from herself aloy hasn't had anyone to talk to yeah ross is there but he can only relate to her so much there's also karst the only nora merchant that will actually speak to her at the start but their relationship is strictly mercantile combine that with being actively shunned by the rest of the tribe and well she's only got herself this lack of people to talk to will of course change over the course of the story but by now it's become a habit that's well entrenched haley quickly finds ross standing atop a nero pie cliff he's in fact waiting for her and tells her that he has one more lesson for her just before she heads off to the proving eloy is more than willing to learn this lesson and with that rost instructs her to descend into the embrace and gather the parts necessary to craft fire arrows then meet him at a gate near a place called mother's heart staying rather mum on what this lesson is when aeloy asks with that aylor descends further into the valley it's here that the world finally opens up to us but not completely aylo and ross live in a region in nora territory called the embrace it is in essence the beating heart of the norse sacred lands centered around old mother mountain the tribe's most important religious site as well as its largest settlement mother's heart besides its culture and religious importance the embrace is also incredibly defensible surrounded by mountains on three sides with the eastern side defended by three gates at various choke points along the eastern embraces still rugged terrain these defenses natural or otherwise keep aloe inside the embrace for at least the first few hours it serves as a microcosm of the wider open world with a few side quests here and there as well as going over basic mechanics that weren't covered in the prologue mother's heart is currently close to you but there's another settlement you can explore called mother's cradle even though its residents make it very clear that ailoy is far from welcome keeping the player contained within a smaller area at the start is something that i think goes under appreciated in some open worlds particularly in a narrative and world building sense of course this isn't going to be for everyone especially when compared to open world sandboxes like skyrim or fallout 4. that's fine but in a game like horizon zero dawn which has a greater emphasis on its main story keeping the player in a contained portion of its world even if only for a few hours gives the player a chance to get properly settled in to get themselves immersed and not to be overwhelmed so quickly this is something other narrative heavy open world games have done extremely well the witcher 3's opening area of white orchard being a perfect example once she's gathered the parts she needs aeloy meets ross at a campfire on the path to the north gate as you approach you can hear the sounds of distant fighting beyond the embrace ayla can ask ross what the fuss is about but as has been standard so far ross remains rather tight-lipped it's also here that ello can lay out her plans of continuing to see ross once she's running the proving and is no longer an outcast despite some early resistance to the plan ross eventually relents sort of once knight falls they approach the gate which the defending braves open for them much to alloy surprise considering that the guards are under no obligation to do so for outcasts to that ross says some who are shunned reaped honor before disgrace which suggests that he was once a well-respected member of the nora prior to becoming an outcast how and why he's an outcast isn't revealed until towards the end of the main story a further twist to that is his sentence is for life something that even to the nora is quite unusual and extreme you can ask multiple people about it long before them but they either don't know or in the case of rost in the high matriarchs are under oath to never speak of it the fact that even as an outcast ross still commands a level of respect from the other nora suggests that maybe his disgrace isn't what it truly means beyond the gate we meet this monster a sawtooth a relatively new machine that has already caused considerable havoc to the tribe this is made clear by the multiple destroyed cabins and lodgings along with more than a few nora corpses littered along the path following the path of destruction you come across a clearing where a life comes face to face with her quarry as part of the lesson ross backs off telling ayla that she's on her own depending on your skill level this fight will either be a walk in the park or an extended learning experience either way the end result is the same with the sawtooth dead alloy immediately begins to strip it for parts just as rost appears from whatever bush he was hanging out in he begins asking eloy if she knows why he brought her there with ailoy first being a bit of a smart ass before giving what she thinks is the answer it isn't of course because why would it be as ross puts it eloy has been training to win the proving but only for herself the lesson was to remind ailey that once the proving is over she'll have to think beyond herself to fight for the tribe it will be your duty to fight for your tribe my tribe [Music] you said i wouldn't need them i can imagine elay wants to go on some sort of diatribe here against the same tribe that made her an outcast but stops herself probably so as to not disrespect rost perhaps sensing this rost ends the lesson with this the strength to stand alone a lawyer is the strength to make a stand to serve a purpose greater than yourself that is the lesson you must learn and remember it after the proving and after i'm gone once back inside the embrace eloy and ross will have one final chit chat before agreeing to meet just outside mother's heart from here eloy is for you to wander and embrace some more with the option to head to mother's heart at her and the player's leisure for what's considered a primitive settlement by the standards of other tribes mother's heart holds a rather imposing presence starkly set against the mountains behind it this is accentuated by the rumble of drums that slowly builds as you approach signifying that celebrations are well and truly underway ross is waiting just before the bridge this will be your last chance to delay heading to the proving for you'll be locked into the quest once you enter mother's heart that's not to say you won't be able to return here once it's over quite the contrary actually you'll still be in the embrace once you're free to explore again and any side quests you've left unfinished will be waiting for you what proceeds before you head in is one of the hardest scenes to watch in the entire game i'm ready to do this see you back home in a few days you will not find me there eli here take this remember why are you talking like we'll never see each other again no no you should be with the tribe and i will always be an app but i told you i have that figured out i'll come to you in secret i'll be the one breaking the law not you you don't even have to talk to me this attachment to me will only hold you back it's my wish that you embraced the tribe you've lived in isolation long enough until now i didn't for your sake i must go where you will never find me this this is goodbye i see i'm glad to have this then it will remind me of you of everything you did and how you helped prepare me for this day thank you heavier than it looks but the court is strong they all mother bless you hey and you regardless of whichever choice you make it's a tough watch you can feel eloy's pain as she tries to keep ross from leaving he's been the only constant that she's ever had raising her from birth teaching her how to survive training her for this very day and now he's gone just like that as aola watches him leave i imagine she contemplates dropping everything she's ever wanted just to go after him to keep that constant alive if that's the case she ultimately decides against it and proceeds to the main gate as she approaches she's greeted by two nora braves who are quick to bar entry you will turn back out cast thankfully the gates are open dan look who it is tirsa remember her if not she's the high matriarch who blessed eloy's naming in the opening cut scene she quickly orders the braves to make way and welcomes alien to mother's heart telling her that she's been waiting for this day a long time clearly confused eloy follows her inside just as quickly as she arrives however tirsa leaves aylor to take care of some outsiders envoys from another tribe before she disappears however she tells ailee that an old friend of hers is waiting for her further along the path and that he can't wait to see her from the outset this doesn't make any sense since alloy in theory doesn't know anyone there may the goddess protect what is going on we'll just have to wait and see what that's about for now as we're given free range wander around mother's heart albeit on a somewhat linear path fittingly for what is probably the tribe's most important festival of the year mother's heart is in a suitably festive mood with musicians singers and dancers entertaining the norm masses keeping them in fine spirits along with a seemingly endless supply of food and drink it wouldn't surprise me if this is the sort of festival that the tribe spends all year planning for beginning preparations for the next one as soon as the last one has ended this is all further enhanced by a host of other bespoke animations of people conversing around fires and long tables this is also wonderful in bringing the settlement to life while providing a glimpse into nora life something that is as of this moment alien to halo and the player it also makes what it's like after the proving all the more stark moseying along we come across eli's old friend haloi it's you isn't it over here yep that's right it's the boy we saved back in the prologue his name's tab and as we can see he didn't become a hunter but a stitcher instead someone who makes clothing and armor as a long overdue thank you he's made some armor for alloy he then directs her towards the matriarch's lodge where tears should be he also mentions that she'll find an angry mob there angry at the presence of the foreign envoys upon reaching the mob in the lodge we see both tirsa and fellow high matriarch gezza inviting the visiting envoys to speak before the assembled nora they've come under a banner of peace though if you were listening to idol chatter around mother's heart it's clear that most of the nora don't feel the same way one of the envoys a carja sun priest then steps forward an enunciation of gratitude written slavers hold your fruit now i'm azeram not karja so i'll put it you straight the 13th sun king was a murderous bung he was he was a tyrant and a monster rated my tribe for blood sacrifice just like yours my own sister was taken i hated the cartoon but the 13th king is dead two years now who killed it the 14th [Music] not because he he lusted for power but because someone had to put an end to his father's atrocities [Music] [Applause] the message that this poor priest means to read is an apology straight from the lips of the 14th kid so please can't you lend him your ears thank you an enunciation of gratitude written by the hand of son as the sun priest continues his speech halo notices something peculiar on her focus a signal emanating from one of the other visitors not on stage but languishing off to the side as she gets closer to investigate she sees that the man is also wearing a focus huh his name's olin a delver and scout from the awesome tribe when elois confronts him about his focus he's beyond shocked that anor would be wearing one since that possibly means aloe has been down in the ruins of the old world which is something that the nora just don't do to that eloy whittily replies who says i'm like other nora before they can continue something happens with olin's focus which he awkwardly brushes off as a malfunction it's then that one of the visitors on stage appears and olin is quick to exit stage left suddenly worried about something it's here we turn our attention to this fine fella this is aaron another awesomer i'm a member of the vanguard sun king of odds personal guards and a favorite of fans of the series myself included there isn't much in this conversation that expands or progresses the story at least not at first glance but alternate dialogue options provide a chance for the player to learn about the world in its lore alongside eloy this sort of world building where information is dumped on the player in long dialogue heavy expositions is something that has become a bit of a hot button topic for gamers with some loving it and others hating it it works in zero dawn for two reasons one being an outcast a lawyers had no prior knowledge of the outside world and two piggybacking off the first point aylor is naturally curious and as such asks a lot of questions there's a lot of information in this conversation should you wish to engage with it it's presented rather well and you'd be missing key contacts for later story moments if you don't however it can feel somewhat disjointed depending on the order you engage it with with that said allow me to go over in as brief of a summation as i can according to aaron some 15 20 years ago something happened that made the machines angry they were already dangerous of course but only if you didn't know how to jump out of the way then suddenly out of the blue was seen the machines began to intentionally attack humans making travel an incredibly dangerous endeavor to top it all off new machines like the sawtooth began to appear bigger batter and armed to the teeth this has since become known as the derangement and the tribes of this world have been trying to make sense of it ever since one of these tribes the karja eventually took matters into their own hands karja religion is centered on worshiping the sun with their son king serving as its vessel seeing the derangement as divine punishment sun king jiron decided that blood sacrifice was needed to appease both the sun and the machines by this time geron was presumably already going mad seeing himself as a literal sun god not just a vessel the blood sacrifices that followed started out domestically but when this did nothing jeron shipped his focus on tribes beyond carja borders these became known as the red raids and over the course of 10 years the car just took thousands of prisoners transporting them to the sundom to either become slave labor or to be sacrificed of course the other tribes made every effort to resist however against the military might of the karja all they could do was weather the storm in the hopes that eventually the karja would tire of it when the breaking point finally did come it was thanks to jaron's own madness induced stupidity his cruelty did not stop at his family and when his eldest son in heir prince cadamen demanded an end to the bloodshed