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For those who want the full game-order experience: *A baby is born to mysterious circumstances and is given to an honorable man named Rost who is also a permanent outcast due to mysterious circumstances. Old lady leader #1 thinks baby is holy; old lady leader #2 thinks baby is demon. They argue. Rost names the baby Aloy. She will be raised as an outcast to the tribe, the Nora. She grows up being treated like dirt by everyone. *There are regular animals but also robot animals, and the robot animals have been getting more angry and dangerous lately. *As a small child Aloy falls in a hole and finds a super advanced sci-fi bunker. She finds a hi-tech thing called a focus that you place *It also allows you to read/listen to ancient records that were left. Here we (the player) learn we're on Earth (references to Machu Pichu; Christian prayers) and also learn that something so bad was happening that everyone died by suicide *Aloy grows up with a singular goal of training to win The Proving; the Nora tribe's coming-of-age ceremony. Outcast children who participate and complete (basically guaranteed) become full members of the tribe, but the winner gets a boon from the old lady leaders, and Aloy wants them to tell her about how she was born. *Rost tells Aloy he's going to go far away because as a full member of the tribe he won't be allowed to interact with him, an outcast, anymore. This upsets Aloy. *Aloy visits the "big city" of the Nora for the first time. People are preparing for the Proving, but also a delegating from the Carja is here. The Carja are another tribe who spent a bunch of time raiding and enslaving and murdering the Nora and basically everyone. They've got a new, non-evil king and are on a goodwill tour. She meets an Oseram (another tribe) man named Erend who seems pretty chill, and another Oseram man named Olin who also has a focus and acts super weird and squirrely as soon as he meets Aloy. *Aloy runs in the Proving, and in spite of multiple individuals trying to sabotage her, she wins, because of course. Then "Shadow Carja" (followers of the old evil king) show up and try to murder everyone. Aloy kills a bunch but gets her rear end kicked by a big scary man named Helis. She's saved by Rost, who himself dies. *Aloy wakes up in a special sacred cave that's supposed to be only for the old lady leaders; the Mother Mountain. She finds out there's a door like the ones from the ruins. The door seems to recognize her, but says that the "alpha registry" is corrupted and won't open. She discovers she was found as a baby right outside this door. Nobody knows who her mother is. *One of the dead Shadow Carja left behind a focus of his own. Aloy checks it out and sees an image of her from Olin's POV, followed by a scary voice saying she's a 99% genetic match for someone named Elisabet Sobeck, and ordering her death. Genetics being a field of study that didn't survive the old world, Aloy assumes that this Elisabet is her mother. Old leader ladies #1 and #3 (who basically just follows what #1 says because gently caress #2) make Aloy a "Seeker", giving her sacred cover to leave Nora lands (usually grounds for being outcast) to figure out who attacked the Proving. *Aloy meets another friend named Varl, whose mother was the war leader. He's pretty cool, and does cool things. *Aloy tracks Olin to the Carja capital city Meridian, a huge city built on/near a mesa near something called the "Spire", a really tall metal tower that looks like maybe a power or communications tower from the old world. She eventually finds that Olin is a digger and explorer who was blackmailed by the "Eclipse" (an extra super cult within the Shadow Carja and also responsible for the attack on the Proving) into helping them exhume ancient war machines for them and also spying for them. They are holding his family hostage. Because Aloy isn't a monster she spares Olin and together they rescue his family. *Meanwhile, Aloy and Erend uncover a plot to kidnap/kill Erend's sister, the new sun king's personal bodyguard. Erend's sister does eventually die, but Aloy and Erend buddy cop together to uncover and foil a plot to kill the sun king and burn Meridian to the ground. It's super fun. The new sun king, who it is worth mentioning is insanely hot, offers Aloy his hand in marraige, because frankly everyone wants a piece of Aloy and she doesn't really care about it all. That said, she does take a moment to admonish the king in trying to make her his bodyguard crush rebound. *Aloy, with the help of the mysterious but smoothly soothing voice of Lance Reddick calling himself "Slyens", finds the ruins of "Faro Automated Systems", where she learns that a businessman named Ted Faro built a crapton of automated robotic weapons of war with the ability to self-replicate by consuming biomass. This includes some of the war machines she's seen, but not the robot animals. *This is an immensely stupid idea, that goes about as well as expected. *At the top of the tour she