So yea I'm a little late to the party. I did start Horizon when it originally came out early in the year and I was super impressed with the look of the game. The writing was good and I especially liked how little kid Aloy interacted with a hologram she found, the way she voices it back and just everything about that scene was impressive.

Then the culture appropriation really kicked in, so I'm native American and hearing characters(white characters) throw around the word brave did not sit well. It's also not just that, everything about these people is taken from other cultures. Also when you get into the meat of the main story these appropriations make no sense. There is one scene from a hologram later that could explain the "braves" term outside of the real word meaning. I bailed on the game, either I got bored or something else stole me away. Anyway I just wanted to get that out of the way, now let's just discuss the story and character. Although feel free to hit me up on the cultural appropriation.

So due to some life choices I have a ton of time on my hands and the games this year are so good and so long. A few days ago I resolved to finally get into and finish Horizon zero dawn. The game starts very strong introducing you to Aloy and her place in this world. Everyone loves a good montage into adulthood, right from the beginning Aloy is presented as a strong character who will not let others bring her down while also being compassionate(although how much of that is her genes, more on this later). That could also just be the way I played the character and her choices you can make.

The one thing I will say about this game is while the side quests are decent I never felt the need to do them. The main story is so damn good that I just needed to know more and more. Also I'm not gunna lie just walking around and navigating the world is a chore. Machines are always in packs and they always want to kill you when I just want to run by to the next mission. The main reason to play this game is the main story of how the world ended all those years ago.

So the main story missions that involve the tribes of horizon are ok but are bogged down by the appropriation, the Nora that Aloy comes from is an amalgam of various different tribal cultures in our universe. The Carja are just Mayan/Aztec culture. The Oseram I am not completely sure but I'm sure it's stolen as well. It feels all very lazy, which hurts to say because I really like this game. There are some decent characters inside of these tribes but Aloy and her connection to the machines is what this game is.

Ok let's get into the guts of the robocalypse. So kind of early on Aloy sees a hologram of Ted Faro consulting Dr. Elisabet Sobeck on a mistake he made. Turns out this is a world ending mistake, so Faro runs a company who makes "peacekeeping" robots that can use biomass as fuel. Something goes wrong in the code and they start consuming the planet. Sobeck tells Faro that there is now way to fix this and that the earth has 16 months left, holy crap. Sobeck says we need to get project zero dawn done before the 16 months is up. Of course that's where it stops and the player has to run to the next installation, which turns out to be U.S. robotics command. How can you stop and do side quests after hearing that.

So wandering around these various installations you find e-mails and voice recordings. Before finding out what zero dawn is you hear how humanity is throwing everything they got at these robots to buy time for zero dawn. This one voice recording recounts how they set the ocean on fire to slow the robots down, about how they fought slag covered robots for about an hour before the swarm showed up. The tired voice on this person and the fact that you know they have that thousand yard stare recounting this hit me pretty hard. They go on to recount dropping buildings on the swarm and giving literally everyone a weapon to slow down the swarm.

The civilians are told that zero dawn will generate the codes to stop the swarm but it's just a lie to get more bodies in there to slow them down. It is immensely sad, you find a hologram later of the general who sent all these billions to their deaths. He laments the fact that he killed more people than all the monsters of history. All this time I am thinking damn I want to be playing that game. So all of this sounds awesome in a tragic way. Strange how the past is always more epic than the story of the moment, I'm looking at you star wars and lord of the rings.

So we come to it, project zero dawn and the whole reason I am writing this. Turns out it's a terraforming project using A.I.. Doctor Sobeck surmised that the only way was to rebuild the earth after it was devastated and to use the population as a shield. So they name the main a.i. Gaia and her subroutines after various other greek gods based on what they do. Apollo is the sum of humanity's knowledge(this one is important and we'll get back to it). Hades is a failsafe in case the terraforming fails and they need to try again, hades will scorch the earth so Gaia can try again. Turns out hades is the reason all these machines are being jack asses and he's the main villain.

There is much more to get into about Gaia and hades and the connection to Aloy's origins. The thing that really got me about this game is what I believe to be one of Gaia's attempts at repopulating. So you go into mother's cradle which is in nora territory and where Aloy's comes from. It's basically an installation to breed and teach humans to repopulate. When you first walk in you see children's drawing's everywhere on the walls. these are not pleasant drawings and right away something is off. There are a few bodies here and there. You find these holograms of children playing with a a.i. trying to tell them to go to bed or something, the kids say nope guess what your not a real person. Right away you can tell this will not go well. The children also call the various a.i. mom or dad, which is heartbreaking in it's own way.

I have to say the sadness creeps in as you watch these knowing these kids aren't going to get what they need from these machines. You get various holograms of machines and when I say machines I mean a.i., not knowing how to deal with teenage humans. When they get out of line they say "let's go outside and blow of some steam". The kids are also clearly not growing up right they still speak and whine like children when they should be further developed. One of the last recording shows a machine talking to a group of 18 year olds I think saying they need to go into the world and fend for themselves because there is no food left. The machine says "you need to take care of each other and be brave" the brave part could be used as an excuse for the "braves" thing. Anyway the children ask if they can come back if they get cold and of course the machine says no. It's goddamn heartbreaking but I do believe these kids are the first to start these other tribes we see like the nora, perhaps these are just nora ancestors.

So you may be asking what about Apollo the a.i. that was supposed to teach this new humanity. In one of the recordings you see the children asking if they can go into a particular door, there are windows off to the side so they can see this room but never enter. The machine says something about it being offline. So these kids grow up seeing all this immense space while essentially growing up in the living quarters. Later on we learn that Ted Faro is still alive and bunkered with the rest of the super smart survivors who built zero dawn. I was pretty pissed that he was still alive by the way, homie should have been put down. Anyway he surmises that this knowledge of humanity is something earned not given and erases Apollo. Now I assume that he was guilty over ending the world and wanted this knowledge to stay dead but that's just my theory. So Ted Faro master mistake artist condemns these children to grow up like this.

I got so sad after playing this maybe it was the acting but damn I thought about this for days. There is so much more to discuss but this was the main thing for me. I did not even get into the overall theme which is obtaining knowledge at any cost or stopping to think on whether or not you should. Ian Malcolm was right. Anyways I just needed to get this off my chest and if you want to talk some horizon hit me up. So much I didn't cover about sylens and hades and Aloy's origin, the tribal religions also I have not got into the dlc yet but I'll probably play it. Thanks for reading if you did.