duron threw him in the sun ring this compelled his second son avod to flee to the osram homeland of the claim there he met up with ursa an austrian woman who had miraculously survived the sun ring and whom avad had helped to escape slavery she's also aaron's sister and current captain of the vanguard with ursa and aaron avod formed in the lines of ostrom warlords and free booters and marched on meridian their numbers swelled along the way by distant karja culminating with the captured meridian known in the series as the liberation while a fair few of his loyalists escaped the city jerome's madness would not allow him to surrender and thus he was slain by bod allegedly with the mad sun king dead and avod crowned the 14th sun king the red raids were finally brought to an end but as we'll see throughout the rest of zero dawn as well as forbidden west the ramifications of the war are still being felt both within and without the sundom after talking with aaron it's time for alloy to head to the blessing here you'll find all the aspirins gathered together in a sort of courtyard each with a lantern what falls is quite a beautiful scene the lanterns floating into the night sky as the high matrix recite the blessing after this ayla has a chance to speak with a few people including tirsa this will be the first time that ayla can actually speak to her at length and it's here that we learn about the nora's hierarchy how having multiple generations of living progeny lends more power i'm going to be perhaps a little too honest here and say that i find the idea of more children equals more power to be detestable to me and yet i have to be honest with myself and recognize that i'm looking at it through the lenses of my own modern day perspective this is an extremely dangerous world for humans and i can only imagine back when nor society was beginning to take shape that the infant mortality rate would have been through the roof this would have undoubtedly lend credence to the idea that if you had lots of living progeny that you clearly knew what you were doing and should be listened to coupled with their worship of old mother then the concept begins to make sense yet this comes with an inherent flaw that just because you have lots of living progeny does not mean you're inherently suited or right to lead of course this is hard to parse with the nora given that they appear to have maintained a steady existence for the last few hundred years that flaw can also be hand-waved away by the fact that the nora are ruled by committee not one person but given their strict adherence to tribal law and isolationist tendencies i'd have to disagree even tirsa who's the clear reformist among the high matriarchs and the most willing to break taboo often leans on that tradition more than she probably should understand now before you stab your fingers into your keyboards and call me out no this is not me railing against women being in charge like some in-cell spewing on twitter or reddit in fact i can still remember on my very first playthrough quite liking the idea of a matriarchal leadership structure it was something new and fresh something that to my knowledge hadn't been done before in gaming or any mainstream fiction for that matter as hyperbolic as it may sound i think gorilla took a risk going in this direction along with making the main character a woman and i think they should be applauded for it by now it's time to hit the hay and get some rest halo heads for the aspirants lodge where she's greeted by resh second only to landra as the nora's the biggest you might have seen him back in the prologue following lands or like an obedient dog and here he has some choice words for ailoy who responds in kind find your bad outcast and dream of winning the proving that's the closest you're gonna get oh this is the bed house with you standing guard i figured it was the latrine you're you're very present here in the lodge we meet yet another familiar face bost remember him yeah he's that kid remember when i said we were going to give him a chance to mature yeah he didn't in the lodge he begins mocking aloy continuing to do so even after he's told to shut it eloy as is her way rises to the challenge and depending on your choice in the flashpoint you even put bost off a little bit it's also in this lodge that you meet vala who despite being equally as competitive and sure of herself as the others is quite friendly to ailoy suggesting that they'll become fast friends when it's all said and done but for now it's time to get some sleep with the biggest day of eloy's life on the horizon so what exactly is the proven well despite its grandiose build up it's fairly simple it starts with the hunting section where the aspirins must hunt machines and take a trophy from their kill after that they must navigate a course of winding paths climbing walls and rickety bridges ending in an altar where they must present their trophy to the presiding proctor the first to do so is declare the winner of course aloy's race is anything but simple your trophy is shattered outcast looks like you'll need another now far behind she decides to take an older more dangerous path eventually catching up even to boston valla the two favorites to win jumping out ahead via slip wire she places her trophy before the proctor just before the others of course boss protests this claiming she cheated and for a split second the proctor looks ready to agree until once outcast and now brave who is first among them [Music] well just as things are starting to look up the proving comes under attack by a group of mysterious masked warriors mercilessly mowing down the procter and other aspirants halo and some others including boston valla managed to take cover with ayloy telling them to help the others while she takes on the attackers this is our introduction to human-based combat and as you can see it isn't exactly the most exciting but i'm going to be a bit of a contrarian compared to others and say that i don't mind it yes it lacks depth and isn't nearly as exciting as fighting machines but there's still satisfaction to be found in sniping enemies one after another either from stealth or in combat or in combining ranged and melee attacks in a dance-like rhythm at first the attackers merely stay on the ridge but eventually start sending in men to engage aylo up close forcing her to juggle fighting them while taking out more archers from above seeing that things aren't exactly going to plan the leader of the attackers decides to pull out the big guns literally in the ensuing onslaught vala is killed followed shortly by boss leaving ayloy alone to fend for herself once she's taken care of the and has a moment to breathe she inspects their leader and makes a startling discovery that he too is wearing a focus but before she can inspect it she's rudely interrupted by this fella as a way to apologize for this he grabs her by her neck and prepares to kill her yeah i know what you're probably thinking of course he'd be there to save the day him leaving and disappearing from aloy's life was just a narrative setup for this fight to occur you're right of course anyone could see it but i think this scene is meant to be more than that even after telling her that he was leaving abandoning her after raising her all her life he was still close by keeping a watchful eye on her and of course seeing her life about to be snuffed out he comes to her aid and so far so good right he's owning his own against a clearly capable fighter perhaps even winning okay listen i don't want to ruin was an otherwise emotional scene but this was predictable how you feel about this scene will largely depend on how you feel about rost there's a bit of a debate amongst fans of the series regarding his place in the wider narrative based on my research it would appear that the majority feel that he was a good yet flawed father figure who did the best he could given the circumstances while the minority feel that he was a bit of a jerk who failed to show much love and affection while i do certainly agree that he can come off as a bit of a jerk at times i believe this is calculated remember what he said to alloy just outside mother's heart just before he left this attachment to me will only hold you back it's my wish that you embraced the tribe that there's the crux of it all he didn't want ailero to become attached to him he's an outcast for life where she has a chance to become one with the tribe not left in isolation this distance was a facade he maintained to help her along to this conclusion yet behind that facade he did truly care about her so much so that he willingly sacrifices himself to save her it was at this end that he was finally able to lift this facade and embrace his two feelings even if only for a moment [Music] hmm following aloy's tumble and ross sacrifice we watch a scene where aloy is being carried on a stretcher flanked on either side by the high matriarchs we don't know where she's being taken only that landra is far from happy to take her there with tears's rebuttal being that she's dying and should be close to her mother this is intertwined with a nightmare she's having featuring ross landra the man that killed roston nearly her and some sort of machine tentacle thing when she awakes she quickly realizes her focus has been removed from her head she resolves to find it and get out of where she is but since she's still more than a little banged up from her failed attempt to fly she isn't going anywhere very quickly she soon finds her clothes in focus with which she discovers that she's inside old mother mountain much to her surprise since only high matriarchs are allowed inside she eventually finds her bow spear and the focus she took off the commander the proving attack or proving massacre as it'll be called moving forward here we get her first major revelation that the attack was meant for her and her alone all the other deaths were collateral eliminating witnesses attached with this order is a perfect image of eloy taken from when she first met olin then appears another image that of another woman considerably older yet shares a striking resemblance to her understandably eloy is more than a little confused who is this woman why does she look like her and why for that reason did the killers want her dead is she her mother all these questions will have to wait a moment for she's soon found by tirsa who quickly beckons her to follow it was tyrse's idea to bring aeloy to the mountain for the nora view it as sacred to die near one's mother this prompts sailor to ask it for mothers in the mountain followed by describing her possible features tears says this is impossible because well you were not born of a woman aloy the mountain is your mother yeah a bit of an odd curveball entering the great chamber we see a massive metal door on the far side clearly a relic of the old ones what the nora called the womb of the mountain as tirsa tells that the high matriarchs found eloy lying in front of the door as a baby tyrson believed her to be a gift where his lantern others viewed her as a curse placed there by darker powers eloy as she does bluntly cause on both takes but this isn't a goddess aloy it's a door with people behind it as she approaches it something stirs in the door and we hear a woman's computerized voice the eponymous old mother a red light scans alien recognizes her as the mysterious woman she saw earlier unfortunately something called the alpha registry is corrupted and eli's identity can't be confirmed thus remaining shot no no tirsta sees this as a sign that it's aloy's destiny to heal the corruption so that ailoy may gain access to the mountain tying it to her visions of the mysterious woman when eloy mentions that the killers came for her because of the resemblance suggesting that they hold the key tears mentions that their power is too great that they ambushed and slaughtered the north war party while aylei was unconscious it's then that italy remembers that it was through olin that the killer saw her that he may have the answers there's just one problem olin lives in meridian the capital of the kardashian well beyond the sacred lands in keeping with their isolationism any nor who leaves the sacred lands are branded as exiles never allowed to return this of course doesn't bother ailoy but tirsa has another idea come and we will make it so exiting the mountain they're met by jezza and landra where tirsa gives them a brief summary of what happened inside and that aylei will have to journey beyond the sacred lands oh while eloy awkwardly waits in silence behind her with this in mind jezza concludes that to complete her task alien must be named a seeker a noral warrior anointed by the high matriarchs in times of great need their purpose may include going beyond the borders of norah territory which means that they are given leave to come and go as they please it also means that they can enter the ruins of the metal world without fear being made outcast and can order other nor to do their bidding though i imagine there are restrictions to this now armed with the mark of a seeker ayloy is given leave to set out on her journey for answers but not before she has to deal with rush again he's been named warchief in absence of sona the actual war chief who disappeared following the war party massacre an appointment that isn't popular with old nora he shut the gate to mother's watch the village directly below old mother mountain and thus aloy has to ask him to open it he refuses initially then becomes furious when ailoy tells him that she's been anointed a seeker he eventually relents even if only to get her from his site the sooner you're gone from here the better before she can make her exit however we're introduced to a brand new machine one that isn't quite like the others it's called a corrupter and it's clear right from the get-go that it doesn't exactly come from the same machine family tree as the others also as the name might suggest it can take control of other machines as it does here just outside mother's watch with a herd of striders turning them on the norah upon breaking through aylo and the other nora engage in a chaotic kerfuffle with the corrupted striders all while the corrupter bounds around the village throwing boulders and firing rockets at range while swinging its lash-like tail in close combat cementing its place on the list of my least favorite machines to fight alongside every flying machine in the series once ayla and the nord defeat the corrupter and strider she immediately begins to pick it apart and finds the component responsible for taking over the striders she attaches it to her spear granting her the ability to override machines leaving mother's watch see resolves to find a machine to test it on with ted pointing out that there just so happens to be a strider heard nearby approaching the hurdle sneaky beaky aloy manages to override one and use it as a mount