Horizon Zero Dawn SPOILERS Thread

As much as I hate Ted, I think it's kinda bad for the narrative if they put all the blame of humanity downfall into one person.
The world was already in trouble before though. Datapoints show you a world wrecked with corruption and war.

Faro just took advantage of the situation and became an arms dealer.
 
As much as I hate Ted, I think it's kinda bad for the narrative if they put all the blame of humanity downfall into one person.

Humanity survives but are forced to basically restart from the stone age with all the ugliness that can go with it. Sylens puts it best when he hears how Ted deleted Apollo and says he knew nothing of the horrors of the Sun Ring and the Red Raids. Its actually amazing because of how much they foreshadow everything without being so blunt about it. I had to laugh by the time you get the datapoint right before you find out Ted kills Apollo and its one of the Alpha's saying,"What's the worst Ted can do?' because then I knew instantly it was gonna be bad but even I didn't realize how bad.

The world was already in trouble before though. Datapoints show you a world wrecked with corruption and war.

Faro just took advantage of the situation and became an arms dealer.

He was Steve Jobs if the Ipod was killer machines
 
I mean, technically, you hear the voice of the software guy who I believe they attached the "Glitch" to. He helps on Zero Dawn, hoping for atonement. The whole thing is if a Microsoft got in on military grade robotics, and killed the world with Vista glitches.
 
Elysium, I don't think, would have been all sunshine and rainbows. Heck, given humanity, i'd say it devolved into some serious lord of the flies level stuff after a while.

Think of it, a few thousand people, hopeless, locked away in a bunker waiting to die. The game mentions over bunkers/shelters became their own little mini-cultures.

All it would have taken is for a handful of strong people to declare themselves in charge, and take whatever they wanted from the rest. After all, who is going to stop them, everyone else is dead.

And no one can have kids, so whats to prevent an all out orgy/hedonistic culture from springing up?
 
Elysium, I don't think, would have been all sunshine and rainbows. Heck, given humanity, i'd say it devolved into some serious lord of the flies level stuff after a while.

Think of it, a few thousand people, hopeless, locked away in a bunker waiting to die. The game mentions over bunkers/shelters became their own little mini-cultures.

All it would have taken is for a handful of strong people to declare themselves in charge, and take whatever they wanted from the rest. After all, who is going to stop them, everyone else is dead.

And no one can have kids, so whats to prevent an all out orgy/hedonistic culture from springing up?
I want the last person in Elysium to die on a sofa while playing a video game, with cans of soda and nachos all over his room.
 
Humanity survives but are forced to basically restart from the stone age with all the ugliness that can go with it. Sylens puts it best when he hears how Ted deleted Apollo and says he knew nothing of the horrors of the Sun Ring and the Red Raids. Its actually amazing because of how much they foreshadow everything without being so blunt about it. I had to laugh by the time you get the datapoint right before you find out Ted kills Apollo and its one of the Alpha's saying,"What's the worst Ted can do?' because then I knew instantly it was gonna be bad but even I didn't realize how bad.

New page, and this hasn't be said yet so I'll be the first: Fuck Ted Faro.
 
Nah, he's only doing for himself. He hasn't changed at all.
Sylens is self centered and has a dangerous lust for knowledge, true. But that doesn't negate that the answers he's seeking are important.


Edit:

I don't remember: what we the point of using biomass for fuel? I think that's a wicked stupid idea for machines of that size and power.
To give the machines an edge in case supply lines/traditional fuel sources were interdicted.
 
Why do people keep talking about the Odyssey mission coming back? Didn't it fail?

Wouldn't it be interesting to find out that instead of the Odysseys being lost, its fate was faked and the inhabitants thought that instead of the oneway trip to a another planet, they decide to come back home.

Maybe Ted was steered towards destroying APOLLO by other rich fucks, suggesting perhaps that it should be the select few who should posses the knowledge and technology of the past. So Ted deletes APOLLO and Odysseys just coasts back to orbit after the end of the world, waiting for ZD to do its thing and then dividing the world between the select few. Taking over the primitive peasants should be an easy job with the technology and knowledge available to them.

So they would be the origin of the signal that screws everything up. Why corrupt HADES and risk it wiping life out again? Maybe their plan was that HADES would react like it did, forcing GAIA to act like it did, taking them both out of the picture.

Why take out GAIA? Because she basicly has the robotic animal kingdom at her command and having been influenced heavily by Elisabet, would not react kindly to a plan like that most likely. So she would have to be dealt with.

