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Horizon Zero Dawn SPOILERS Thread
- Thread starter vivekTO
- Start date
Miniature Kaiju
Member
It hadn't occurred me that Sylen's "lantern" is actually one of those machine cores we get from any killed beast. HADES probably requires a certain kind of core - maybe it needs to be powerful enough to handle his advanced processes or something.
The Banuk encampment up north was close to a core that looked very similar to the one HADES was inhabiting. It transmitted a signal that calmed the beasts - I wonder what AI it housed.
He actually reacted really sweet, lol. He stood there with hanging shoulders, all disappointed but respectful of your decision. Later he comes to your aid in the end battle.
I'd feel bad if I killed him in my playthrough.
S
Steve.1981
Unconfirmed Member
Yep, that's a cool little read. I liked the story of the vantage points, it's interesting to find out where the emotionial depth of that mother and son bond came from.
MegaSackman
Member
Just came to post this. Awesome!
I also like how he spoke about the structure in screewriting for games.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Yes there are farms on the outside of Meridian.
Hippolnareff
Member
I wasn't really that impressed by the writing or dialogue. I mean, it wasn't bad but some bouts were sort of dull. However, i think this franchise will REALLY come in to its own in the inevitable sequel.
Tal Shiar Agent
Member
The Royal Maizelands. Plus farms all over the southern tier.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Yes there is. "Religion". They state so all the time. They are probably the most devote tribal group in the game.
MegaSackman
Member
I just watched the ending again, I forgot how cool it was that Avad hugged a regular soldier after the battle.
Probably whispered to them mid hug and asked if they wanted to take Ersa's place.
MegaSackman
Member
Well, the soldier stood staring him after that lol.
I was back in the sacred land collecting things near the end of the game. It was in that quiet stretch where I really felt sad at all the devastation the Nora lands had been subjected to. They lost scores of braves in different attacks by Eclipse and their towns and homes were mostly reduced to rubble. I rode through the main Embrace gate, which was impressive when it stood, and it had been reduced to splinters.
Aloy even remarked that most of the Nora left were still taking refuge in All Mother Mountain as I walked through Mother's Heart. I really hope her tribe heals and rebuilds as time passes. It seems the Nora are content to live in the Sacred Lands but if it isn't Mad King Jiran's Red Raiders it's Helis's insane cult hell bent on inflicting death and destruction upon them. It's been a rough period for the Nora.
Aloy even remarked that most of the Nora left were still taking refuge in All Mother Mountain as I walked through Mother's Heart. I really hope her tribe heals and rebuilds as time passes. It seems the Nora are content to live in the Sacred Lands but if it isn't Mad King Jiran's Red Raiders it's Helis's insane cult hell bent on inflicting death and destruction upon them. It's been a rough period for the Nora.
Square Triangle
Member
Is Elizabet's ranch located anywhere on the map in-game?
Miniature Kaiju
Member
Nope. Her ranch is further west, in Carson City, Nevada.
Square Triangle
Member
Ah bummer. How did you find this out by the way?
So I'm assuming the game takes place in Colorado, Arizona and Nevada?
Hippolnareff
Member
Near Salt Lake City, Utah.
Miniature Kaiju
Member
The datapoint with her bio mentions she grew up outside Carson City.
Yup. A very compressed version of that area.
Square Triangle
Member
I do remember reading the US Robotics Lab was in Utah.
Now I need to read through all these data entries
No, the past was terrible and like Sylens said he didn't see the red raids. I can't believe Sylens was a fuck nigga this whole time. I liked him, he was a dick but a likable character
I was thinking that was Hephaestus probably. That was the subordinate function involved in building the machines.
I think HADES and the complicated approach made sense in terms of Hubris if they didn't have Elizabet so clearly defined. HADES is something Ted would have considered for inclusion not her...
Yeah if I take the context at face value I always come to the conclusion that Elizabet would have given the decision to GAIA to decide not a separate sub-routine.
If you think about it HADES is too close to ME3 logic - "to save the world from a plague of biomass consiming machines we've programmed a machine to destroy the world with a plague of biosmass machines!"
Also to be blunt HADES logic would make sense if there was reason to believe conditions on Earth would be hugely different or if they were terraforming another planet.
It's reseeing the same soil and ecosystem as before so the odds of GAIA getting it wrong given she's not creating new organics but merely recreating organics known to function perfectly well (grass, corn, etc) should have been pretty low.
That said they did give a decent logical explanation for HADES and like I say the idea was ultimately more driven by narrative need than character consistency so It's not a huge biggie: HADES makes for a nice threat.
Going forward though I will tire of the franchise if they keep trying to re-do Zero Dawn with constant threat of biomass consuming machines. That's been done twice now already - once as backstory and once as the "big bad" for Aloy to defeat this time around.
They need a new direction for future antagonists if they want to keep up the good narrative foundation here and not go down the boring route of rinse/repeat sequels.