considerably speeding up travel time as she traverses the world with her mechanical version of roach eloy presses on to the gates of the embrace arriving just as a brave kills a corrupted sawtooth this is voral and though it isn't apparent right now he'll eventually become one of the most important people in eloy's life he's the son of sona the warchief that's gone missing as well as the older brother of vala the young woman aeloy spoke to in the aspirants lodge and who was among the dead in the proving massacre i have a lot to say about varl including his relationship to aloy and his place in the narrative throughout the series but i'm going to save it for the forbidden west video for now all i'm going to say is that prior to forbidden west i really really didn't like him this was largely down to how i felt about his voice actor's performance that it felt rather stunted and forced my disposition towards him has changed however and now i kind of wish we got to see more of him in zero dawn thankfully forbidden west makes up for that in this conversation varl points ayla in the direction of mother's crown and a woman named moraya about getting directions to meridian just as halo is about to move on he then asks her if she could look for sona before heading for the west reasoning that the tribe desperately needs her leadership in this time of crisis haloid promises to do what she can and in doing so opens up a whole new quest chain that runs parallel to the main story yet doesn't really cross over we won't get into them right now but needless to say these quests along with a later quest chain involving errand are main quests that feel like side quests in the case of sonas this is fine since they fit relatively well within the main narrative errands not so much but for now we'll pretend like we've gone straight to mother's crown it's at mother's crown that ailoy meets maria who informs her that the waste meridian is closed off the car just shutting the gates of the fort guarding the past out of fear of the corrupted machines infesting nora land this means that she'll have to clear a few corrupted zones to convince the carter to let her pass once that's completed ailoy presses onto the cargo fort known as daytower which is under attack by a corrupter and a gaggle of enslaved machines once they're cleared the grateful cards are fling open the gates allowing her to enter and marking the true start of eloy's journey [Music] though it never says so directly reaching day tower is by all accounts the start of act 2. it's here the world fully opens up eloy having remained somewhat confined to the limits in north territory up to this point it's also where we get our first full exposure to the karja the tribe that ayla may have learned some about from aaron or reverend to read back in mother's heart as you exit daytown continue west you'll see the world opening up to be quite literal though still rugged the land is no longer hemmed in by towering mountain ranges with many more open areas broken up here and there by mesas hills and meandering rivers from this vantage point we get another glimpse of the game world's beauty on display as well as the impressive draw distance even as it's shrouded in a layer of handily placed fog from daytower it's a fairly straight shot to meridian though you'd be forgiven if you wanted to partake in some of the side activities that are set roughly along the path including a tall neck and a bandit camp regardless of what direction you come from the feeling you get when you lay your eyes on meridian for the first time will be the same perched on a mesa it dominates the skyline immediately catching your eye and leaving you in wonder i'll gush about meridian later but for now let's continue on across the bridge into the main city just before the bridge eloy finds a crowd gathered upset at having to wait to get into the city for some undisclosed reason though if you listen closely you'll learn it has something to do with ursa if you remember she's aaron's sister and captain of the vanguard upon reaching the main gate she stopped by soldier who informs her that due to a recent murder all strangers must be searched before entering the city it's not just any murder either but that of ursa and aaron has taken her place as guard captain upon hearing this eloy request that aaron be summoned the man himself soon appears overjoyed at her presence having heard rumors that she had died he quickly gives alloy permission to come and go from raining as she pleases and the two step off to the side to speak in private there alone as you asked and what did you want to tell me here eloy reveals that it was through olin that she was targeted in the proving attacked and that she needs to see him aaron doesn't believe this of course being a friend and all but after some pushing from eloy he reveals that he left meridian days ago but that he has a house in the city eloy asks him to take her there which he does if not a little reluctantly eloy can also offer her condolences to aaron about ursa which he hand-fistedly accepts on the way to olin's we see that aaron isn't taking his sudden promotion all too well one more word you scorched out slag and i'll throw you in jail myself now get out of here or i'll give you all a kick in the ass this is exacerbated by his supposed heavy drinking which we'll learn later was a problem even before his sister's death though he appears confident the opposite couldn't be more true which is something that will come up more than a few times throughout the series upon entering olin's house using less than conventional means alloy begins investigating she eventually finds a hidden hatch beneath a rug after again using unconventional means to break through we enter the vault where eloy begins to search for clues it doesn't take long as she finds a journal which very clearly states that olin was indeed behind her being targeted his writing drenched with guilt along with the name of the dig site he's currently gone to we also find a rather grim message revealing that the killers have taken his family hostage as a means of forced cooperation [Music] serve and they live disobey and i will open their throats and leave their corpses to prune in the sun haloid presents the evidence to aaron who's far from impressed by this revelation but quickly jumps to asking ayloy how it is that she found it all out eloy quickly explains how the focus works as well as how olins and the killer's focuses are different she's then just about to leave when aaron stops her and requests her help in finding ursa's killers hoping that eloy's focus may reveal hidden clues as to how and where they are ailoy refuses at first but after some pushing from aaron she relents and agrees to help the two agreeing to meet at the site of ursa's murder this is where the quest chain involving eren begins the one similar to sonas i mentioned earlier those that are main quests would feel like side quests like sonas we'll come back to it later but to put it briefly aaron's quest chain has a few problems chiefly how it fits within the wider narrative or rather how it doesn't before we head off to find olan let's talk about meridian for a bit save for a select few locations in other games i don't think i've come across a more impressive urban set piece sure there are larger locations with more to do and see yet meridian's design and style always makes me look forward to getting here you have the main city atop the mesa connected to the palace of the sun on another mesa next to it you then have the village and maizelands below connected to the largest city above by two massive elevators feats of engineering in this world there's also a wonderful amount of organic storytelling one example being the old sun ring once used for geron's sacrifices now turned into a memorial for those killed during his reign and not just for the karja topping it all off are the impressive views you get of the wider world atop the mesa further solidifying the sense of cards and dominion over the surrounding land a sense further enhanced by the towering presence of the spire located on a neighboring mesa known as the alight all that said imagine my disappointment when we don't get to go back to meridian and forbidden west at least not in the same capacity there is still the possibility for dlc that will do just that however so fingers crossed heading north from meridian alloy eventually reaches the site marked in olin's journal only to find he's far from alone some of the killers are here as well and just as she arrives they raise a couple of corrupters from their ancient slumber much to olin's dismay just as things are looking dicey olin and the lead killer's focuses are disabled and ailoid receives a mysterious call forgive this intrusion eloy you've left me no choice who is this an interested party now the focuses are disabled but i don't know for how long the rest is up to you who is this from here you take care of the killers and the corrupters getting some help from olin should you be spotted with them taken care of it's time to interrogate olin i promise i'll tell you everything i know you will we learn a lot from him here for starters the killers are known as the eclipse a call to the shadow karja and that they're led by helus the man who killed ross and nearly killed eloy confused yet in short the shadow karjar are geron's loyalists who escaped the liberation while helus was durran's chosen champion the shadow cards a mantra is to overthrow a vaude and retake meridian but where the eclipse fit into this equation remains a mystery we also learn about the devil the eclipse worship an entity called hades who issued the kill order on ailoy when she first met olin it's through hades that the eclipse are raising ancient war machines such as the corrupters but also larger machines they call deathbringers when it comes to the mysterious woman with whom alloy shares a resemblance all that we get is that olin saw her image at a place called maker's end which also happens to be where he first ran into the eclipse now we come to the moment of judgment though guilty of many things the proving massacre above all owen's situation isn't nearly as cut and dry as it would first appear as he tells it the eclipse merely showed up one day and forced his cooperation with his family being taken hostage beforehand to make sure of it he's an unwilling participant in their schemes either unable or unwilling to make his escape for the sake of his family's safety as ayloy puts it perhaps you're not an evil man just a weak one with that in mind killing olin seems heavy-handed though i have to be fair and point out that he's more than accepting of this fate only asking that eloy rescue his family i let olin go as i usually do viewing him as an unwilling pawn in the eclipse's schemes now with a chance to atone and start anew though i must stress i wouldn't blame you for killing him sparing him or not chains is little in terms of the overall narrative the only difference being if he's with you or not when you rescue his family after that they return to the claim putting considerable distance between themselves in the eclipse with olin dealt with eloy has a new heading maker's end along the way she received another call from the unknown man who called her earlier at the dig site telling her that the mysterious woman's name is elizabeth sobek well go on what do you know about her stay on your present course and before long you'll know her as well as i do maybe better upon reaching maker's end she finds the outskirts crawling with the clips the cult having a built-up presence in the ruins after working her way through their dig sites including facing off with yet another corrupter italy traverses the passage through some ruins before jumping into an open area and coming face to face with the death bringer though this one is heavily damaged in a mobile it still packs a hefty punch and at this early stage you'd be wise to remain in whatever cover is available picking off its vents when they're exposed there's also a few eclipse troopers around one of whom has a focus once you finish them and the death bringer off ailoy will grab the focus and investigate his contents it's then that we hear hades for the first time what what is this the entity is unacceptable unacceptable unacceptable baffled and perhaps more than a little shocked by this italy presses on into the tower inside we find a door similar to the one in old mother mountain that immediately scans ailoy recognizing her as the mysterious woman elizabeth sobek unlike the mountain however genetic profile confirmed entry authorized greetings dr sobak step inside walking through the door a computerized voice tells us that ailoy as elizabeth sobeck is late hundreds of years late for a meeting with someone named mr farrow climbing the tower we come across a series of data points both audio and text which begins to tell a story of its own with even the unknown caller providing data entries that give added context we learned the tower and surrounding runes belonged to a cold world corporation called pharaoh automated solutions or fas and that they made the focus as well as the war machines we've already faced which they sold to potential buyers as swarms in one chamber we even learned these machines old world designations scared for the corrupter co-pass for the death bringers and horus for the enormous metal devil who can also manufacture more themselves as well as the other machine types and that they all consumed biomass as fuel now remember all that because it's going to be important in a short bit manufacturing capabilities they can make more of themselves then how would you ever stop them as we climb the tower and listen to more data points we start to get a sense of what might have happened by all accounts a swarm of feral machines began attacking other robots and human personnel of its assigned company to make matters worse they weren't responding to stand down codes and they couldn't be hacked because ted farrow founder and ceo of fas specifically ordered that it not be possible all the while the swarm's numbers were growing at a rapid rate sending the corporation spiraling into damage control it's almost fitting that as you ascend the tower there's a rising sense of tension as the pieces begin to fit together and perhaps form a grim conclusion that conclusion is revealed when you reach the top floor you scan a databank and use alloy's alpha privileges to gain access to purge data which reveals three holograms in sequential order from these holograms the grim truth is revealed elizabeth good to uh it's been years where's your legal team ted no need i dropped all 18 lawsuits the money landed i assume your daddy confirms us all right this promises to be interesting perhaps we could have lunch brought in you know i know you ted you screwed something up something big or you wouldn't have eaten the crow necessary to get me