Why corrupt HADES to take GAIA out then? Because HADES was designed to take control away from GAIA in order to reset the planet. By forcing HADES to start its job despite the planet not needing a reset, it would force GAIA's hand because the system was designed so that HADES had to give control back to GAIA in the end. That would leave the destruction of both as GAIA's only option. That would leave other sub-routines either inactive or to their current states.

HADES getting out the burning building, so to speak, probably wasn't their plan or other sub-routines going out of control. The idea might have been that once HADES and GAIA were out of the picture, they could just swoop in and take control of the rest.

After that, divide the land, enslave the primitive peasants, become "all powerful" kings and queens of the restored earth because of the technology and knowledge that they posses, keeping the peasants in the dark. Just like good old times.
 
Fuck Ted Faro.

Haha, this was my immediate response during The Mountain That Fell (this fucking guy...), but later I started thinking maybe an argument could be made for allowing the future of humanity a clean, fresh start at new life on Earth, unburdened by the knowledge of our civilisation's mistakes. You could say it was supremely arrogant of Sobeck and the other project leads to think they could/should try and control everything about how humanity started again.

But I mean, I'm just thinking out loud... In the end I still have to say Fuck Ted Faro.
 
Just finished the game on OG PS4 and I have to give credit where credit is due. They did wonders on that hardware. There were some obvious limitations here and there, but man it seems hard to justify buying a Pro unless you have a 4K screen.

Graphics aside I was disappointed with the final bits of the game. You fight your first Deathbringer about halfway through the game. Then you decimate them with ease using the Osram guns, before being over run by many more.

Then the climatic final battle is....another Deathbringer. Like wtf. They couldn't be bothered to craft a better final battle?
 
Haha, this was my immediate response during The Mountain That Fell (this fucking guy...), but later I started thinking maybe an argument could be made for allowing the future of humanity a clean, fresh start at new life on Earth, unburdened by the knowledge of our civilisation's mistakes. You could say it was supremely arrogant of Sobeck and the other project leads to think they could/should try and control everything about how humanity started again.

But I mean, I'm just thinking out loud... In the end I still have to say Fuck Ted Faro.

Those who don't remember history are bound to repeat it.

A clean, fresh start is what they would've gotten, with the knowledge of what went wrong before, and the tools and information to not repeat the same mistakes.


Edit: About the Hades protocol, one thing I didn't quite understand was, if the birthing chambers had such a limited amount of supplies, how were they ever planing on doing this for a few cycles? I mean, they started running out of food with the first batch of humans, around the time they hit their teens it looked like from the holos.
 
Why do people keep talking about the Odyssey mission coming back? Didn't it fail?

It was Elisabet who sent out the email to the other alpha's. It would make sense that she would lie about the fate of the ship to motivate people to work harder.

Furthermore when Zero Dawn receives the Ectogenic chambers from Far Zenith (Odyssey project) Brochard-Klein notes that "if the rest of Far Zenith is this high tech a colony around Sirius might actually be possible". So we can assume the Far Zenith project was way beyond Zero Dawn in terms of technology.

Now I'm pretty sure that to get those chambers Elisabet traded it for the alpha build of Apollo. That built has few restraint and no fail-safes. So thematically it would fit for a sequel to explore what happens when a civilization with barely any knowledge of the old world would clash with one that has access to all knowledge. How did they handle that knowledge, do they think Earth is their right because they grew up on learning about it?
 
Those who don't remember history are bound to repeat it.

A clean, fresh start is what they would've gotten, with the knowledge of what went wrong before, and the tools and information to not repeat the same mistakes.

In theory I agree. But after going through the Apollo learning program, what are the odds of at least one dude thinking, "You know, Ted Faro did nothing wrong...". It could be argued that's a dangerous seed to plant.
 
It was Elisabet who sent out the email to the other alpha's. It would make sense that she would lie about the fate of the ship to motivate people to work harder.

Furthermore when Zero Dawn receives the Ectogenic chambers from Far Zenith (Odyssey project) Brochard-Klein notes that "if the rest of Far Zenith is this high tech a colony around Sirius might actually be possible". So we can assume the Far Zenith project was way beyond Zero Dawn in terms of technology.

Now I'm pretty sure that to get those chambers Elisabet traded it for the alpha build of Apollo. That built has few restraint and no fail-safes. So thematically it would fit for a sequel to explore what happens when a civilization with barely any knowledge of the old world would clash with one that has access to all knowledge. How did they handle that knowledge, do they think Earth is their right because they grew up on learning about it?

