It’s so good. Sometimes I just run around shooting Inception arrows at everything just to freak things out, still hasn’t gotten old.
Now that I’ve basically finished it and know what the story is, I’m tempted to believe that Kojima primarily teamed up with Guerrilla not because of their engine, but because they were basically making a Metal Gear game. I know, big robots and all, but Aloy being a clone really sealed the deal for me, here.
I’ve been bursting to get this off my chest for awhile now:
Fuck Talanah. She didn’t contribute a damn thing in killing Redmaw. Yeah OK, so maybe the rules of the Lodge dictate that she ascends to Sunhawk because of her rank over Aloy…but the least she could do is prostrate herself before Aloy for handing it to her on a silver platter. She barely acknowledges the work Aloy puts in.
Apparently, this is also a video on YouTube right now:
LOL, perfect.
Yeah, THAT was weird, because Avad didn’t make that proposition to me. Somehow I bypassed that entirely, yet when I went back to warn him about the imminent attack he went off on the apology. Aloy was all gracious in accepting the apology and I was just wondering what the hell he was on about. There were a couple of moments like that where the scripting seemed to bounce ahead.
Oh, and seemingly the all allies trophy is not missable, regardless of game choices. Jury is still out, but official word is you just have to complete the side missions.
Annoying, as I played the game as a millennial snowflake when I’m normally darker than that. Should have brained that kid with the rock in the prologue.
Though Helis’ final words of “You… you pity me?” was delicious.
Sylens when he found out APOLLO was destroyed…
That fight with Helis, all through the game I had just been picking the option that I most felt Aloy would be feeling at that time. But when the Helis dialogue-options turned up, I didn’t know what would happen. The “Love” option seemed a good choice, BUT I didn’t know if that would end up sparing him, which I definitely didn’t want. Remembering Rost, I chose aggressive (for the first time all game, I think) and it was fucking brutal. Aloy got really dark. I twisted that knife like there was no tomorrow.
Kind of badass, but now that I’m pretty sure he would have died no matter what I wish I had picked the “Love” optionm, which was about her feeling regret for all the wasted life, right? That sounds more Aloy to me. I don’t know why I care so much. But I really grew to like Aloy – seeing her destroy a man mentally while also stabbing him to death was pretty harsh.
“Your whole life was a failure, and soon no one will even remember you. Turn your face to the Sun, and think about THAT.”
…Lawd.
AThe love option is basically her telling him it didn’t need to happen, he’s butchered so many and he’s been a pawn in service of something he doesn’t even understand.
The turn your face to the sun bit is almost a mercy gift.
But yeah, I didn’t play as I wanted to as there was a lot of bad advice about the trophy from loads of sites.
AI got the all allies trophy without really trying, but then again I always tend to play toward the side of good (whatever that may be) when making character choices in games. I’ve never enjoyed playing the villain, even in games like the Fable series where I only see half the content by playing one side. What can I say? I guess playing the bad guy isn’t fun for me.
Hell, I even had Aloy make friends with Nil, who is basically this game’s less honorable Dexter. An NPC that makes no bones about enjoying murder and chooses to murder bandits not because it’s the right thing to do, but because bandits fight back the most and therefore give him the biggest rush. Anyways after she eliminated all the bandit camps he challenged Aloy to a duel to the death for one final rush and I chose the refuse (heart) option. He reacted as though she were dumping him when I did that and it made me laugh. I was happy to see that the game then had Nil then show up at the end, totally stoked to fight in the battle against the Eclipse and I have to say it was something else to see Nil running around in his element when Aloy had to run through the burning Lower Meridian town as she made her way to the Spire. I can only hope that psycho didn’t survive the battle, even though he technically was an ally.
Was just going over a bunch of the in-game datalogs again before getting full into Mass Effect: Andromeda, and just gonna say this again, but god, Ted Faro is such a bastard. It’s a testament to how much corporations controlled the world by the time it ended that he was able to not only escape some form of punishment, but was also allowed to both create his own bunker and gain access to Zero Dawn. Fuck that guy, but also fuck the society that created him. Bashar Mati’s story makes it clear how utterly corrupt human society was by the time it all went up in flames.
A lot of the datalogs, and especially Mati’s story, paint a picture of a future world where corporations and those who run them have as much power as individual nations. And Faro Automated Solutions was the largest, most powerful of all of them. There is really no telling what they could have forced him to do without, as Lis explained, revealing to everyone exactly how fucked they all were. The same secrecy that gave Zero Dawn the cover it needed for completion allowed Ted Faro to escape the punishment he really, truly deserved.
I’m hoping Horizon’s inevitable GOTY re-release will be subtitled as the “Fuck Ted” Edition.
(Or, how about the, “Better Off Ted” Edition?)
Yeah, he’s certainly one of the more memorable character creations of recent memory. Someone the protagonist has no actual interaction with at all, who has (hopefully) been dead for hundreds of years and a victim of his own hubris and yet he’s absolutely fucking detestable like pretty much no other. I genuinely can’t recall another story in any media that left me seething so much over the actions of one guy the way this one did.
A couple of points I was thinking about after finishing the game:
I reckon Far Zenith, Odyssey, and those 77 (of whom 76 are secret) billionaires have still some part to play in this story. The game alluded to those events *way* too much to never follow them up again. Not to mention the implications of that ship having an alpha-build of the APOLLO-entity. Also I think we will get to Elysium eventually, and who knows what happened to that place? Dunno, but having thousands of the brightest minds on the planet living in basically a fallout shelter (city?) could lead to interesting things.