here so spit it out there's a glitch in the chariot line you're a killer robot peacekeepers yes those so shut them down obviously liz we would if we could they're not responding are you telling me a swarm has gone rogue ted it's worse than that show me the data then and i'll take that lunch alone ted farro brought elizabeth so back here but they hated each other another thing has been recovered this isn't a glitch it's a catastrophe fully aware it's bad bad jesus it's not bad ted it's apocalyptic you built a line of killer robots peacekeepers that consume biomass as fuel in emergencies and you made them capable of self-replication limited self-manufacture controlled not anymore the glitch severed chain of command the only nation this swarm answers to now is itself it's replicating ted it will strip the earth bear in 15 months we're not talking fall of civilization we're talking extinction i get it blizz so how do i stop it while it's contained it's not contained it can't be you know what i mean right before the truth kicks out you mean liz i will do anything you say keep working it and whatever you recommend i'll do i'm gonna hold you to that ted the faro robots threatened all life on earth but somehow she defeated them the world of the old ones fell but life went on or we wouldn't be here there has to be another way if there are a nicer way to fix your mess i would have proposed it but this this when i asked you to find a cure i didn't expect it to be worse than the disease it's not ted it may be grim but it's our only chance now sign the proposal sign it i can't sign that yes you can that liz i cannot in good conscience sign that you've got a choice ted i know i'm speaking to you from a vtol end route to us robot command in 15 minutes i meet with general harris and the rest of the joint chiefs what are you crazy now your choice is what i tell them sign and i'll tell them the wealthiest corporation on earth has guaranteed the funds necessary to build zero dawn exactly as i've designed it or don't sign and i will make sure they and everyone else on this planet knows the real cause of the glitch jesus you don't have to threaten me i'll sign look on the bright side ted from here on out you get to do what you've always been good at footing the bill while others get their hands dirty god forgive me this scene even after multiple playthroughs still gives me anxiety even while we're watching this footage i couldn't help but get this sinking feeling in my stomach feeling the tension rise in the initial meeting before hitting its peak as elizabeth lays out the horrifying reality of the situation to ted due to a glitch in the system the robots had gone rogue and they were destined to consume the world of course this only leads to more questions if the world was destined to be consumed and all of humanity with it how come it wasn't the path to that answered is laid in the final hologram with elizabeth on our way to u.s robot command it's also where we get our first mention of project zero dawn elizabeth's solution though by the sounds of it it's far from a happy ending leaving ted farrell to sulk and come to terms with what he created i love this scene i'll even go so far as to call it my favorite in the entire game it works wonderfully as a great story beat answering some questions while raising others pushing the story along at a nice even pace i hope it becomes an example of great video game storytelling one that will be studied for years to come now with that gushing let me ruin it all by being a nitpicking and bring up the glitch a glitch glitch the glitch as of the end of horizon forbidden west we still don't know what caused it now i have to be fair here and refer back to what i said in the intro that we're almost certainly going to get a third game or at least some dlc for forbidden west which means the possibility that it'll be explained is still very open that said i will be quite disappointed if it isn't hell it could be something as simple as a network failure due to some mundane update that sever the chain of command just ask rogers communications they know all about that boring absolutely but it'd be something i did consider diving into the many theories about the glitch that i've come across online but that would require so much added context that i ain't even gonna try at least not for this video i think we're all better off without it aloy is more than a little perplexed by what she's just learned on top of being rather frustrated by the lack of concrete answers it's here that the unknown caller chimes in that's your reaction to everything you've just learned to whine like a spoiled child you should really try talking that way to me face to face as you wish say hello to silence enigmatic explorer utter pragmatist voiced brilliantly by lance redick and one of the most important people aloy will meet on her journey i have a lot to say about him but like varro we'll save that for the forbidden west video much of the conversation with science is a recap of what we've learned either from olin or in the tower with silence adding bits of his own knowledge we can also ask him about himself and how it is that he can see through and listen to eloy's focus though he remains very bare bones in his explanations you never get the sense that he's telling the whole truth that he's holding quite a lot close to his chest and he gets rather surly with alloy's constant questioning it's a trait that continues all the way through the series often putting the two at loggerheads from asylums we learned the location of u.s robot command the place where elizabeth was heading to in the final hologram located due north of the sacred lands it's become known to the osram as the grave horde a grim yet fitting name as you ascend the slopes to it you'll find it in the shadow of a horus titan its metal tentacles slithering through the ruins upon entry you'll find a handful of eclipse inside suggesting that they have a presence within once they're taken care of you'll have a chance to listen to the data points scattered across the vicinity accompanied by the corpses of the previous owners giving the impression that they were their final words even if they didn't know it at the time given that one of the horse's tentacles is driven right through the main entrance into the ruin we can assume that they didn't die peacefully to put it mildly we also see for the first time the term operation enduring victory though its meaning is a mystery at this point descending into the ruins depths we begin to explore finding more data points providing added context to the lives of the soldiers we found earlier most being journal entries with one exception being a soldier sending rather moving voice messages to his wife back home eventually we'll come across more eclipse and corrupted machines before entering some sort of meeting room where a hologram of earth displays just how rapidly the feral swarm was devouring the planet before that you'll find a server room where the soldiers voice messages home are heavily edited with any bits that might have been considered antithetical removed we also find the response from his wife starting upbeat then devolving into a desperate plea for answers as she figures out that her husband's messages aren't entirely original leaving the meeting room we come to a large open area and come face to face with the horus [Music] eclipse troops are tampering with it somehow and they managed to drop a deathbringer down and reawaken it unlike the first one we faced back in maker's end this one's got full health and can move on a brand new run this can be one of the tougher fights in the game the deathbringer constantly tracking you and rarely taking a pause it's rockets able to destroy nearly any cover you try to use on top of this are the eclipse troopers that will relentlessly hunt you down making the early stages of the fight a bit of a juggling act from this fight we traverse a string of corridors before reaching another meeting room and another hologram it shows elizabeth meeting with the joint chiefs just after she's laid out the plans for project zero dawn whatever it is the general's presence state for general harris are less than thrilled by what they've been told in essence mechanized warfare will not defeat the swarm due to its ability to hack anything robotic as such human combatants are necessary to fight back this effort is codenamed operation enduring victory humanity's effort to hold off the swarm just long enough for elizabeth and her team to finish zero dawn which will be funded entirely by ted farrow the generals protest but as chairman general harris has final say it has already secured an orbital launch base as a staging error for zero dawn to which elizabeth immediately heads to after the meeting with this information we head back outside eloy already set on finding the orbital launch base silence of course has already found the location great only one problem it resides directly under the palace at sunfall seat of the shadow karja who the eclipse if you remember are an offshoot of with many of its members holding positions of authority within shadow cards or ranks all of them wearing focuses too many for science to take down at once as they're all connected together via a vast network it's then that eloy suggests that they crash the network which sparks an idea in silent's head with him conveniently remembering that there's a weak point in the network he sends alloy the location adding that he'll be in touch when she arrives before disappearing leaving us and alloy to continue wondering just what zero dawn is what was zero dawn what sort of super weapon did elizabeth make she stopped the machines not before the world she knew her civilization ended let's hope it won't come to that again [Music] before we meet up with silence again let's talk about side quests for a bit in all open worlds and rpgs in general good and great side quests further enhance the experience both in terms of world building and narrative building on previous established themes concepts lore or just off the main story itself while this was common knowledge even before then it was given a much higher standard with the release of the witcher 3 a game that continues to be lauded for how its side quests are written and presented this higher standard is felt across the horizon series though there is a marked improvement between zero dawn and forbidden west given that it was guerrilla's first crack at the open world genre zero dawn side quests are little hit and miss in terms of quality but they all share the same core trait that each of them has a story side quests are broken up into two categories side quests and errand quests errand quests are exactly what you might expect pick up this delivered here or something along those lines very basic very mundane not much to talk about that said they still have that core trait building on at least one of those four facets i just mentioned hey great people finally stopped calling me outcast and now it's savage this largely comes in the form of some justification usually tied to events that have already transpired or are currently transpiring in the main narrative their mundaneness remains but the storytelling gives them a complexity that makes them at least somewhat interesting side quests however are a different machine and it's here that we get much more variance now when i say variance i don't necessarily mean quality though some of you may see it that way and that's fine not every side quest is going to click in the same way this variance is mostly shown in the presentation a perfect example can be found in the hunter's lodge questline where you first meet talana and help her become sunhawk the leader of the lodge all while hunting a menacing thunderjaw known as redmaw the majority of the quests merely involve hunting dangerous machines if there's a considerable amount of storytelling as well with talana's backstory how it ties to the red raids and the reign of the mad sun king and hala cease the main antagonist in this quest chain only became sunhawk because talana's father sacrificed himself to save others in the sun ring along with her brother with this story even having an alternate source in the form of legend the oldest member of the lodge who unlike talana witnessed the event first hand another can be found when you first come to sunfall and meet phanasha a card to spy who tasks you with rescuing uthid a shadow card to general who's on the run after exposing the culling of sunfall's population by high priest bahaves who with it ends up killing this opens the door for vanessa to get dollar tree queen nasari and prince edeman who the shadow karja have propped up as the one drew sun king out of sunfall after an extended clash with the eclipse and corrupted machines you get the royals across lake daybring to the town of bright market where you're greeted by sun king of vod in what could be your first canonical meeting with him if you haven't done aaron's quest chain yet or progressed far enough i hope you're beginning to understand what i'm getting at here though they're only side quests the attention to detail with regards to their narrative elements brings them up to that higher standard and makes them infinitely more interesting while further enriching your knowledge of the game's world events characters themes you get the idea was was holding his own since i brought one of them up only a moment ago i think it's time we talk about sona and aaron's respective quest chains these are for what must be the third or fourth time i've said this now main quests that feel like side quests this isn't a criticism of their quality they're definitely on par with what you come across throughout the main story but it's more with how they fit within that main narrative you pick up sonos when you first meet varl as you leave the embrace way back earlier in the game it involves finding sona helping her take down an eclipse dig site then removing the eclipse presence in the secret lands for good by destroying their main base of operations in the ring of metal located in the ruins of devil's grief it also serves as payback for the proving massacre and war party ambush as well as providing us with a little insight into the strained relationship between varl and sona no doubt further string by vala's death remember sona is varl and valla's mother sona's questline fits well within the main narrative largely due to its location the search for sona begins in an area well before mother's crown while the quest to defeat the eclipse in the ring of metal takes place in a region that they'll pass through at least a couple times coming to and from the grave horde never truly taking you off the main path it just melds with the main story so much more nicely in fact the only reason i can really get for saying that they feel like side quests is because it's a pretty short quest line probably even