sees a video of Ted Faro begging Elisabet Sobeck for help, because (surprise!) a swarm of robots went rogue and kill everyone and everything. Sobeck comes up with a plan called "Zero Dawn"; we don't learn the details, but Ted doesn't like it very much. Still, she blackmails him into signing off on bankrolling it as she heads to U.S. Robot Command. Sylens knows where that is, so it's Aloy's next destination. *At U.S. Robot Command, she finds the various U.S. generals bickering over Sobeck's plan, which is told to be the only thing that will save humanity. We still don't learn what Zero Dawn is, but many generals call it unconscionable until the head honcho, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Aaron Herres, thanks Sobeck for giving humanity a chance and puts his foot down. Zero Dawn is moving forward. *She and Sylens learn where Zero Dawn HQ is. Hooray! It's directly underneath Sunfall, the Shadow Carja/Eclipse capital. Awwww. Together they concoct a plan to take out the Eclipse's Focus network, making it easier for her to sneak into Zero Dawn. *It's worth pointing out that Aloy and Sylens have a strained relationship. Aloy is annoyed that Sylens care more about knowledge than anything else and isn't risking his own hide. Sylens thinks Aloy is short-sighted and selfish, caring more about figuring out her own past and connection to Sobeck then the vast historical knowledge they're uncovering. *Aloy sneaks into the Eclipse base and knocks out the Focus network, but not before coming face-to-face with HADES, the scary robot voice that is leading the Eclipse. She escapes, barely, and heads to Sunfall. *At Sunfall, Aloy sees that the Shadow Carja's "king" is a scared child, hot sun king's little brother. Here she meets Vanasha, a badass attendant to the Queen who asks for Aloy's help. *Aloy manages to get inside the Zero Dawn headquarters, but not without alerting the Eclipse as well as opening their way into the HQ as well. This is the best location in the game, as the pacing of the reveals here is :chefkiss: *First is an intake room; people who arrived here were scared and disoriented, obviously being pulled off the street. One is Travis Tate, a sardonic rear end in a top hat of a black hat hacker who thought he was way off the grid. The people here are experts in their field. AI, robotics, geologists, even art historians. From here they were led to the first viewing room, dubbed "The Bad News". *The Bad News is delivered by General Aaron Herres: the Faro Swarm is unstoppable. It would take 50 years to crack their activation codes, and the Earth's inhabitability will last for maybe a year and a half. All life on the planet will die; mass global extinction. It is literally unstoppable. Sobeck's "Zero Dawn" is the only way humanity will have a future. General Herres' overseen project: Operation Enduring Victory, in which every able person was conscripted to fight the swarm, was going to fail, and get every person involved killed, because every moment gained is a moment for Zero Dawn to continue its work. *The next chamber is where the Zero Dawn candidates speak with counselors, whose instructions tell them to be well-versed in explaining that no, there really is no way to stop the swarm, every angle has been considered. Zero Dawn is the only way. Candidates are upset, panicky, angry, but a few seem prepared to learn with Sobeck has up her sleeve and how they can help. Once sufficiently calmed, candidates are brought to the second viewing room, dubbed "The Good News" *The Good News is delivered by Elisabet Sobeck: Zero Dawn is a not a mega-weapon meant to stop the Faro Swarm; that cannot be done. Zero Dawn is meant to rebuild the Earth well after the Faro robots are dealt with. A mass terraforming and genetic re-seeding project headed by the most advanced AI possible, dubbed GAIA. We are treated to explanations of GAIAs sub-systems, all named after Greek myths. One is designed to keeping cracking the Faro swarm activation codes, and then when finished build relay towers around the world and deactivate all robots. Another is designed to beginning the terraforming process; creating robotic creatures designed to assist in the process. Functions for reseeding plant life, animal life, and eventually humanity. Also introduced, but not yet explained, is HADES, the same psuedo-AI that now leads the Eclipse and called for Aloy's death. *Here we learn that the candidates were given a choice: work for Zero Dawn, and they and their family get to live out their natural lives in the Elysium shelter. Otherwise, they could either choose medical euthanasia (with a 48 hour waiting period) or indefinite detention (letting anyone go was impossible, but those in detention had 48 hours to choose a different option). This part is super bleak. *We get broader introductions to some of the more plot-relevant subfunctions, starting with HEPHASTUS, designed to build the robots necessary for the terraforming project and responsible for the Cauldrons (optional dungeons where robot animals are