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Horizon Zero Dawn SPOILERS Thread

What I'm curious about is this "black quartz" that was mentioned in an FAS audio log.
Black Quartz is a type of military standard for uncrackable codes, I believe. The code Ted's code expert comes up with is a polyphasic something something of a Black Quartz standard. The problem with the code is that it is nearly impossible to break. It is natural for things to glitch, break, and get bugs, then engineers find a fix and push an update. What is bad in Faro scenario is that the glitch severs the control of these engineers, or anyone for that matter, so they can't push the "service pack" as Ted calls it in the game. And because they used such unbreakable code, they can't brute force their way in to apply the pack either.
 
I really like how they set Sylens up as future the big bad, he's definitely going to be a very interesting villain to face off against thanks in no small part to Lance Reddicks performance. He's basically the inverse of Aloy, while she's curious and altruistic, he's knowledge hungry and selfish.

He's a quick learner too, highly intelligent, self motivated, and not unwilling to get his hands dirty if it helps him.
 
What was the Odyssey? All I got from the story is that it was destroyed. I'm not sure what it was trying to accomplish. How did it get destroyed?
The Odyssey was a ship intended to colonize another planet outside our solar system. The project was originally scrapped as a failure, then picked up again and finished shortly before zero day. It was carrying a small crew, a lot (200k I think?) of zygotes, frozen seeds, and an alpha version of the Apollo ai, headed for Sirius.

It made it as far as the edge of our solar system, but when they fired up the main engines there was some antimatter malfunction and it exploded, leaving zero dawn as the only hope to continue terrestrial life.
 

Hellshy.

Member
So does anyone else think it's possible that the Apollo alpha(or the humans it was meant to guide) from the odyssey could be responsible for sending the signal to hades and the other gaia subordinates?

One of the late game datapoints has Sobeck talking abut concerns with alpha apollo lacking restraints and safe guards . She says other things in that datapoint but of course the ship would have to have never been destroyed.
 
The Odyssey was a ship intended to colonize another planet outside our solar system. The project was originally scrapped as a failure, then picked up again and finished shortly before zero day. It was carrying a small crew, a lot (200k I think?) of zygotes, frozen seeds, and an alpha version of the Apollo ai, headed for Sirius.

It made it as far as the edge of our solar system, but when they fired up the main engines there was some antimatter malfunction and it exploded, leaving zero dawn as the only hope to continue terrestrial life.

Which could be a lie, there's nothing to gain from the knowledge that Odyssey was a success.

If anything it could have been spun as a lie to further motivate the team working on Zero Dawn.

If Enduring Victory was a lie I don't see any reason why the Odyssey's failure could be as well.
 
So if the Odyssey was a success what does that mean? Is there a planet of human life somewhere?

Yeah and who knows how long it's been around if it did succeed, it never said how long it would take for Odyssey to reach it's destination. Also the Odyssey had an alpha build of Apollo so they would have advanced technology.
 
Just dawned on me that elizabits body was surrounded by a triangle of flowers.

Gaia built her creator a shrine made of life, exactly as she would have wanted.

It's also very somber a sight to me. Here sits the most important person in History, known no no one but Gaia, sylins, and aloy.
 

MaKTaiL

Member
I would love for them to make a Horizon: Enduring Victory game where we play as one of the soldiers tasked to protect Project Zero Dawn in the frontlines. It could be FPS too. It could be epic!
 
Which could be a lie, there's nothing to gain from the knowledge that Odyssey was a success.

If anything it could have been spun as a lie to further motivate the team working on Zero Dawn.

If Enduring Victory was a lie I don't see any reason why the Odyssey's failure could be as well.

Personally, I really hope it wasn't a lie, I feel like it fits the games universe better that the tried and true trope of sending humanity into space failed.

Really drives home the core themes of environmentalism and trying to take care of what we have while we still have it.
 