shorter than the side quest involving venasha and also because it's not that narratively complex aaron's quest lines where things get a little tricky it too is fairly short though considerably longer than sonas and considerably more complex beginning right after you search owen's vault for clues you meet aaron at the site of ursa's murder scan the area with her focus alloy realizes that a few things are off for the ambush site see car tracks i think someone moved the bodies here then scattered them across the field following the car tracks you come upon an old world ruin where you agreed by some awesome not shadow karja who aaron and others originally believed was behind iris's murder after an extended battle with the oscero and a couple of ravagers alloy searches the ruins and discovers that ursa and her vanguard were murdered there without a fight then brought to the other site stage as an ambush but why upon further investigation we find a bloody rock and cut leather straps suggesting perhaps that the murders mutilated someone swapped on with ursa posing them as her which means then my sister could be alive i i'm going meet me back there when you can returning to meridian in a meeting with aaron avad and blameless maraude a character who i think doesn't get nearly enough screen time it's confirmed that the body recovered isn't ursus meaning that there's a chance she could still be alive with a vod vowing to see her found it's here maraud puts out a suggestion as to who might be behind her possible kidnapping a man named durval a genius ostrom tinker with a deep-seated hatred for the karja born out of his family's murder at the hands of the mad sun king he had previously worked with aaron ursa and avod towards livery meridian but when he vowed to slaughter its inhabitants and burn the city to the ground he was pushed out his hatred has also extended to ursa and avod specifically because he fancied her but she spurned him for vod along with possibly being the only person capable of such a ruse it makes him the perfect suspect our search takes us to pitch cliff a small ostrom settlement on the border with the sundom where maraud has an agent unfortunately the agent is killed but not before drawing a map in his own blood following the map we come upon a sizeable outpost garrison by oceron with capturing machines held down in chains clearing out the camp we enter into some sort of creepy workshop dungeon thing and find ursa alive being tortured by some sonic device after disabling the device aaron takes ursa in his arms lamenting how he wasn't there for her which urged the counters by saying that she knew it was a trap and was hoping to take out durval then and there she warns him and alloy that durvall has plans for a vaude meridian before finally succumbing to her wounds leaving aaron to grieve eloy searches the workshop and finds a manifest for tons of blaze being shipped to meridian bought under what can be presumed to be an assumed identity with this in hand aeloy returns to meridian while aaron stays behind to take care of ursa's body back in meridian we meet up with the gang in the palace giving him the name on the manifest mirage states that there's a house under that name in the city and that derval may very well be there of course he isn't there when we arrive but we find a bomb hooked up to lots and lots of blaze after pushing the blaze out a window causing an explosion that's never brought up again job done right not quite because as eloy mentions they've all said he'd make a bob watch his men head back to the palace while ailoy follows a trail blaze to another house where we discover that durval found a secret way into the palace chasing after him we finally get to confront him oh you must be the nora who bushwhacked my count the fight happens in two stages starting with their valence goons before a beaten derval calls in some glinthawks with the lure taking care of those we get to see aaron knock out the still divine durval as it pleased the vod looks on i'm sorry for going into so much detail compared to sona's quest but by comparison the complexity of aaron's quest requires such detail to make sense which isn't criticism it's what i enjoy the most about them so why do they feel like side quests and not maine in aaron's case they just don't fit into the main story both narratively and in terms of progression searching for clues with errands does fit for it's conveniently on the way to maker's end after you interrogate olin and returning to meridian while on the way to the grave horde isn't that ridiculous of a notion but heading to pitch cliff located in a region you might not visit otherwise then back to meridian yes you do so after ursus warning but you get the idea right it just doesn't seem to mesh well with the rest of the main story as side quests this can be fine but is main more than a little disjointed in my books so after all that rambling why are sone and aaron's quest label as main quests for one very simple reason in the end game you'll be supported by allies and friends you've made across the game side quests help them they help you don't help them they don't show up a simple formula yet one that works and makes sense aaron varl and sona are there regardless aaron and var will even show up during one of the final cut scenes and i suspect that gorilla's writers needed a justification for them being there to give their presence some narrative weight how better to do that than to make you interact with them in the story even if those interactions are really sidebars to the main story and might not fit all that well thankfully this is something gorilla's writers will avoid in forbidden west [Music] returning to the main story after speaking with silence outside the graveyard we follow his directions to a point in the far southwest corner of the map deep in the jungles of the jewel at the top of a cliff we find a campfire where silence instructs alloy to wait for nightfall how nice of you to finally drop by it's then that silence drops a bit of a shocker on us stating that to disrupt the eclipse's focus network alloy must infiltrate their main base via a back way in the network is centered on a module that's been installed on a derelict tallneck destroy that down goes the network given how much he knows about the place alloy quickly puts two and two together and suggests that silence was once part of the eclipse silence denies this of course but does admit to assisting them before realizing how dangerous they were becoming a lloyd doesn't buy this of course but silence disappears before she can bombard him with questions leaving her no choice but to push on coming out the other side of the crevice we find that the back way in doesn't mean the easy way with the consisting of two open areas crawling with corrupted machines thankfully due to their assigned paths the machines can either be easily avoided or taken down with stealth eventually you'll come to a ridge over which should be the tall neck except you getting this i see the legs of a tall neck down there no tallneck damn the transmitter's been moved click down the ravine to the left only place it could be so much for your insider knowledge because that would have been too easy right following simon's instructions we head further down the ravine eliminating eclipse troops as we head around to a crossing point as the path along the ravine is blocked off just before the crossing we come up on a large tent in which there are several data points and a set of conspicuously placed armor this armor there's only one man big enough to wear this keyless i have some things to say about helis a little later but for now all i'll say is that i strongly recommend you give all the data points a listen after crossing a makeshift bridge we follow the ravine with the tallness quickly coming into view as well as getting closer to the sounds of explosions which we've been hearing since we entered the camp hearing the tallneck aloy senses something clearly isn't right i don't like this it feels wrong everything here is wrong just get to the module and destroy it reaching the top of the tallneck reveals what that something is hades is here housed in a horus connected directly to the tallneck leaving eloy more than a little shaken but she attempts to gain access to the module and fails haiti swings by to investigate entity has come here entity miscalculated entity cannot destroy me i am beyond its reach maybe you are but this isn't destroy the entity ugh [Music] what follows is a sort of chase slash platforming sequence clamoring across the ravine's cliffs and handholds all while under intense fire from multiple deathbringers once you've escaped them you run into more clips than you can shake a stick at dodging their attacks and killing any who stand in your way despite what silence says you then reach the repel points sonos pointed out earlier as your means of escape rough going but you survived after yet another failed attempt to fly eloy is less than impressed with silence given that he knew hades would be there to his credit silence does recognize that he took a risk sending her there reasoning that it was the only way and given that she succeeded they now have access to zero dawn in its secrets of course this does little to calm aloy who's more than a little done with his secrets to that silence says this good that means you're wising up trust is for fools it shifts and crumbles like sand a poor foundation for any partnership but mutual self-interest now that is a solid bedrock upon which you and i might build the new signs of understanding we both need answers aloy and thanks to you we're on the verge of grasping them it's unfold we'll speak again you miserable damn him now it's time to head to sun fall and zero dawn sunfall is the most westerly settlement in the game and the makeshift capital of the shadow karja upon arrival silence gives us an impromptu history lesson [Music] the mad kingdra palace a bullwork of cardia might against the howling forbidden west thanks for the history lesson entering sun falls like entering another world though still technically karja those who live here do so under crushing conditions a stark contrast to the more affluent lives of those in meridian shadow side the first area of sunflower you enter makes this abundantly clear a tent city outside the walls is home to the poorest of the shadow karja servants and slaves dragged with the nobles and priests who fled meridian during the liberation disease hunger and thirst pervade here the only means of escape being to either flee sunfall altogether and risk the wilds or join the ranks of the kestrels the mad sun king's former elite soldiery now the bulk of the shadow karja army led personally by helus entering the fortress proper is where it will find the market though calling it a market is a bit of a stretch given that sunfall's been cut off from all outside trade since the liberation further up we get a grandstand view of the sun ring unlike the sun ring in meridian this one is still very much due for sacrifices though judging by our introduction it's also being used to train kestrels against the toughest machines behemoths in particular the difference with the sun karja can also be seen in the residence of the fortress who wear far darker clothing in comparison further embodying the shadow aesthetic after that comes the citadel the seat of shadow carja authority where prince edema and his mother queen nasadi reside though as we see upon entering the throne room they do so more as prisoners than his true monarchs this is largely due to edema being the youngest son of duran and with the shadow cards are calling nevada falls sun king edom is their only source of legitimacy entering the throne room for the first time also introduces us to vanasha opening the way to her side quest mentioned earlier as well as lusin bahavus who serves as religious leader of both the shadow karja and as we'll learn later the eclipse sharing overall leadership of both with helus silence directs us to the grand balcony behind the throne room where there's a convenient opening in the balustrade to another one below after a quick climbing section we come to a vent conspicuously covered up which alloy immediately recognizes as signs of silence as previous visits it's here that silence tells us that i've shown you the way in but this humble vent marks a point of no return which is weird because it isn't not really entering the event does put us on a sword of rails for a while but we are eventually free to explore once again after that so either this bit of dialogue was written purely for narrative reasons or entering the event was meant to be a point of no return at some point during development as she does eloy has the perfect response you'll tolerate what i give you silence i didn't ask you along for the ride as we enter the bunker sonos begins waffling on about his long search for answers while aloy seems to blissfully ignore him as would anyone i would think approaching the door we go through the same song and dance as before hold for identiscan with everything going accordingly until authorized malfunction malfunction malfunction kidding me you don't need me laughing shut up there's gotta be another way thanks to a thousand years of lying dormant there has been a mechanical failure more than a little flustered a desperate alloy invokes elizabeth's name to access the door's root commands ordering an emergency venting to circumvent the issue this works to great effect except that the venting is directed outside whoops that got their attention despite this we have no choice but to press on passing through the door we receive a rather ghostly welcome welcome these first two rooms don't reveal much in their data points but they do begin to paint a grim picture such as one suggesting they need to soundproof the waiting room so as to muffle the cries and streaks of horror coming from the next room it's in that next room a holographic theater that we learned the first truth about zero dawn that it isn't a super weapon designed to save humanity but a hope and a prayer that something might come after operation enduring victory isn't a fight for survival but a fight to give the zero dawn team time to make that hope a reality that said humanity no matter what is doomed to go extinct that last point alone in my opinion is what puts xerodon head and shoulders above most post-apocalyptic fiction in fact i go so far to call it the most compelling aspect of the entire horizon series on top of eloy's character arc in other post-apocalyptic works we almost always see the usual trope of human civilization collapsing after a great cataclysm this isn't criticism zero dawn makes full unashamed use of it but humanity going extinct entirely to my knowledge i don't think any other post-apocalyptic fiction in the last 20 years or so has used such a concept i personally think it's brilliant as is the