mass-produced and where Aloy learns how to override groups of them). HEPHASTUS is also responsible for the events of the Frozen Wilds DLC, so we'll get back to him. *We also learn about APOLLO, which is designed to be a repository of Earth's collected knowledge and cultural heritage, to be shared with the growing humans using a scaffolded and gamified educational system. This confuses Aloy and angers Sylens; everything else seemed to work, but APOLLO's knowledge seems to be lost. *We finally learn HADES' purpose. He's built by Travis Tate, the aforementioned hacker and death-metal/porn aficionado whose attempts to add The Human Centipede series (which got like 6 sequels in Horizon!Earth) and hentai to the APOLLO archive are rebuffed (Tate is clearly a Goon), but builds HADES to specifications. See, there were concerns raised that GAIA would get things wrong at first, concerns brought up by everyone's lease favorite human Ted Faro, but the GAIA AI agrees with. Since GAIA is designed to build and foster life, a subfunction was required to take the reins over for a bit to re-devastate the planet to give GAIA a chance to try it again. Sobeck is worried about this but ultimately agrees. *Aloy finally gets an uncorrupted alpha registry (the Alphas are so named as the leaders of the individual pieces of Zero Dawn) but is then captured by the Eclipse. *The Eclipse, being a wacky evil sun cult, decides to sacrifice her in the Sun Ring (an amphitheater attached to Sunfall) at high noon, because of course they did. Aloy is able get a hold of her gear using the tried and true method of "bait the charging boss into running into a pillar and dodging at the last minute". Helis, seething, sics some more war machines on her, but she's saved at the last minute by an explosion in the wall of the Sun Ring, as Sylens rides in, in the flesh, on an overriden machine, hands the reins of one to Aloy, and they clear out. Before leaving, however, Helis recognizes Sylens, and calls him a traitor. *Aloy is amazed that Sylens actually risked his neck for real for her; Sylens replies that he needs her ability to match Elisabet to open more doors of knowledge for him, not because he likes or anything. Aloy wonders how Sylens knew where to find her, to which he replies "the Eclipse is a wacky evil sun cult, of course they were going to sacrifice her in the Sun Ring at high noon". Aloy decides to return to Nora territory, partially to get back in the Mother Mountain but mostly because Helis decided to send an army with death war robots to murder all the Nora. *Aloy saves the day, of course, and is hailed as a religious savior to the people, which kind of pisses her off (after all, they spent most of her life treating her like worse than dirt). With the full alpha registry on hand, she enters the Mother Mountain to found one of the sites of ELEUTHIA, the GAIA subroutine designed re-birth and raise human life. The children are raised in relative comfort by a pair of robotic caretakers, but the children chafe under their constraints, especially as they can see a large unopened chamber with a door that would never open for them. Aloy, being a boss, gets the door open and finds that the locked chamber was meant to be a school, housing the knowledge of APOLLO. However, none of the APOLLO knowledge is actually available here. * The takeaway here is that the first new humans, the world over, were birthed in these sites, but were never given any sort of education before being loosed in the world on the cusp of adulthood. *Ultimately, she finds a message from the GAIA AI to Elisabet: twenty years prior to the game, a "strange signal" from an unknown source has re-awakened all of GAIA's subfunctions and freed them from her control. This ranges from harmless (ELEUTHIA) to very scary (HEPHASTUS) to apocalyptic (HADES). As a last resort, she says that she blows herself up, cutting off HADES' ability to control her own functions against the world. As part of this, GAIA makes the decision to create a clone of Elisabet Sobeck, who would be able to set things right and restore GAIA's functionality. Once raised and "birthed", this baby was left at the door to ELEUTHIA to be found by the Nora; this baby/clone was of course Aloy. *Sylens speaks of an ancient ruin where a massive explosion was triggered twenty years ago; a ruin so secured not even Sylens, through years of attempts, was able to gain entrance. He invites Aloy to his home base, which he created just outside those ruins. There he spills the beans; he had hinted in the past that he had helped the Eclipse in the past, but now he states that he created the Eclipse. He found HADES trapped in a broken machine; Sylens repaired him enough to give him voice, and the two entered a partnership. HADES would give Sylens the knowledge of the ancients (calculus, physics, etc.) while Sylens helped him by telling him more about the surrounding region and eventually helping him build an army. Sylens helped HADES trick the Eclipse into thinking that it was an important figure