Also, I’ve got no doubt that Rost’s backstory is directly linked to the unidentified signal. A group of mercenaries penetrates the border, makes a beeline for Denver, excavates something, and makes a beeline out. A little over a year later, the signal is sent. Coincidences don’t make for compelling storytelling. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if Ted Faro was still alive somehow, someway, and behind all of this. He was supposedly isolated in a personal bunker called Thebes, but I don’t believe such an person would let himself die of old age alone. Who else would understand GAIA so perfectly to launch an attack like that?
AGiven Utah seemed to be the last place to fall, it makes sense his pyramid would be nearby…
I doubt it’s Faro, but a clone x generations down the line. Each one fed self serving bull from the parent. The GAIA bunker did have a log saying that was possible (Lightkeeper was it?).
A small society like that in a big bunker could probably last the millennia.
A[quote name=“Leto II” url=“/community/t/159145/horizon-zero-dawn/50#post_4256236”]A couple of points I was thinking about after finishing the game:
I reckon Far Zenith, Odyssey, and those 77 (of whom 76 are secret) billionaires have still some part to play in this story. The game alluded to those events *way* too much to never follow them up again. Not to mention the implications of that ship having an alpha-build of the APOLLO-entity. Also I think we will get to Elysium eventually, and who knows what happened to that place? Dunno, but having thousands of the brightest minds on the planet living in basically a fallout shelter (city?) could lead to interesting things.
Also, I’ve got no doubt that Rost’s backstory is directly linked to the unidentified signal. A group of mercenaries penetrates the border, makes a beeline for Denver, excavates something, and makes a beeline out. A little over a year later, the signal is sent. Coincidences don’t make for compelling storytelling. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if Ted Faro was still alive somehow, someway, and behind all of this. He was supposedly isolated in a personal bunker called Thebes, but I don’t believe such an person would let himself die of old age alone. Who else would understand GAIA so perfectly to launch an attack like that?
[/quote]
I really don’t believe Faro would try to destroy the world again, but I could see him finding some way of sticking around waiting for another rogue signal to hit earth so that he could try to track it and get to the source of why his Robots were hijacked. If only to get revenge. I think this boils down to me feeling that as loathsome as he is, I believe Faro really didn’t want the world to end, because he wouldn’t have asked Elisabet to find a way to stop the Faro swarm if he did. If he wanted to end the world he would have simply bankrolled his own version of Zero Dawn and then hid in his bunker until he could rebuild the world the way he wanted it.
As for the prospect of Faro or a clone of Faro still being around, I think it’s more likely that the real Faro is still around. Why else would the writers of the game go so far to have Sylens mention Cryogenics to Aloy without it maybe coming up in a future game?
Yeah, I’m thinking Sylens’ references to cryogenics are going to pay off somehow in the next game, too. Good chances are that the sequel takes place in the Forbidden West, a.k.a. California, so this will probably be the last time Aloy will have direct dealings with the Oseram. They shipped Dervahl to there for trial after all, so perhaps the antagonist is already waiting for Aloy to show up, whoever they are. And, of course, I have no doubts that the Odyssey will play some role in the proceedings.
Interestingly, when Zero Dawn receives the Ectogenic chambers from Far Zenith (the *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 build has few restraints 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 clashes with one that has access to all knowledge. How did they handle that knowledge, and do they think Earth is theirs by right because they are actually in full possession of the knowledge of the Ancients?
(Also, did you guys taunt Dervahl after he’s in prison? He’s got about 20 different, unique embittered lines, and makes sure you KNOW that he totally hates your fucking guts. LOL.)
BTW, if you Platinum this game, you’ll get a download code for a free Horizon PS4 Platimum theme e-mailed to you from Sony. Snagged the trophy yesterday, and the code showed up in my inbox early this morning.
AWife and kids are away so naturally bought a PS4 Pro.
Came with a couple games (Farcry Primal and Watchdogs 2), but I asked what they’d recommend to show off the “Pro” aspect as well as 4K.
So they suggested Horizon Zero Dawn.
And oh my sweet fucking lord. I think my jaw was on the floor for the entire 8 hours before my body screamed at me that it needed food and water and to move from its position in front of the TV.
From E3, the first Horizon DLC trailer, The Frozen Wilds:
20:19:
Looks like Aloy is going Northwest into Wyoming.
https://store.playstation.com/#!/en-us/g…ozen-wilds
$19.99 for regular users; $14.99 for PS+.
Christ, I’m legitimately in love with this game.
The world building on display is just so fucking cooooooool! I love digging up all these text files that paints the Old World as a dystopian cyberpunk hellhole. And I just love the whole tribal feel. It’s done in a way I really haven’t seen before.
And it is so gorgeous. My god, riding through the city ruins by the moonlight on my Strider was a legitimately breathtaking experience.
And it’s fun as hell to play! Luring machines into traps and peppering them with arrows. Having to think tactically in how you take them down. It really succeeds in making you feel like a post-fall hunter.
Climbed my first Long Neck, which was so fucking cool.
Also tried to take on a pack of Bellowbacks which…did NOT go so well.
ABandit camps. I loved clearing bandit camps. Good times.
Need to get back into it and get all the collectibles.
AWhat I loved about clearing bandit camps in Horizon is that the developers didn’t mimic Bethesda’s horrible fallout 4 system. In that the camps in Horizon don’t repopulate with bandits after a set period of time, they actually stay cleared the rest of the game and turn into little towns you can visit with merchants and quest giving NPCs.
Finally got around to finishing this last night. My thoughts:
Just have to agree with everyone else here. FUCK Ted Faro. I hope I get the opportunity to kill that cunt down the line. And while I’m at it, FUCK STORMBIRDS!
Was also thinking that it feels that at some point this game was going to have romance options in Varl, Erend and Avad. But they decided to nip that idea beforehand. Which is for the best, I think. Aloy got no time for that dick when there are robots to kill and worlds to save.