timing of it because it re-contextualizes many of the lingering questions we'll have had going into this scene case in point instead of wondering how it is that human civilization collapsed now we're wondering how it is that humanity even came back to begin with it's thought-provoking and i love it beyond the theater we encountered a group of kestrels rappelling in from above after taking care of the feather heads we have a moment to listen to the many audio data points scattered throughout the chamber these are interviews with some of the candidates chosen by elizabeth to work on zero dawn drawn from a vast array of backgrounds including a hacker a biologist a military officer and an art historian in them we hear their confusion fear anger and despondency probably the saddest among them is that of brad andak an engineer who worked on the feral robot self-replication of subroutines god there were no limits i hope by now you're beginning to see how zero dawn's data points work as lord doms whereas lore dumps in other games be they journals books or the like may or may not tie to the location that they're found in data points in zerodon are almost always relevant to their given setting further enriching and expanding on the world this is further improved by the developers actually taking the time to meticulously organize these data points by their specific relevance doing so by main quest side quest and data points that you can find while exploring the open world and then breaking them down again by their type text audio or hologram making them actually relevant to their given location not only makes them more interesting but can actually help with player immersion adding narrative weight to their discovery and absorption interestingly the majority of data points found on make quests are audio and holograms which i think was a wise decision as some players might not be bothered to read everything especially at this late stage in the story in the next room is another holographic theater where we finally learn what zero dawn really is in essence it's a super intelligent fully automated terraforming system run by what elizabeth calls a true ai named gaia supported by nine subordinate functions each designed to fulfill a certain task pertaining to said terraforming system among these functions is hades which immediately conjures a multitude of questions just how did hades end up in that horus titan why does it want aeloy dead matter of fact just what is hades's role in the system we also learn of apollo an immense repository of human knowledge that the new generation of humans spawned by elutia was supposed to learn from but considering the state of the world that clearly never happened why the following room is full of more audio data points subsequent interviews with those we heard prior to elizabeth's message making their decision on whether or not they want in on zero dawn most accept though not all either asking to be euthanized or being definitely detained throughout the project's duration with anyone who chooses these two options granted 48 hours to reconsider listening to the data points you get the sense that most of them don't fully understand or even believe that zero dawn is going to work but often simply because the thought of there literally being nothing after the fall is far worse than not trying after a couple more skirmishes with eclipse soldiers we start to tour some of the labs of some of the subordinate functions hephaestus responsible for designing constructing the machines we find out in the world doing so in the cauldrons that you may have explored in the open world apollo responsible for archiving and disseminating 42 zetabytes of collective human knowledge in four different languages no less aluthia responsible for the preservation of the human genome as well as gestating and raising the first generation of humans at cradle facilities around the world and hades an extinction fail-safe reversing terraforming operations in case gaia doesn't get it right the first or second or even third time of course this conjures many questions especially with regards to hades and hephaestus the questions around hades haven't changed though knowing its original purpose has given them new context what we learned of a festus asks only one question but an important one if guy was designed to preserve life then why are the machines attacking people what caused the derangement we begin our final approach to elizabeth's office which has just been out of our reach throughout the latter half of our exploration coming just after alluthia ailoy wonders if old mother mountain was one of the cradle facilities its alpha mentioned if you remember it's in front of its hatch that tyrses said alloy was found as a baby we're also reminded that it wouldn't open for her earlier because of a corrupted alpha registry after mentioning this to silence a lloyd realizes that there could be a copy in elizabeth's office meaning that she might be able to finally fix the corruption and get inside further raising the stakes elizabeth's office is less than office and more of a full-size lab here we find three holograms each dated at varying stages of guys development starting with guys showing the first signs of true human emotion just as elizabeth envisioned followed by ted farrell in a scene soaked in so much irony you could wring it out with a towel pushing elizabeth to give gaia a kill switch just in case it runs amok with even gaia agreeing with this course now remember this because it's going to be important later the last hologram is from just as they're preparing to move to a place called gaia prime with elizabeth clearly in distress but with the pharaoh swarm closing in when asked by gaia elizabeth openly admits to being afraid that they might fail though guy is quick to dispel this fear thanks to you life will have a future you really believe that i believe in you elizabeth entering elizabeth's actual office we find a few more data points including one about the odyssey another attempt to save humanity albeit on another planet several light years away organized by a group called far zenith unfortunately according to var zenith it blew up before it left our solar system meaning that zero dawn is now the only hope for earthly life the data points though are secondary to our main objective the alpha registry copying the file to her focus aylon silence have a quick exchange where he calls her naive for thinking she'll find anyone behind the hatch at old mother mountain bluntly calling her a creation of a machine aloy is rather vexed by this but before she can do or say anything about it more eclipse soldiers rappel in from above [Music] ah still alive good i have a more suitable death in mind for you child well when eloy comes to we find her in a less than ideal spot caged above sunfall's sun ring weapons in focus just out of reach as she tries to grab them we listen to helis as he approaches along a bridge waffling on about his given destiny as chosen wondering how it was that aloy survived the proving massacre and thus was allowed to interfere with the eclipse's plan attacking dig sites and killing his men like the religious fanatic he is he eventually reasons that it was all predestined by the sun so that she might fall into his hands so that she could be sacrificed in the ring below even after multiple playthroughs i'm still not sure how i feel about helius on the one hand he comes off as a fairly one-note villain with little in the way of depth beyond his religious fanaticism and yet listening to the data points found in his hovel at the eclipse's main base suggest otherwise he had a loving wife whom he too loved dearly who then died while giving birth ending their unborn child's life in the process and as such was left with great sorrow as would anyone in such circumstances this sorrow then morphed into fanaticism when jiron had them buried in the alight and honor usually reserved for sun kings and honored heroes further cementing his loyalty these data points are still drenched in the religious fanaticism we see in game but they paint helis in a far more interesting light if they're meant to make us just a little sympathetic for him then i think they fail in that regard but they do make me wonder about something was he always so fanatical i have no doubt that he was always a bit of a nut job but i can't help but wonder if geron honoring his wife and child was the tipping point that said helius into full religious zealot unbending in his loyalty to geron and his beliefs it's an interesting thought and yet when we finally get to speak with him at length at sunfall he returns to that one note state of being just waffling on about his destiny as skillet slaughter this sort of half and half stage is mostly okay if only for the simple fact that he's not the main antagonist in fact alien silence each make a remark at one point that i think is meant to highlight his bloody simplicity but i can't be sure i just think it's a bit disappointing because for as compelling of a villain hades is i think it was a missed opportunity to make healers more than what we got towards the end of the conversation helis tells aeloy that he ordered eclipse forces to invade the north sacred lands following her crashing of the focus network and to exterminate the tribe wholesale he then crushes eloy's focus which for some reason makes him get all excited we'll say before turning and leaving a lengthy cutscene follows where helus again waffles on this time to the crowd gathering the sun ring our time in shadow is over raw while a couple of corruptors take control of behemoth aloy's then without a weapons or armor dropped into the arena this fight takes place over two stages the first stage being to get your gear back using the behemoth's size and string to destroy two pillars holding up the race platform dropping your gear and weapons with it the second stage is of course actually fighting the behemoth though with the handicap of not having focus to pinpoint weak spots though if you fought behemoths before then you'll already know where they are after you kill the behemoth a stunned helis sends the corrupters down to finish the job to which eloy has a great response why leave it to them come give me yourself just as the corrupters close in the gate into the sun ring explodes and silence comes bursting in on a strider a second one in tow three overridden ravagers follow after him and quickly maul the corrupters while helas calls him traitor something that eliot picks up on as she and silence make their escape after creating some distance with sunfall we finally get to speak with silence face to face he gives ailoy a new focus having copied every piece of data she scanned including the alpha registry happy birthday isaac daddy sure does love his little big man you're really good at making it impossible to like you silence but i guess i need this before he dips we can question him if we like including on how it is that helis knows him as far as we know silence only assists the eclipse not know he is personally on this subject silence is evasive though it's clear he knows more than he's letting on just before parting ways aloy asked silence to come and help the nora but he flatly refuses only saying that he has other plans then in a rare moment of empathy he apologizes for the comments he made in zero dawn and hopes that eloy finds what she's looking for before speeding off into the sunset leaving alloy to go and help the nora on her own so now you're probably thinking that you'll be sent straight to the sacred lands to save the nora after all heal has made it pretty clear that you'd accept nothing less than total annihilation so given the urgency you'd expect that you'd have no other option but to go and save the day except you aren't not really you can absolutely head straight there of course and i'd imagine most players would but you're also more than able to go do literally anything else in the game and blissfully ignore the fact that nora are on the verge of being genocided as nitpicky as it may seem this is arguably the biggest stumble in the story in terms of pacing and player agency we don't know if ayloy's mother whoever she is is in any real danger and thus there's no massive panic or rush to go and find the answers which allows us the freedom to explore thus preserving the story's continuity to put it mildly however saving an entire tribe from being wiped out is pretty damn urgent so the fact that the game allows you to simply ignore it without any consequences does put a big question mark on player agency i have to be fair and again point out that i severely doubt most players will take this route i mean aloy seems pretty dead set on heading straight to the sacred lands so why shouldn't you it's a glaring stumble to be sure but given how while the rest of the story balances player freedom vs player agency on what is once again guerrilla's first attempt at an open world it's a forgivable one at least this time around but back to the task at hand fitted with a new focus and armed with the alpha registry it's time for alloy to go and save the nora then finally learn the secrets of old mother mountain and that of her origins at the gates of the embrace we arrived to find the worst possible scenario unfolding the eclipse had broken through the whole of the embrace is shrouded in wood smoke crawling with eclipsed soldiers and corrupted machines while the corpses of both nora and eclipse litter the paths and roads the skies are heavy with rain clouds and it begins to pour as you hurry to mother's heart this works at setting the scene due in large part to the fact that you can't fast travel into the embrace in fact the closest you can get is the main gate the same one where you first met barl earlier in the story it forces you to diversely embrace and bear witness to the devastation the eclipse has wrought on the land further heightening the sense of urgency you may already be experiencing arriving at mother's heart you're immediately engaged by two corrupters and some eclipsed soldiers once you've dealt with them you head up the path to the mountain upon reaching the top you find a corrupted thunderjaw firing disc rockets at the entrance into the mountain suggesting that any survivors have holed up in there once you attack the thunder jaw sona and varro lead whatever brave survived out of the mountain to assist leading to a chaotic battle as more eclipsed soldiers arrive once the thunder jaws down all that's left is to mop up the remaining eclipse before we're finally given a chance to breathe before heading inside we speak with varro where we learn tiers tirsa ordered the tribe to take refuge in the mountain despite tribal law forbidding such an action most of the tribe's non-combatants survived but the braves took grievous losses with most of those who survived being wounded including varl this along with the proving massacre and