MaKTaiL

Member
So the Nora tribe was created after those kids/teens from the Nursery Bunker were forced to go out into the wilds to survive right? They asked GAIA: "What will we do now?" which she responded: "You will have to be brave.". They all called her "Mother". It all makes sense!
 

wapplew

Member
We can hate Faro all we want, but thanks to him, we got to play Horizon zero dawn with tribal and bow not high tech laser.
#thanksTed.
 

Moneal

Member
So the Nora tribe was created after those kids/teens from the Nursery Bunker were forced to go out into the wilds to survive right? They asked GAIA: "What will we do now?" which she responded: "You will have to be brave.". They all called her "Mother". It all makes sense!
I think all the people in horizon come from those kids. Its the only cradle we find in the area. We also see carja traits like the kid saying he wants to be king and the obsession with the sun at one point.

As for Odyssey, i think that it for it to be something within the story going forward, it had to break down. I think the engines blew up and messed up a good portion of the ship, but it survived. I am now thinking the alpha Apollo AI could have guided the ship back to earth over 900 years, and corrupted the system. That Apollo AI would potentially see the System as an enslavement. The transmission attempted to free the other AI from GAIA's control, not to destroy or corrupt them. Hades the whole time has been trying to perform his programming objective the whole time, revert terra-forming back to zero.
 

firehawk12

Subete no aware
Which could be a lie, there's nothing to gain from the knowledge that Odyssey was a success.

If anything it could have been spun as a lie to further motivate the team working on Zero Dawn.

If Enduring Victory was a lie I don't see any reason why the Odyssey's failure could be as well.
I guess it could be a lie to motivate the scientists left on Earth... but it seems kind of pointless to do so at that point.
 

Quote

Member
I think it's likely that there is more to the Odyssey. I can see the reason the writers added the Odyssey, because it's more believable that there would be multiple attempts to further life. However, why add a part about an "alpha version" of Apollo? It has to be a major plot device for the sequel and it being an alpha version will be some explanation for something.
 

wapplew

Member
What do you guys think on lite RP of the game? Should next entry give us more RP option like branching narrative, multiple ending etc?
Personally I like more guided, streamline, linear nature of Horizon, hope the game stay that way.
 

Zackat

Member
What do you guys think on lite RP of the game? Should next entry give us more RP option like branching narrative, multiple ending etc?
Personally I like more guided, streamline, linear nature of Horizon, hope the game stay that way.
I like it this way. Seriously, if all they did in horizon 2 was make the human combat as good as the dino combat it would be amazing.
 
What do you guys think on lite RP of the game? Should next entry give us more RP option like branching narrative, multiple ending etc?
Personally I like more guided, streamline, linear nature of Horizon, hope the game stay that way.

I like it the way it is as well. I don't mind multiple endings, but to me personally they should be only for create your avatar games like Mass Effect for example.
 
I really shouldn't have played this before Nier. I'm a few hours into Nier, and it feels like a game I should love...but it's world is so empty and it's characters terribly boring compared to Horizon Dawn. Think I'm done with it.
 

ISee

Member
Didn't Ted build his very own, private bunker instead of joining elysium or the alphas?
What if he made a copy of Apollo before deleting it and cloned himself over the decades and it was him (or multiple clones of him) sending the signal that interfered with fails subroutines?
 
So Aloy's next steps are going to be trying to reboot Gaia, right?


I really shouldn't have played this before Nier. I'm a few hours into Nier, and it feels like a game I should love...but it's world is so empty and it's characters terribly boring compared to Horizon Dawn. Think I'm done with it.

man I felt the same when I tried Zelda BoTW. Everything just paled in comparison to Horizon. I'll have to take some breathing room from Horizon, play some other games, and then get into Zelda.
 
I really shouldn't have played this before Nier. I'm a few hours into Nier, and it feels like a game I should love...but it's world is so empty and it's characters terribly boring compared to Horizon Dawn. Think I'm done with it.
Heh, I'm in the exact same boat. Nier and HZD feel a generation apart.
 