of their mythology. Sylens also helped build their Focus network, which HADES used to issue his kill order for Sylens after it had decided he had outlived his usefulness. Sylens shares that HADES was always most interested in The Spire; not Meridian or the Carja, but specifically The Spire. They easily deduce the meaning; The Spire was part of the network that issued the Faro Swarm deactivation code, and HADES was going to override it and reactivate the swarm. *Oh, at some point during all this Aloy goes back to Sunfall and helps Vanasha save first one of her friends and then rescure the Queen and the Sun King's little brother and bring them to the safety of Meridian. All in a day's work. *The only way to stop HADES is to find the Master Override, found in the ruins of GAIA Prime, the ruins Aloy stands on the precipice of entering. Sylens gifts Aloy his custom spear, to which she could attach the Master Override and destroy HADES once and for all. *Aloy enters GAIA Prime; the first thing she finds is a memorial built to Elisabet Sobeck. GAIA Prime and the Alphas were flown out here to live in the GAIA Prime bunker, because their work wasn't quite done, but it was too late to remain aboveground, so they weren't able to join the others in Elysium (its worth noting that some members of the team still chose medical euthanasia or freedom over Elysium). However, upon arrival, they discovered a catastrophic failure in one of the site's seals, that would ultimately spell doom for them and GAIA and the whole Zero Dawn process. While the Alphas argued amongst themselves over who would go outside, fix the seal, but be stuck outside, Dr. Sobeck just went and did it herself. One of the remaining Alphas built the shrine to her, and others were given the opportunity to leave a few thoughts for her. Travis Tate gets a lot of humanizing in the files found in GAIA Prime, in case one was left thinking he was just the monster responsible for HADES (also he lost all the hentai he was planning on archiving). *We learn that Ted Faro got to have his own shelter, a private built pyramid he called "Thebes". Faro leaves several messages, talking to Elisabet, grappling with his own guilt, also grappling with ways to offload his guilt. His target? The collected historical knowledge and culture of human society. You know, APOLLO. After one of these rants, Aloy responds "I don't like where this is going," speaking for most of us. It's worth noting, my partner was actually on-board with Ted at this point; maybe it was a bad idea to set humanity right back on the same path they originally were. *Then Ted decides to unilaterally destroy APOLLO while locking the Alphas completely out of the system. Then he sealed the chamber the remaining Alphas were in and removed all their oxygen, killing each and every one of them so nobody would be able to fix what he did. Yeah, gently caress Ted Faro. *Aloy gets the Master Override, shoves it onto Sylens' spear, and heads to Meridian, where all the friends she made are waiting to make their final stand against HADES and the Eclipse. You get to meet all the friends you made along the way, they all get to flirt with Aloy one last time, and then the Eclipse attacks. Lots of bad dudes and bad robits show up. Aloy kills Helis, primarily by blowing his rear end up a bunch. *After the sun king is saved, Aloy makes her way to The Spire, where her closest allies Varl and Erend await to join the fight against HADES, now in the possession of an incredibly beefed up Deathbringer (we've fought these before, but weaker versions in easier circumstances and more places to hide). HADES does get to the spire and starts transmitting the re-activation codes to the Faro robots. During the battle HADES summons multiple waves of robots, and not easy, annoying robits, but the scary powerful kinds. It's a pretty tense fight; also there's a timer, but it's pretty generous. *Aloy stabs HADES with Sylens' spear with the Master Override; HADES "spirit" is pulled from machine and appears to fade away. The reactivation code reverses, and the Faro robots are once again put down. The world is saved. Hooray! *Aloy goes on a journey to find Sobeck's home in Nevada*, where Sobeck had told the Alphas she was trying to get to after getting locked out of GAIA Prime. Aloy finds Sobeck's remains as she listens to Sobeck's last known recording; Sobeck talking about what she would have wanted for her daughter, had she had one; it's incredibly sad and poignant and :chefkiss: *The End *Oh yeah and the HADES' "spirit" flies back on screen and ends up trapped inside of a container held by... Sylens! Dun dun dun! Yeah, so of course Sylens didn't help you kill HADES; he made it so that you could capture HADES for him. Because knowledge. You know. *The End, for real this time *I didn't mention it now, but we eventually discover that the bulk of the game takes place in Colorado & Utah, with a little bit of the Arizona/New Mexico badlands, and the DLC takes us to parts of Wyoming (namely Yellewstone National Park).