war party ambush has put the tribe in a precarious position and yet through it all they have survived inside the mountain is a rather somber site with nora scattered around the cave trying to come to grips with their situation it's here you can speak with some of whom you've met on your travels namely in side quests but also along the main story including a wounded but alive tab and a grumbly rash we find the high matriarch standing directly in front of the hatch with tears and jezza happy to see her olandra continues to be an insufferable eloy informs them that she should be able to get through the hatch this time to speak to old mother which of course wrangles landra who outright blames ayloy for everything has just transpired despite what sona said only moments earlier outside she brought lower corrupted thunderjaw she lifted the siege alloy can either respond or ignore this but either way she steps past the high matriarchs leaving them to bicker amongst themselves approaching the hatch eloy goes through the same song and dance as last time her entry initially denied before she restores the alpha registry prompting the hatch to finally open for her as the nora look on aloy takes a moment to compose herself before heading inside upon entry were welcomed to eluthia cradle 9 confirming that the mountain was indeed a cradle facility the birthplace of the nora people silence also contacts us and we begin our investigation i see you're inside figured i might be hearing from you shall we begin i never stopped upon entering the main portion of the facility were immediately met by a wall painting similar to a child's artwork chaotic and is near alien imagery there are several of these wall paintings in this facility and i have to admit that i find them rather disturbing their primitive nature juxtaposed against the advanced tech all around suggesting that things didn't quite go to plan along our paths are several offshooting sections in order of human development starting with the ectogenic chambers that birthed the first generation of new humans with the very chamber that birthed alloy ominously standing all on its own the following sections are where this new generation was raised in their early years from toddlers all the way to adolescence by robot caretakers called multi-servitors it's from the remains of these multi-servers that we find a series of holograms giving us an insight into the relationship between the robots and the facilities progeny including the moment when the new humans were first released into the world this hologram can be quite sobering seeing these new humans grapple with the thought of finally being released into the world they wished so long to see but now having second thoughts especially when they're told they won't be able to return towards the end of the hall you come to a door like much of the facility up to this point it too is painted over but this one's been done with the noticeable anger and hatred slashed with red this door leads into the larger chamber in the center of the facility in plain view from above it's also locked in the last hologram you come across some of the children tried to break in but were beaten back by the multi-servers as such they grew to hate the door denying them all that space keeping them locked away in the cramped confines the inner chamber seemingly taunting them alloy of course has no issue getting through upon stepping through we learned that this central chamber was in fact supposed to be where the new humans were to learn from apollo and its repository of human knowledge however due to the locked door the new humans never got to learn from it or gain access to the trove of focuses that happened to be there this leads us to asking why that is a question only deepened when we learned that apollo is in fact offline huh of course silence has some telling comments about this this is a graveyard the charnel house of knowledge reaching the control room we find a priority message for elizabeth from gaia dated 20 years ago elizabeth this message serves to inform you of an unforeseen and catastrophic anomaly in it she informs us that she received an unknown transmission that turned her subordinate functions into chaotic self-aware ais and due to this hades attempted to seize control of the terraforming system and render earth uninhabitable to stop this gaia resolved to destroy herself which stopped the immediate crisis but didn't solve it long term for without her the terraforming system will become increasingly erratic before ceasing operations all together as a solution for the long term gaia ordered the cradle facility were in to gestate a reinstantiation of elizabeth sobeck in this case aloy with the hopes that when she reaches maturity she'll be able to gain access to this very facility and view this very message as well as access other xerodon facilities thus rebuild gaia and the terraforming system with it however just as guy finished laying out her plan hades launched a virus that dissolved the code shackles holding all their functions in place allowing them to escape which in turn explains how hades ended up in that horus we saw earlier the virus then begins corrupting data across all systems including the alpha registry meaning that the hatch won't open for alloy just as it hadn't many hours earlier despite this catastrophic setback a defiant guide declares her unwavering fate that elizabeth aloy will find a way directing her to the ruins of guy prime to find the master override which is in fact the kill switch ted farrell pressed elizabeth to create for gaia back at zero dawn hq after one final instruction to destroy hades before repairing the system gaia finally destroyed herself with one final parting word i only wish that i could hear your voice again [Music] halo of course is more than a little shaken by this revelation not least by the fact that as she sees it she doesn't have a mother silence counters this point but as he speaks you can almost taste the bitterness attached to his words perhaps envious of eloy's sharply heightened importance his own pride and ego taking a hit he promptly cuts short their call but not before instructing ayloy to meet him at gaia prime's ruins the flames heal the world how tragic to learn you're a person of towering importance it seems you have a destiny to fulfill so when you're done feeling sorry for yourself go to the bitter climb i'll be waiting above in gaia prime's ruins with her path clear it's time to leave though not before meeting with the rest of the nora as she exits the hatch they can only look on in amazement with jezza and lanza bowing in reverence to her approach landsra suddenly begging for forgiveness having done a complete 180. knowing the tribe wouldn't understand what she saw eloy explains it as old mother telling her that she was created to lift a curse as well as where to go to find the means of doing just so that it was all mother's wish for her to do so and that she'll at the very least try i don't know immediately upon hearing this all the nora fall to the knees and bow before her the high matriarchs chanting her praise this is where i feel the nora reach peak absurdity i know this is gonna sound incredibly harsh given the circumstance but it's something i simply can't ignore alloy here summarizes it best first you shun me now this that right there is the crux of it all they've gone from seeing her less than a person due to circumstances no fault of her own to suddenly holding her up some paragon of all their ideals and beliefs one that's theirs and theirs alone all because of a narrow mindset as a result of their isolationist tendencies and aversion to outside influences having been an outcast most of her life as well as now having seen the world beyond the confines of the nora's extremely limited world view aloy doesn't take this sudden reversal all too well vehemently chastising them for this and rightly so in my opinion the scene ends with a-line instructing anyone strong enough and willing to fight to head to meridian with tyrsup presumably speaking for all the matriarchs in that moment giving her blessing before we go we can speak to some of the nor in the mountains such as varl and tab and even landsra but the most important among them is tirsa where it's by speaking with her that we can finally learn the truth about rost about why he was made an outcast for life it's pretty tragic to say the least but i strongly recommend that you give it a listen years before eloy's birth ross had a wife and a daughter who were murdered at the hands of bandus that had inexplicably invaded the sacred lands his daughter was among the last to be murdered and her body was left just outside the sacred lands the bandits knowing that the nora wouldn't break taboo to collect them as tirsa tells it it was then that a grief-stricken ross begged the matrix to be made a death seeker someone who like a seeker can leave the sacred lands but can never return for their soul has already been given to old mother while the body wanders in search of death all while bringing death to others in the process granted this right and after returning the bodies of the slain ross set out in pursuit of the murderers he returned a full year later presumably having traveled much of the known world successful in his mission but terribly wounded collapsing just beyond the sacred lands though he should have died where he lay another hunter brought him back some speculate this hunter to be odd grata another outcast you can meet early on in the embrace whom ross has taken a special interest in helping but this has never been confirmed ross return put the matriarchs in a difficult position due to being a death seeker he no longer had a place among the north and should have been driven out yet conversely they couldn't bring themselves to do that as a compromise they offered to make him an outcast so long as he never spoke of this arrangement to anyone an arrangement that ross was more than happy to agree to he resolved to live the rest of his life in solitude right um until the matriarchs turned to him for another matter that of alloy [Music] leaving the nor again we head for the bitter climb the path of the mountain that is home to guy prime along the way we come across large groups of machines not corrupted but seemingly drawn to what is in essence gaia's grave they can be easily avoided though this can be a bit of an exercise in patience as you scurry from tall grass to tall grass the storm bird however can't be avoided the fight itself isn't anything to write home about but i really like the setting amidst gaia's ruins during a raging snowstorm i'm listening i don't know why i just really like it each journey begins with a single step i guess once the storm bird is taken care of we're free to press onto guy prime and bear witness to her sacrifice what her sacrifice entailed was literally blowing up an entire mountain did this cracked the inside of the mountain like it was an egg it's a striking set piece like a proverbial middle finger to whoever sent the signal trying to end the world it's also rather haunting its cavernous silence punctuated by occasional rumbles as whatever remains of its structures continue to crumble we learn from silence that he's been here before which at this point comes as a surprise to absolutely no one following a path he's laid out for us we reach his workshop with a gene locked door at the far end this is exactly the kind of place i expected to find you in silence thank you he's also here in hologram form and we can learn that he's been coming here ever since the mountain exploded the guarding machines useful in keeping his workshop protected from any would-be trespassers beginning our exploration we find a data point that tells us that due to the rapid advance of the feral swarm the zero dawn alphas were forced to shack up and guy a prime instead of taking up residence with everyone else in another bunker called elysium with some taking in stride others not so much weeks you realize i just lost 350 kilos of pre-code smug comics in transit diving deeper into the ruins we find audio logs from a couple of them either wondering how things will be after the end or lamenting decisions made in the desperate final days at zerodon hq there's a thought for future generations we eventually reach elizabeth's office and find that none of her things are unpacked as well as some journal entries though corrupted silence tells us to scan them as the focus can repair them though it could take a considerable amount of time these entries will be repaired and made available to us over various stages of the end game that aside the fact that none of the things are unpacked implies that something happened to elizabeth that something is revealed in the next room where we find what appears to be a memorial of some kind to elizabeth listening to an audio recording attached to it we learned that an access port seal malfunctioned leaving a wide enough gap for a signal to go through that would alert the feral swarm of guy's location and that it could only be fixed from the outside from there we switched to a visual recording of the event well i'm not going out there now who i signed up for either we sent someone out or all of this was for nothing it should be liz's decision so when is she going to get here she said five minutes you don't think oh no okay everyone i've repaired the seal gaia seal closure at 1.4 millimeters confirmed elizabeth no we'll find a way to bring you back in it's not gonna happen the swarm's too close really it's all right guys complete she'll take care of things from here on out that's what she does not like this there's so much weight guys you know me i'm i'm no good endings not letting things end so um let's not so happy trails liz and see you around yeah take care of each other all right i'm okay with this i want to go home goodbye a scene that pulls on the heartstrings elizabeth's final act of heroism sacrificing herself in a bit to ensure that life on earth had a future the one we're currently in now silence being who he is puts this down to elizabeth simply being better than everyone else but a aloy knows better it wasn't her sheer force of will but her sentimentality her love of life and the dream of life after the swarm and because of that she willingly threw herself into the fire to make sure it would come to fruition before continuing ailoy makes one final remark she said she wanted to go home maybe what nothing it's time to go on from here things start to get weird and very concerning we start to find audio data points from and about ted who's locked himself away in his own private bunker called thebes shortly after elizabeth's death he begins to ask questions about guys systems which in theory he should know nothing about which worries the alphas but they eventually brush it off i mean maybe i should ignore him he's buried in his pyramid with the holy holy girls and