Didn't Ted build his very own, private bunker instead of joining elysium or the alphas?
What if he made a copy of Apollo before deleting it and cloned himself over the decades and it was him (or multiple clones of him) sending the signal that interfered with fails subroutines?
Yeah, he is in his own place. It could've definitely been clones of his, but I hope not.

It really bugs me they use The Odyssey name twice. It is the ship that is leaving the solar system, as well as a ship that is referenced in an interview as being space junk from some failure back in '57.
 
Interesting bit about Ted I didn't pick up on first time playing..."...[Ted] is buried in his pyramid with the holi-girls and Pantah Antimod cuckoos..." So he was locked away with people who very well might have been anti-technology, in a way, converting him to their beliefs. On top of not wanting to repeat his previous mistake, being locked away with Pantah Antimods probably played a big part in his psyche.

Didn't Ted build his very own, private bunker instead of joining elysium or the alphas?
What if he made a copy of Apollo before deleting it and cloned himself over the decades and it was him (or multiple clones of him) sending the signal that interfered with fails subroutines?
He couldn't have made a copy...or not very easily. The only way Apollo could be stored was on encapsulated DNA that needed stored in -18 degree celsius temp. for 1000+ years, according to Samina.
 
so next game we definitely need to have controllable metal ge- i mean thunderjaws XD

and please make an epic metal devil battle. I honestly thought a metal devil was coming when we saw that gigantic explosion at the beginning of the last battle.
 
Yeah, he is in his own place. It could've definitely been clones of his, but I hope not.

It really bugs me they use The Odyssey name twice. It is the ship that is leaving the solar system, as well as a ship that is referenced in an interview as being space junk from some failure back in '57.
They didn't use it twice, it's the same ship. The project was originally a failure, but another corporation stepped in (can't remember the name, same corp that made the artificial wombs) and successfully completed the project years later.

Well, successful enough to launch before blowing up I suppose.
 

ISee

Member
Yeah, he is in his own place. It could've definitely been clones of his, but I hope not.

It really bugs me they use The Odyssey name twice. It is the ship that is leaving the solar system, as well as a ship that is referenced in an interview as being space junk from some failure back in '57.

It is the same Odyssey. They reactivated and speed up the odyssey program to have a second option to safe terrestrial life.

Interesting bit about Ted I didn't pick up on first time playing..."...[Ted] is buried in his pyramid with the holi-girls and Pantah Antimod cuckoos..." So he was locked away with people who very well might have been anti-technology, in a way, converting him to their beliefs. On top of not wanting to repeat his previous mistake, being locked away with Pantah Antimods probably played a big part in his psyche.

He couldn't have made a copy...or not very easily. The only way Apollo could be stored was on encapsulated DNA that needed stored in -18 degree celsius temp. for 1000+ years, according to Samina.

I missed the first part entirely. Where is it from?

For the second part:
There is a datalog where Sobeck talks about being lucky not having to see Ted teaching his own clone, so cloning himself was at least a possibility he may had.
And maybe there was an Apollo copy already present in his bunker. Ted was the richest man alive, ever. Him having an apollo backup just for his own pleasure wouldn't surprise me.
 

GlamFM

Banned
So the Nora tribe was created after those kids/teens from the Nursery Bunker were forced to go out into the wilds to survive right? They asked GAIA: "What will we do now?" which she responded: "You will have to be brave.". They all called her "Mother". It all makes sense!

Beautiful, right?
 
Personally, I'm firmly in the "Odyssey blew the hell up" camp. A lie about losing Odyssey to motivate the Zero Dawn team? That just seems absurd. If anything it would be demoralizing. It seems like an unnecessarily cruel thing to do, which isn't in Elisabet's character at all.