1. No, it wouldn't make sense for Elisabet to lie about that, that would be needlessly cruel. These people are already facing the literal extinction of life on Earth, all that lie would do is lower morale. Plus, it's absolutely not within her compassionate nature to lie about something like that. Also keep in mind, best case scenario is that a cobbled together colony ship that was originally planned to launch in 2080 engaged its engines and left the solar system towards a completely unknown planet with completely untested technology. No one at Zero Dawn would have worked an ounce less if the message had been: "Odyssey has left the solar system."

2. We can assume that Far Zenith had advanced ectogenic technology, but that's about it.

3. I think the concerns over the early version of APOLLO were less that it would go rogue and turn evil or something, and more that it would just break or not work correctly.

I still think the most likely reality is that Odyssey just exploded and failed, and it was tragic.
 
1. No, it wouldn't make sense for Elisabet to lie about that, that would be needlessly cruel. These people are already facing the literal extinction of life on Earth, all that lie would do is lower morale. Plus, it's absolutely not within her compassionate nature to lie about something like that. Also keep in mind, best case scenario is that a cobbled together colony ship that was originally planned to launch in 2080 engaged its engines and left the solar system towards a completely unknown planet with completely untested technology. No one at Zero Dawn would have worked an ounce less if the message had been: "Odyssey has left the solar system."

2. We can assume that Far Zenith had advanced ectogenic technology, but that's about it.

3. I think the concerns over the early version of APOLLO were less that it would go rogue and turn evil or something, and more that it would just break or not work correctly.

I still think the most likely reality is that Odyssey just exploded and failed, and it was tragic.

Now I might be misremembering things (have to go back) but there were some logs about the work environment and people complaining. And if your facing extinction I think it wouldn't be weird to have everyone as motivated as they can be, and making sure the people know this is the last straw would accomplish that. She even end the mail with "we must succeed".

We KNOW that Far Zenith has the advanced ectogenic technology and an advanced anti-matter drive.. Now for Apollo Elisabet mentions in her log "So much knowledge, so few restraints, and no fail-safes. How will they avoid repeating our mistakes? What's to stop them from playing god?". Note that she isn't talking about a single AI.

Once again I really think they have sown these seeds for the sequel.
 
On finishing the story I felt content that I understood almost everything. My only questions were; where the hell did that signal, that hit Hades like a lightning bolt, come from and who/what sent it?

I thought I must've missed something, and my suspicion told me the answers would involve Sylens somehow. I was very happy to see the final scene, after the credits. I really hope the expansion leads straight off from that ending.
 
In theory I agree. But after going through the Apollo learning program, what are the odds of at least one dude thinking, "You know, Ted Faro did nothing wrong...". It could be argued that's a dangerous seed to plant.

The argument that keeping APOLLO program intact plants a bad seed is nonsensical. The bad seed will exist one way or another. That's humanity. As you can see from playing the game, the bad seed existed anyway. It was a real fucked up rebirth for humanity.
 
The argument that keeping APOLLO program intact plants a bad seed is nonsensical. The bad seed will exist one way or another. That's humanity. As you can see from playing the game, the bad seed existed anyway. It was a real fucked up rebirth for humanity.

Just for argument's sake, was it really though?

From everything I saw playing through the game, and outside of one crazy-ass Sun King, I thought humanity was doing pretty well without the knowledge from Apollo. Various tribes were building their own lives and creating new cultures, all coexisting with the machines in this new Earth in their own successful ways. And when that Sun King lost it in a bad way, different tribes and cultures came together to bring him down and then started working together to build a better way forward, in peace and with respect for one another.

The main problem of the story wouldn't have existed without the signal that unshackled Hades, and we don't know any of the circumstances that brought it about so I can't say if it would or wouldn't have been influenced by a successful Apollo program. I can reassess that when we get the info.

I'm just saying Ted Faro, as much of a monster as he undoubtedly was, maybe stumbled upon a hint of sense in his fear of teaching a future humanity of our civilisation's terrible mistakes.

Of course he probably got there through shame and fear of judgment, and he then acted arrogantly and committed another horrific crime. I'll not defend any of that. I'm just seeing sense in letting humanity start again clean and completely free of the past.
 
All the meanwhile the only animal life on Earth will be turkeys, racoons, rats, foxes, boars, geese, and salmon thanks to Ted purging Apollo.