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Jan 19, 2022 20:32
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mutata posted:I believe Cyan wasn't part of Zero Dawn, but a separate initiative before the Faro Plague to stabilize the Yellowstone caldera, which explains why Cyan wasn't affected by all of the Zero Dawn AIs going wacky and trying to eat each other. Yes, Cyan was part of Operation Firebreak, which was part of the Clawback from catastrophic climate change. e: Because Horizon: Zero Dawn is the type of game that posits that AI and autonomous machines will help save us from oncoming global crisis of climate change, but that they will also murder the entire planet a few decades ago.
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Jan 19, 2022 21:33
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I mean... Thebes is still out there, somewhere. So presumably we'll find it at some point (see also: Elysium); but how much Ted Faro plays a role from there remains to be seen.
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Jan 20, 2022 00:18
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zakharov posted:Laughing that the Carrie-Anne Moss character who looks like Tilda Swinton is named Tilda. Tilda Swinton doesn't even often look like Tilda Swinton
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Jan 20, 2022 20:48
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Sylens' flaw is that his drive for knowledge is purely selfish. I never once got the impression that he was planning on opening a school or whatever when he was done to share what he'd learned for future generations. Teaching, sharing knowledge, these things are not exactly in his nature. He's already apparently learned physics, calculus, he's reverse engineered wireless networking, and he hasn't exactly been in a rush to share that knowledge. And i cant picture him doing so without there being something in it for him.
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Jan 23, 2022 22:37
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I did not get the impression that Sylens didn't particularly care about anyone, except insofar as they are useful to him. Even in the end, he lies to and manipulates Aloy in order to get what he wants (a captive HADES). At best he comes to grudgingly admire her tenacity and ability, but in the way a craftsman admires a masterwork tool. I think we are quickly forgetting this the same guy who casually referred to the genocide of an entire tribe or two as one might regret inclement weather.
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Jan 24, 2022 02:49
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CobiWann posted:I still can't get over that the voice actress who portrays Aloy also portrays Tiny Tina. Also Parvati in Outer Worlds
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Jan 24, 2022 20:29
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Cactus posted:I bought a PS5 by accident. Tbf it's still pretty hard to do that on purpose
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Jan 27, 2022 07:13
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Apraxin posted:I feel like I've been away from the console wars for too long, that guy's twitter is just completely incomprehensible to me. I didn't understand much, but what I did I hated.
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Jan 28, 2022 07:03
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Zil posted:"No don't you see that reusing even a single line of code from one game to another is a sign of laziness! 1!!! "* *When on a console exclusive for a console I hate
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Jan 28, 2022 20:12
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Happy Noodle Boy posted:I hope we can hug and hold hands with Petra. CobiWann posted:I hope there continues to be a purposeful lack of romantic options for Aloy. Just let a girl save the world. I hope that both of these are true
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Feb 7, 2022 18:01
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exquisite tea posted:No romance, but also, more gay. Platonic cuddles and handholding! But otherwise yes.