I still think the biggest hint we have is the group of strangers that came into Nora lands, took hostages, did something that produced "strange noises" and then left, a bit before the AI programs were severed from GAIA.
 

firehawk12

Subete no aware
I think it's likely that there is more to the Odyssey. I can see the reason the writers added the Odyssey, because it's more believable that there would be multiple attempts to further life. However, why add a part about an "alpha version" of Apollo? It has to be a major plot device for the sequel and it being an alpha version will be some explanation for something.
If Odyssey was launched before Zero Dawn was finished, then they probably put on a version of Apollo that wasn't finished yet.

I would be happy if they retconned it blowing up, since I think the perfect idea for a sequel would be about humans on another planet so they don't have to go back to the Aloy "chosen one" well again. It'd also vastly change the scope of the Horizon "universe". But I suppose having a Horizon set in a different part of America with familiar faces and monsters is a much more realistic endeavor.

So the Nora tribe was created after those kids/teens from the Nursery Bunker were forced to go out into the wilds to survive right? They asked GAIA: "What will we do now?" which she responded: "You will have to be brave.". They all called her "Mother". It all makes sense!
I guess it's impossible to imagine generations of legends being passed down through oral tradition... but it seemed a bit on the nose when I heard that at the time. lol

What do you guys think on lite RP of the game? Should next entry give us more RP option like branching narrative, multiple ending etc?
Personally I like more guided, streamline, linear nature of Horizon, hope the game stay that way.
It broke up what otherwise would have been boring cutscenes, but they just seemed as inconsequential as the few times you'd get a dialog choice in Uncharted 4.

---

I didn't want to post this in the OT because of spoilers, but I just wanted to explain why the game's presentation felt "last gen" to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cac7hW09QMo

You can see the system is built only for two characters to talk to each other, much like BioWare games from 10 years ago starting with KoTOR. But they decided to have Aloy be one character and Rost's grave be another "character". So instead of something emotional like the final scene where Aloy finds Elisabet's corpse, you just get to look at Aloy's head for 3 minutes while she talks to a pile of rocks.

I think they did that because they wanted to be able to chain the "updates" you give Rost. I only went to his grave at the end of the game, so it gave me the option to retell the entire story via "Go on". So they probably couldn't do a cutscene, or alternatively, they needed to either make Rost's grave an end-game only location or create different cutscenes for whenever you decided to go to his grave.

I'm not sure what would have been better here, but even something like a reverse shot of Aloy so that you can see her face when she's talking would have made the scene more interesting. Imagine if you were watching a movie and it's just 3 minutes of the back of a character talking. It'd be ridiculous in that context, and it's pretty silly here.
 

Jyrii

Banned
These questions have probably been answered in the thread already, but..

- I thought that the Faro robots would just deactivate once there was no more biomass to consume. But the wikipedia synopsis states that GAIA actually developed a countermeasure. Was it revealed what it was?

- Wiki also states that HADES was "designed to enact controlled extinction if the outcome of Zero Dawn was not favourable for human existence". What actual purpose does it serve though? I cannot think of any situation where extinction would be the better choice, except if the machines started harvest humans in biomass farms. Was that the fear?
 

Vek

Member
These questions have probably been answered in the thread already, but..

- I thought that the Faro robots would just deactivate once there was no more biomass to consume. But the wikipedia synopsis states that GAIA actually developed a countermeasure. Was it revealed what it was?

- Wiki also states that HADES was "designed to enact controlled extinction if the outcome of Zero Dawn was not favourable for human existence". What actual purpose does it serve though? I cannot think of any situation where extinction would be the better choice, except if the machines started harvest humans in biomass farms. Was that the fear?

- The countermeasure was Gaia cracking the faro robots security to develop the deactivation codes. This code was transmitted using the the spire that can be found near Meridian.

- Hades provided the option of wiping the slate clean, in case Gaia got it wrong. The world after the faro plague is barren with an inhospitable environment, if Gaia got it wrong and made it worse or not quite right, they'd need a way to start again. Think of Hades like a homicidal eraser.
 