As John McClane asked "how can the same thing happen to the same guy twice" - the moral (which of course Die Hard itself ignored - is move the narrative on don't keep trying to repeat it.
I figure they could have one more go at this if it turns out Ted's around but even that would risk being lame.
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
Anyone?
Also, where is Helis being held after capture so I can go taunt him some time? I never saw him.
Yeah, but he's sassy and full of honesty and self-awareness. I won't lie, that makes him ultra-endearing. And the way he's all heartbroken after you deny him is strangely adorable. xD
motorised mallard
Member
Are you sure that you aren't mistaking Helis for the Osseram (name evades me) renegade? Because I don't think that taunting a corpse would be that much fun and it would be kind of disturbing. Or is there an option that leaves Helis alive? I got the impression that even the "kind" option means that he gets spear between the ribs.
If you are talking about the Osseram dude, he is near to the "loot box" vendor if my memory serves me right.
I figured it was bits of the nano swarm coming off the machines. There's a log I found that describes what happened to a soldier's legs when they came in contact with the bio-fuel swarm. It ate them.
Also, it's Dervahl you capture. He's in the center of town in a cell.
MugiwaraCole
Member
The sound bites of soldiers basically getting blendered up by the Faro plague were
man.
Miniature Kaiju
Member
Helis is proper dead. The heart option meant allowing him to face the sun while he got the stabby-pokey treatment.
Theslammer
Member
Got the plat!
So when/where do I get the theme for getting a plat? Did I hear this correctly?
So when/where do I get the theme for getting a plat? Did I hear this correctly?
I never got it. =/
MegaSackman
Member
Berserker976
Member
I dunno man, I feel like maybe you're underestimating what a gigantic undertaking reconstituting an entire, planetary biosphere is. Not to mention creating the systems and AI to do it in two years. Just because the materials are there doesn't really make it that much easier. GAIA needed to condense millions of years of evolution and biosphere changes into a few hundred years. The probability she'd get it right the first time is pretty damn low.
Also, as for your point about it being ME3 logic, keep in mind that HADES taking over the Faro robots was NOT its intended modus operandi. HADES was supposed to take control of all GAIA's terraforming systems and completely revert everything using those, not the Faro Plague.
The one point I will cede is that they definitely should have put in place something that permanently disables the HADES subsystem once ELEUTHIA was activated and humans were reintroduced, since there's no possible use for HADES once GAIA reaches that stage.
Here's a good explanation of a thought experiment in AI which might help explain the behaviour of the Faro bots, HADES, and Gaia.
The Stamp Collector:
https://youtu.be/tcdVC4e6EV4
Good follow up:
https://youtu.be/5qfIgCiYlfY
In Horizon, rather than collecting stamps, the rewarding factors are: Replication and destroy enemy, destroy life, and create life respectively for the listed AI.
The Faro bots are close to the Gray Goo thought experiment as well:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo
The Stamp Collector:
https://youtu.be/tcdVC4e6EV4
Good follow up:
https://youtu.be/5qfIgCiYlfY
In Horizon, rather than collecting stamps, the rewarding factors are: Replication and destroy enemy, destroy life, and create life respectively for the listed AI.
The Faro bots are close to the Gray Goo thought experiment as well:
Wikipedia said:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo
They're damn near literally a gray goo scenario except the nanomachines are housed in gigantic robotic war machine bodies and they only break down biomass instead of everything though I guess they do consume metals and other inorganic matter to build the machines themselves.
TheBioLover
Member
I replayed the final mission to get the plat, and man is the final scene (before the credits) good. The writing and music are so great, very emotional scene.
STILLethal
Member
Nanomachines?! (David Hayter voice)
So just finished this literally 10 minutes ago, amazing game. Interested to see what happens with the rogue HADES being captured by Sylens, and if that means he will once again serve HADES or if he will truly get his quantum physics teachings.
Fargo's reasoning behind deleting all of APOLLO kind of makes sense in that he wanted the new humans to start afresh, but the whole idea behind APOLLO was that the "new Earth" could start afresh but be more wary of these machines and what they can do in the wrong hands. Deleting that knowledge basically doomed humanity to repeat itself, thus causing what Aloy had to deal with and the rise of HADES.
I am intrigued though, according to the logs the disaster and fall of original humanity was over 35,000 years ago, correct? So in that time GAIA has been in hibernation, or was she using that time to crack the code on the original robots and placate them, allowing her to reform Earth as per her coded instructions? Because GAIA herself stated that she created Aloy to remove HADES and allow the recreation of Earth to continue, and Aloy being only 19ish means the rise of deranged machines was only happening recently.
Then there's the history of the Red Raids, which sound like they happened before Aloy's birth, at least 30-40 years before. In that time there were deranged robots, and the then Sun King thought it best to sacrifice humans to sate that derangement. So when did HADES become rogue?