panda anti-mod cuckoos what can he do the data points from ted himself suggest otherwise directing them to elizabeth despite her being dead we hear him seemingly start to unravel questioning the efficacy of the project in particular with regards to what the new humans might learn from apollo the last data point before reaching the control room suggests that he's found a solution which makes alelo rather uneasy with a single stroke make it all go away i really don't like the direction this is going upon entering the control room we make a startling discovery the corpses of the alphas presumably suffocated for his silence bluntly points out because there was none inside the chamber there's another hologram recording where we learn what happened to the alphas and more i'm not out of court control alpha sorry to alarm you but i need you to listen okay to what i'm about to say this isn't easy see uh i've um please stop trying to access the system okay see what this is about is um i said stop trying to access the goddamn system and what i'm trying to say is i can't stop thinking about the ones who'll come after us those innocents those blameless men and and and women we're gonna give them knowledge like it's a gift ted ted we've talked about this before apollo has three thousand plus fell safe conditions it's not a guess it's a disease they're the cure and we're gonna give them the disease our disease no we can't and it's not too late if we're willing to sacrifice it doesn't need to be like this it already is samina i did it three minutes ago i've purged apollo it's gone all of it every copy sacrifice is not a sacrifice it's cultural obliteration you crazy bastard millennia of culture i'm sorry really i am but sometimes to protect innocents innocents have to die emergency [Music] apollo purged and the alpha's dead all thanks to the reckless narcissism of ted pharaoh desperate to cover up his involvement in bringing the world to an end destroying all of human knowledge to do so and not just apollo as you explore the world you'll notice that all the animals are small such as foxes boars and turkeys and yet we see no large animals such as deer or bears that's because of ted's purge for artemis's rewilding protocol hinged on the new humans having the knowledge to introduce stage two and up organisms into the wild knowledge they'd have gotten from apollo but didn't this leads to a theory i have regarding the port seal malfunction that ted was also behind that somehow i have to stress that this is entirely circumstantial there's no physical or written evidence supporting it only that the timeline of events seems to fit though this could be entirely coincidental there's also a data point from ted at elizabeth's memorial where he doesn't seem all that choked up about elizabeth's passing i've theorized that since he managed to gain access to zero dawn's systems through his omega clearance that he intentionally caused the port seal to malfunction hazarding a guess that elizabeth would willingly sacrifice herself to fix it up to that point elizabeth was responsible for managing ted keeping him at arm's length from gaia now that she was out of the picture ted had free reign to purge apollo with no one being the wiser until it was too late again this is all very circumstantial and the malfunction could very well just be a narrative device to ensure elizabeth's sacrifice would happen as of this writing we have no concrete answers and may never know grabbing the master override we begin to make our way back to silence workshop upon arriving we find silence in the flesh he's come to make his final farewell but before he goes he wants to tell ayloy the rest of his story specifically about his evolving with the eclipse he reveals that he didn't just assist them but he actually founded the whole damn thing having found hades in the titan we saw earlier and served it in return for any and all of haiti's knowledge silence found the eclipse to do its bidding turning to the shadow cards to build an army manipulating them by having hades masquerade as the buried shadow of carja myth desperate to retake meridian helis and behaves willingly agreed to serve it unaware that hades cared not for meridian but the spire that's because the spire is one of the towers gaia built to send out the deactivation codes produced by minerva to shut down the feral robots using the same method hades wants to send on an activation signal to wake them back up and thus wipe the earth clean of life once more silence didn't care about meridian either so caught up in setting up the eclipse focus network to haiti suspects though he does admit to being trouble when the eclipse first raised an ancient war machine questioning hades about his intentions due to this hades issued a kill order on him putting him on the run ever since it was not long after this that silence heard of the kill order placed on aeloy and after observing her for some time resolved to help her in her search for answers though not entirely selflessly before leaving silence leaves eloy a lance of his own design to fit the master override to along with everything else in his shop reasoning that it was hers to begin with i was merely trespassing doing just that eloy now has the means to destroy hades and so begins to head to meridian to warn a vaude of the coming eclipse assault the strike after what happened with durval i know he'll defend the city with the spire returning to meridian we immediately go to see avad and warn him of the coming threat murad is there as well and to them both eloy begins to explain just what that threat is stressing that they must defend the spire at all costs not truly understanding avad on murad's insistence orders the vanguard to be stationed there knowing aaron won't question it along with eloise suggesting that the city guard defend the western ridge there's a quick and awkward cut to black as eloy explains everything that she knows to avoc before we meet with murad at the palace gates where he informs us that allies from across the sundom have come to aid in the defense most coming for alloy by name for me don't be so humble maraud also states that there's been no movement in the west which conveniently affords us the chance to complete any other side activities we wish as well as a chance to speak with our assembled allies both at the city and at the spire damn right once we feel we're sufficiently ready we head to olin's old apartment where eloise gets some much-needed rest before the titanic clash to come how could you sleep elizabeth with a weight like this pressing on you how did you rost after you lost your family silence are you there i guess i shouldn't ask ghosts for advice the following morning we arrive at the palace to witness a scene of utter devastation the eclipse destroys an entire section of the ridge overlooking the jewel allowing their war machines ancient and corrupted to march on meridian and the spire unhindered ailee immediately jumps into action ordering everyone to man the guns and prepare for the assault however before this can happen an explosion rocks the palace and outsteps helus who quickly goes to bloody work despite avad's protest eli jumps into the fray thus initiating the final showdown with helus [Music] the fight itself isn't all that great to be honest it's pretty gimmicky requiring you to damage helis by exploding blaze barrels next to him as he's almost impervious to arranged and melee attacks his own attacks doing considerable damage which makes me ending this fight with an arrow somewhat hilarious in hindsight despite what i just said i'll give gorilla some credit here in trying to make the fight interesting with its gimmickiness even if it falls a little flat with the defeated helis on his knees wondering aloud how it all came to be we've got a few choices in how we deal with him though as i see it there's only one true choice was not meant to be the sadistic butcher too stupid to see you were being used turn your face to the sun and think about that and so ends helus ayloid having finally avenged rost with duran's mad dog out of the way we can finally make for the western ridge slotting in on a slip wire we arrived to find it under assault by deathbringer making use of a nostromo cannon to take it down this is pretty much how this entire stage of the battle goes using this cannon to defend the bridge against waves of machines with each wave building in intensity before ending with a corrupted storm bird despite her best efforts more and more machines keep coming and eventually the gates behind them are destroyed nearly crushing ailoy and rendering her unconscious she comes too briefly just as a death ringer stomps on by dragging hades behind it before falling unconscious again she's reawakened by tebb who informs her that hades has reached the spire hey dad my old mother you survived i thought you were killed the others were they no no wounded but alive mostly the machines blasted through then kept going they marched on the spire dragging that thing with them take care of the other step i've gotta go so begins a race to the spire we cut through the village below the mesa completely destroyed as well as the great elevator with cards of forces locked in desperate struggle with corrupted machines on the way there we see the spire lit up like a christmas tree signaling that hades has begun its transmission awakening ancient machines across the world making an already desperate situation all the more so reaching the top we find talana aaron and varl miraculously alive though the same unfortunately can't be said for the rest of the spires defenders it seems they're just as relieved to see alloy live considering what happened at the ridge and resolved to help her with confronting hades we're about to go over the top anyway right right hawk and thrush let's go reaching this fire hades begins to taunt alloy before taking control the same deathbringer that brought it up there though i do have to wonder how given that sizeable chunks of the ascent have been destroyed though that could have been done after hades arrival at this point none of that matters and the death bringer immediately unloads all its weaponry on eloy to make matters worse there's a little timer at the top of the screen should it reach zero then game over hades will have permanently ended the world over the course of the fight as you damage the deathbringer hades will call upon more corrupted machines to its aid turning an already hectic fight into pure chaos eventually the deathbringer goes down which oddly puts a kibosh on the timer but at least it allows us some time to mop up any corrupted machines that may still be around in any event it's time to finish hades system threat imminent i'm more than a threat stabbing hades with the lance eloy's pulled into some weird digital realm where she uses the master override to purge hades master override armed to activate state name and rank elizabeth override activated purging extinction protocol using the spire the purge sends out a signal similar to what hades was using this time shutting down all the machines that attempted to reawaken with the threat of hades now eliminated the sun shining over meridian in the spire we can begin to celebrate a job well done the world as we know it has been saved [Applause] [Music] okay gaia uh sorry about that where was i the last scene in the game has his following aloy she calmly rides through a barren plane approaching some ruins all while we listen to one of elizabeth's recovered journals with her telling guy a story from her childhood the runes are in fact that of elizabeth's childhood home if you think back to when she spoke to silence at her memorial in gaia prime alien mentions that elizabeth wanted to go home and is undoubtedly looking to see if she managed to she did in the end and were treated with an emotional moment as a lloyd grieves over her genetic mother while elizabeth finally tells gaia what she would have wished for her daughter if she ever had one i would have wanted her to be curious [Music] and willful unstoppable even but with enough compassion to heal the world just a little bit [Music] ayla then finds a pendant resembling earth in elizabeth's clutches taking in her hands with a larmoyan smile she holds it close to her chest as the camera pans away bringing the story of horizon zero dawn to a bittersweet end [Music] anyway that's all i've got for now gaia time to tuck in i wish you a pleasant sleep elizabeth thank you i'll catch you tomorrow [Music] except it isn't the end taking a page out of marvel's book after the credits roll were treated to another cut scene back at the spire a group of curious cards to approach the supposed corpse of hades only for the orb to suddenly come to life a red thing i don't even know what to call it goes flying out and off somewhere that somewhere just so happens to be silence who traps the red thing in some sort of cage turns out hades isn't actually dead and is now silenced prisoner with plans to find out just who sent the signal that woke it setting the stage for the next game and next story to discuss so much you never revealed your masters for example the ones who sent the signal that woke you knowledge has its rewards don't you think well let's begin and so ends the story of horizon zero dawn a true masterpiece of video game storytelling for what is again its first crack at the open world genre gorilla absolutely nailed the narrative giving us both a story that will make you laugh cry angry and smile with themes and concepts that will leave you deep in thought and wanting to know more on top of this they have given us a main character in alloy that has become one of gaming's most iconic in the last few years supported by an interesting and well-rounded ensemble supporting characters all transposed onto a beautiful open world that you can get lost in for hours at a time all this put together has given us an open-world narrative that has captured the imaginations of gamers all over coupled with the boundless and fully deserved praises received back then and to this day though not flawless by any stretch and not entirely unique in certain aspects it serves well as yet another example and testament of what can be achieved in the medium all in spite of the many question marks that hovered over its head prior to release it set a strong foundation for what would become horizon forbidden west as well as establishing a franchise that can proudly stand alongside sony's finest ips for that and more the team at gorilla games should be proud

Channel: Adam the Chuck

Views: 22,854

Keywords: video game, Horizon Zero Dawn, Guerrilla Games, analysis, critique, story, Horizon Forbidden West, Playstation, narrative, Horizon Zero Dawn Story Analysis, Horizon Zero Dawn Story Analysis - A Masterpiece of Storytelling

Id: dcAIupG4-NE

Length: 141min 39sec (8499 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 20 2022