Lost all the video game, movie, music, tv show too.
Wait, how long physical media like Bluray can be store? Maybe there's still video games, music, movie survive the plague like ancient vessels.
If focus able to read old voice/hologram recording, maybe digital entertainment of that time can be read by focus?
 
The thing with Apollo is he was seemingly designed to be honest and impartial in both the knowledge saved within it and the history of mankind. It could have been a fresh start in that you had a "god" basically teaching humanity not to be absolute shit heads to one another and give them the tools and knowledge to build a better world. There would have been none of the passed down animosities or hatreds from parents to children and through cultural osmosis. Not saying that stuff wouldn't have reared its head anyway, its inevitable as humans are still human but it could have been a much better start for humanity without instead having to re-suffer through the stone age and onward.
 
Are animals necessarily lost without Apollo? I mean, now Aloy knows the seeds exist. And the banks would have been designed to be activated after a few Hades restarts. Maybe a future game will center on recovering lost species?
 
Lost all the video game, movie, music, tv show too.
Wait, how long physical media like Bluray can be store? Maybe there's still video games, music, movie survive the plague like ancient vessels.
If focus able to read old voice recording, maybe digital entertainment can be read by focus?

Authored CDs and DVDs (not writable ones) have, on average, a lifespan of 20 to 30 years under pretty good storage. Blurays are said to have a lifespan up to 5 times longer, so some 100 to 150 years. So you probably wouldn't find a working DVD or Bluray in the wild after 970+ years.

If stored under pristine conditions, though - say, Library of Congress and National Archives - maybe they could last a lot longer.

We have optical media tech, though, that supposedly would last you thousands of years.
 
Authored CDs and DVDs (not writable ones) have, on average, a lifespan of 20 to 30 years under pretty good storage. Blurays are said to have a lifespan up to 5 times longer, so some 100 to 150 years. So you probably wouldn't find a working DVD or Bluray in the wild after 970+ years.

If stored under pristine conditions, though - say, Library of Congress and National Archives - maybe they could last a lot longer.

We have optical media tech, though, that supposedly would last you thousands of years.

I'm sure future people have better storage tech, video/audio log for example.
So even Apollo destroyed, we might still have a lot none project zero dawn data around the world. Ted may deleted google drive, but we still have millions of personal storage.
Aloy might stumble across library of Utah or Saving Private Ryan Faro hologram 240p remaster edition. (low res low color range hologram)
 
I don't remember: what we the point of using biomass for fuel? I think that's a wicked stupid idea for machines of that size and power.

The wanted to make them autonomous war machines that could go into remote areas and work entirely on their own: Get their fuel, override enemy machines and repair/replicate themselves.

Someone should've seen coming what happened.


Why do people keep talking about the Odyssey mission coming back? Didn't it fail?

Only one source mentioned that it failed(hyperdrive exploded when leaving the solar system), but I wouldn't say that information is reliable. Could've easily been a faked message for some reason.

Sylens is self centered and has a dangerous lust for knowledge, true. But that doesn't negate that the answers he's seeking are important.

Agreed.


In theory I agree. But after going through the Apollo learning program, what are the odds of at least one dude thinking, "You know, Ted Faro did nothing wrong...". It could be argued that's a dangerous seed to plant.

With a Apollo, humanity has the chance to learn from its mistakes.
Without Apollo, humanity is destined to repeat them.

Faros reasoning is not completely idiotic. Especially given his background, his actions make sense (which is always important for a good villain). But he is still wrong.




What makes many of the side characters so exciting is that their motivations make sense. They aren't comic book style evil villains or heros. They are human, flawed, curious, make mistakes etc.
Thats great.
 
At the end, Aloy rams her spear with the deactivation into Horus. And it shuts down.

So how then is Sylens able to retrieve it?
 
I'm sure future people have better storage tech, video/audio log for example.
So even Apollo destroyed, we might still have a lot none project zero dawn data around the world. Ted may deleted google drive, but we still have millions of personal storage.
Aloy might stumble across library of Utah or Saving Private Ryan Faro hologram 240p remaster edition. (low res low color range hologram)

There is a data point that talks about using DNA as the storage method for humanities knowledge over the long term.
 
Authored CDs and DVDs (not writable ones) have, on average, a lifespan of 20 to 30 years under pretty good storage. Blurays are said to have a lifespan up to 5 times longer, so some 100 to 150 years. So you probably wouldn't find a working DVD or Bluray in the wild after 970+ years.