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Feb 7, 2022 18:18
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The DLC weapons are actually super helpful and useful (especially the upgraded ice one) if you're willing to drop fat stacks on the Blaze/Chillwater/Shocker to keep them babies fed
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Feb 8, 2022 01:12
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It also wouldn't be outside the realm of believability for Sobeck to tell a lie in order to spur motiviation.
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Feb 17, 2022 01:13
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Unlucky7 posted:Putting aside that this seems out of what we have seen of her character, there was a huge chance that it could have had the exact opposite effect on morale. Oh, I definitely don't buy it myself, but simply positing it as a possibility.
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Feb 17, 2022 01:29
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I just learned that you can dye your armor and why hasn't this been front and center in every review
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Feb 17, 2022 01:55
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Yeah, fighting Lapras is always more annoying and less fun than you'd hope
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Sep 8, 2022 16:35
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I thought the Ted Faro stuff was perfectly fitting, honestly. I'd also love to thank this game for curing me of my obsessive completionism; if it were even a little bit easier to grind for every material for every upgrade I would probably still be working on it now.
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Oct 3, 2022 23:15
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At best, Faro had a choice: join his wealthy peers on a suicide mission into space (one Liz didn't seem to have much faith in, and if nothing else at that point he would've trusted her), OR, bury himself in a monument to his own ego with his new cultist family and literal harem. Not really a shocker that he didn't bother with the Zeniths
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Nov 23, 2022 05:17
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Sakurazuka posted:Lol that I played Horizon 1 and that game one after the other. Lol same; two games that excel at both severe existential dread and unrelenting hope
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Dec 23, 2022 23:45
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A Wizard of Goatse posted:like the whole game from the first Corruptor is those menacing relics not being as dead as everyone hoped. Part of what made climbing around on those things once you knew what they were so unnerving was the everpresent, constantly hinted-at possibility that one might wake up at any moment, the way Hades was associated with them I'm pretty sure only game engine limitations kept Chekhov's doom robot from firing at the finale of Zero Dawn They're not completely unstoppable though; and thematically pulling together basically everyone ever to work together to bring one down would be a pretty drat satisfying conclusion to the arc for Aloy.
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Feb 1, 2023 18:40
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A Wizard of Goatse posted:your neolithic buddies banding together to find the right weak spot you can shoot with your bow that all of humanity was just too dumb to figure out last time around is precisely what I had in mind as an unsatisfying way to fight the thing that the whole dramatic weight of the story rests on being 100% impossible to beat in a fight. they are demonstrably stoppable by exactly one thing that involves letting them exterminate all life on Earth and starting over from scratch. By the time you get the crew together to put one down it's too late and it's converted the West Coast into a dozen more of 'em, that's their whole deal. An army of Horuses are demonstrably unstoppable. A single Horus, especially before it's gotten the opportunity to self-replicate, can be taken down by concentrated military might. Demonstrably. I'm not thinking of "everyone help Aloy shoot a pointy stick at the glowing red weakness" here. I'm thinking combining Oseram weaponry and Tenatkh flyers and a small army of machine riders and everyone working together to keep it check and occupied long enough for Aloy to get her spear upgraded by Sylens so she can drive it through the things brain/heart/core/whatever and finally bring it down.
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Feb 2, 2023 01:22
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A Wizard of Goatse posted:yeah that's mad lame, thematically on par with Ted coming back and joining the crew as your nerdy inventor buddy. I really hope they got something better up their sleeve but am not betting on it Yeah why should the dramatic climax of the game about the hero learning she doesn't have to do everything by herself and accepting and soliciting aid is important feature an intense collaborative victory, weaksauce op
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Feb 2, 2023 01:51
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hazardousmouse posted:the dev team really seem to want me to like the quen and their representative and i just want to chuck them all into the fuckin sun The Quen are by and large garbage but Alva is definitely a Good Egg
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Apr 12, 2023 17:21
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Machine Strike is a lot more fun and dynamic when you build an interesting team rather than cheese it with one big boy, I had fun with it.
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Apr 13, 2023 06:48
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