- The countermeasure was Gaia cracking the faro robots security to develop the deactivation codes. This code was transmitted using the the spire that can be found near Meridian.

- Hades provided the option of wiping the slate clean, in case Gaia got it wrong. The world after the faro plague is barren with an inhospitable environment, if Gaia got it wrong and made it worse or not quite right, they'd need a way to start again. Think of Hades like a homicidal eraser.

Right, as I understand it the spires were built to crack the encryption on the Faro robots and broadcast it if they were ever somehow reactivated. I think that the Faro robots first deactivated naturally once they ran out of biomass to consume, and by the time rogue HADES started reactivating them GAIA was already shattered and unable to activate the spires herself.
 

Gradly

Member
- The countermeasure was Gaia cracking the faro robots security to develop the deactivation codes. This code was transmitted using the the spire that can be found near Meridian.

- Hades provided the option of wiping the slate clean, in case Gaia got it wrong. The world after the faro plague is barren with an inhospitable environment, if Gaia got it wrong and made it worse or not quite right, they'd need a way to start again. Think of Hades like a homicidal eraser.

I'm not really into the story and just read things from here and there, but a lot of things I still struggle to understand so could you please just give us a brief of what happened in a very basic way if you fully aware of the story, and I mean things like the state of machines in the past and current ones, cuz as we see how easy controlling the machines now but was it hard to control them in the past, the past humans and current ones, have Zero Dawn affected the machines in the past or it just worked to create life or whatever separately, I mean we saw here how Hades unearthed those Deathbringers immediately, so why couldn't they somehow wiped things immediately too. Also if all humans we saw were originated from those cradles I don't think 1000 years is enough for them to reach this level of civilization
 

Moneal

Member
Right, as I understand it the spires were built to crack the encryption on the Faro robots and broadcast it if they were ever somehow reactivated. I think that the Faro robots first deactivated naturally once they ran out of biomass to consume, and by the time rogue HADES started reactivating them GAIA was already shattered and unable to activate the spires herself.

The Faro robots didn't deactivate when they ran out of biomass. They went into stasis. So before GAIA did anything else, she built the spires and broadcast the deactivation codes to the Faro robots.
 

Moneal

Member
I'm not really into the story and just read things from here and there, but a lot of things I still struggle to understand so could you please just give us a brief of what happened in a very basic way if you fully aware of the story, and I mean things like the state of machines in the past and current ones, cuz as we see how easy controlling the machines now but was it hard to control them in the past, the past humans and current ones, have Zero Dawn affected the machines in the past or it just worked to create life or whatever separately, I mean we saw here how Hades unearthed those Deathbringers immediately, so why couldn't they somehow wiped things immediately too. Also if all humans we saw were originated from those cradles I don't think 1000 years is enough for them to reach this level of civilization

Faro swarm wipes out life and go into stasis.

50 years later GAIA breaks Faro swarm encryption and broadcasts shutdown codes.

GAIA begins terraforming.

200 years later Humans released from Cradle.

700 years later signal infiltrates GAIA system releasing AI's from GAIA's control.

GAIA blows up GAIA Prime to destroy HADES, so it doesn't revert terraforming to zero.

GAIA creates Aloy to fix her.

The machines are easily controlled in the future, because of the use of the corruptors. They were described as the ultimate hackers. Aloy even uses parts from one to control the machines herself. HADES can control the corruptors and Deathbringers because he has access to the encryption codes GAIA used.

While Apollo wasn't available, the servitors in the cradle facilities did provide some basic knowledge to the humans. Civilization didn't have to start completely from scratch.
 

Staf

Member
I'm starting a replay on very hard now. I forgot how likeable Rost was. Really wish they didn't kill him off... Think if there is one thing this game misses is a close friend/ally to Aloy that she can interact with. Nevertheless, love this game to bits.
 
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