Fargo's reasoning behind deleting all of APOLLO kind of makes sense in that he wanted the new humans to start afresh, but the whole idea behind APOLLO was that the "new Earth" could start afresh but be more wary of these machines and what they can do in the wrong hands. Deleting that knowledge basically doomed humanity to repeat itself, thus causing what Aloy had to deal with and the rise of HADES.
I am intrigued though, according to the logs the disaster and fall of original humanity was over 35,000 years ago, correct? So in that time GAIA has been in hibernation, or was she using that time to crack the code on the original robots and placate them, allowing her to reform Earth as per her coded instructions? Because GAIA herself stated that she created Aloy to remove HADES and allow the recreation of Earth to continue, and Aloy being only 19ish means the rise of deranged machines was only happening recently.
Then there's the history of the Red Raids, which sound like they happened before Aloy's birth, at least 30-40 years before. In that time there were deranged robots, and the then Sun King thought it best to sacrifice humans to sate that derangement. So when did HADES become rogue?
The derangement and hades corruption are two different things. The derangement was hephastus creating machines with weapons to defend the machines strictly meant to terraform the earth. Since humans didn't have the knowledge of Apollo, they had no clue what these machines were or their purpose so they started to destroy them. It's the reason why you'll see something like a sawtooth circling a bunch of grazers....the derangement was a defense mechanism by hephastus, ensuring that it's protocols were being executed.
It was about 1,000 years ago. The part you're thinking of was talking about days, not years.
The derangement didn't start until right around Aloy's birth so the red raids must have been going on when she was a child. She was just oblivious to them, being an outcast.
The collapse of human civilization and Zero Day happened in 2066, roughly 1000 years prior to the game's start. I believe the first humans were decanted roughly 300 years following Zero Day.
While 300 years seems a little fast for GAIA to restore the Earth's biosphere from the barren rock it was reduced to, similar technology was used to restore habitability to New Zealand following its ecological collapse on a much smaller timescale and with fewer resources.
The Red Raids were committed under the rule of Sun King Jiran and are very recent, maybe 2-3 years prior to the game's start. Aloy and Rost were sheltered from the depredations of the Raids by living in the Nora interior. Jiran is overthrown and executed by his second son, Sun King Avad, who it's mentioned ascended to the throne only recently.
Hades became rogue 20 years ago. It was in response to HADES' assault on GAIA's systems and GAIA's self-destruction of her primary reactor that Aloy was "birthed". The "Derangement", caused by HEPHAESTUS achieving self-awareness and becoming rampant, occurred at the same time.
Aaronology
Member
HEPHAESTUS broke back into his forge. I don't imagine he'd need to find shelter in a core anywhere.
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
Er yeah, I meant Dervahl. Derp. Thanks.
Awesome replies, thanks for clearing that up. I'm very keen to hear more from this world, and like someone else previously mentioned and as much as it sounds selfish I would rather they never do another Killzone in favour of Horizon. It has an actual world, a backstory and far more interesting landscapes to play with then what Killzone has turned into.
I would love to see the next title if there is one focus on exploring more of Earth as it's clear GAIA's purpose isn't to just repopulate a small section but the entire of Earth. There definitely has to be more beyond the borders, and that is something I'd be so keen to explore.
Another option could definitely be a prequel, maybe around the Red Raids or Sylens journey. I don't think it would be good to go all the way back to 2066 as that may not translate well into what Horizon is with its primitive combat influenced by tech of the future (though technically old).
I would love to see the next title if there is one focus on exploring more of Earth as it's clear GAIA's purpose isn't to just repopulate a small section but the entire of Earth. There definitely has to be more beyond the borders, and that is something I'd be so keen to explore.
Another option could definitely be a prequel, maybe around the Red Raids or Sylens journey. I don't think it would be good to go all the way back to 2066 as that may not translate well into what Horizon is with its primitive combat influenced by tech of the future (though technically old).
The Artisan
Member
spoil me. tell me everything
Miniature Kaiju
Member
Originally I was thinking of Gaia's subordinate functions as housed in physical cores and some may have been scattered in the blast. But yeah, you're right. The cutscene says all the various functions "escaped" before Gaia Prime was destroyed.
Yeah Erend is surprised that she doesn't know about them. The Mad Sun King was only deposed 2 years before the Proving so the raids would be occurring up until then. Also, Nakoa lost her family to them and she appears to be the same age as Aloy.
Aaronology
Member
MegaSackman
Member
Question:
I was discussing with some friends, they don't totally buy the Hades creation idea, they think it's stupid. Anyway, the question is:
What was Hades supposed to use to destroy everything again in a predicted situation:
A- Corruptors and Deathbringers
B- Gaia's machines
C- Something else
?
I was discussing with some friends, they don't totally buy the Hades creation idea, they think it's stupid. Anyway, the question is:
What was Hades supposed to use to destroy everything again in a predicted situation:
A- Corruptors and Deathbringers
B- Gaia's machines
C- Something else
?
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