If stored under pristine conditions, though - say, Library of Congress and National Archives - maybe they could last a lot longer.

We have optical media tech, though, that supposedly would last you thousands of years.

The viewpoint collectables actually go into this.

The guy who planted them was working on a fero project that could store data for 50,000 years. They couldn't commercialize it yet.

He stumbled upon the truth of the Apocalypse after being called in off his dead end project by a world renowned scientist (working on PZD/Apollo) and knowing something wasn't right about the encounter, hacked around and found the truth. He was going to commit suicide, but decided to leave a very human story behind in the chance someone or something might survive to listen to it.
 
Thebes probably has a copy of Apollo still, cause of course Ted would keep it for himself


I only hate that dude more as time has gone on. Fuck that guy.
 
Humanity survives but are forced to basically restart from the stone age with all the ugliness that can go with it.

Can't get more ugly than Humanity turning the Earth into a space rock devoid of any biomatter. That stone age humanity is already making many of the same mistakes isn't just a coincidence in this narrative. It's a statement on one of of the two overarching arguments made in the game.

Elisabeth and Ted are coming at this from different angles, but ultimately Ted is literally trying to create Eden. Man stripped of knowledge is innocence reborn in a way, but what he's really doing is only dooming them to repeat the same mistake because of his own fears, his own shattered ego, and his own need for penance and redemption.

The tree of knowledge is a tool, it can be used for creation or destruction. But without history as a guidepost, humanity will repeat the same mistakes.

Sylens is correct, and so was Elisabeth. Humanity can never turn back the clock and renter the garden of Eden.

It is not for us, and its against our nature.
 
With a Apollo, humanity has the chance to learn from its mistakes.
Without Apollo, humanity is destined to repeat them.

Faros reasoning is not completely idiotic. Especially given his background, his actions make sense (which is always important for a good villain). But he is still wrong.




What makes many of the side characters so exciting is that their motivations make sense. They aren't comic book style evil villains or heros. They are human, flawed, curious, make mistakes etc.
Thats great.

I hear people saying that without the knowledge from Apollo, humanity will repeat the mistakes of the past. Again I wonder, is that inevitable?

In Horizon, humanity has been reborn into an Earth they must share with machines. Humanity lives daily with a healthy respect for the machines. They coexist, they don't know anything different. This is their natural world. Will the Nora repeat the mistakes of Ted Faro? Will the Banuk? I'm not so sure they will.



I agree about the motivations of the characters in this world. They are very well written. It's great.
 
Finally finished up the game, and aside from yes, f-ck Ted, I'm trying to figure out the order of operations on some of the events in the past, based on the logs.

This is the abbreviated time-line as I understand it.

So one of Faro's robotic / nanotech swarms gets away from humanity, and it's stated they don't have "half a century" to crack the codes to get it back under control.

Swarm eats the world. Dead planet. Swarm goes into hibernation, still not under human control.

Gaia starts the re-seeding process. We don't know how many times it looped with Hades / Gaia - I actually thought we were going to find out that we're on like the 10th Aloy attempt by now, but it's fine that she's the first.

Hades is infected by something, overridden and starts... to do what exactly? Repurpose the cauldrons and up aggression of the cauldron bots? Is that the 15 years ago thing when machines became more hostile?

Aloy is born around this time

Gaia nukes herself to destroy Hades. Doesn't work. Game plays out.

So while I may be off on some of this, when was the Faro swarm brought back under any control? It was never mentioned how Hades suddenly had access to the Faro swarm when it was locked away from everyone. Is that just a "between the lines" kind of thing? Or did he just have himself and was corrupting the rebooted faro

Even then, the massive spider bots that are tunneling around through the mountain landscape -- what were those? Hades? Why would one of them have shut down right before it was going to tunnel into the all-mother bunker? What did that and when? Are the spiders Hades?

Loved the game, and want to know more about the other bunkers, but the swarm / Hades line is very blurry to me.
 
I feel like Ted only deleted Apollo because he didn't want future civilization to know how much of an egotistical fuck boy he was. Apollo would've had the knowledge about the Faro plague and he would have been looked at poorly for the remainder of human history. I think that's the real reason he didn't want anyone to have that knowledge.

Was I the only one that felt the game ended abruptly? Clearly there is so much more story to tell and it just kinda stops with so many questions unanswered.
 
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