To all of the last girls on earth.

For all of the grandiose tales that are told within the game, for me, the most memorable story was the recorded conversation between two long dead women forming a band to kill the boredom of their soon to be non-existent jobs. Horizon Zero Dawn’s machines are mysterious, animal-like and often dangerous, but in the side quest Waterlogged, it's shown how their ancestors were once tools used by a multi-trillion corporation to replace people’s jobs. And the fear of losing my job is far more relatable than being faced with humanity’s extinction, as it might be with many others, and so the story of Laura and Shelly ends up being the tucked-away heart of Horizon.

The quest begins when Aloy is tasked by a Banuk drummer named Laulai to head upstream to a dam, which is now named Greycatch by people who have little idea of its original purpose. Along the way you run into Gildun, a bumbling if well-meaning man that skilfully rides the line between annoying and charming. What follows is some valve turning, some sluice gate opening and a series of audio and text logs to collect as usual. These recordings chronicle a couple of dam workers from many years into the past. As you progress through the dam – finding the logs in sequential order would you believe – you hear the two bonding over essentially being the last two human workers left at the dam, along with their hatred of…The Man.

In an act of defiance, albeit a very small one, they form the band Concrete Beach Party, giving themselves at least some sort of escapism from the uncomfortable fact that they're going to lose their livelihoods. The audio logs tease their one-and-only song which is of course the Last Girls on Earth, but only the first few seconds of it is teased. Aloy finally reaches her goal which is to push a comically over-sized red button, the honour of which she gives Gildun, which he does with gusto. Turning on the power also drains a far-off water basin called Deep Din by the locals, fulfilling the request given by Laulai. With Aloy’s work finished at the dam, you are left with a burning question: when do you get to hear Concrete Beach Party perform?

What follows is my personal experience with the end of the quest, because I want to describe in exact detail the exact moment when Waterlogged exactly became the best part of Horizon for me. As I made my way back to the recently drained Deep Din, I headed down to discover one final text log along with Laulai happily drumming away on the pipes once more. In the log it tells of Shelly’s bittersweet farewell to Laura as they go their separate ways, but it also expresses how their friendship will endure through this little band called Concrete Beach Party. Yet, still no song to be found, much to my great disappointment. As I dejectedly made my way back up and out of Deep Din, I saw it, hidden behind the ladder I initially came down on: the final audio log.

I hurried over knowing for certain what was on it, and sure enough, through heavy compression the song Last Girls on Earth started to blare out. As I made my way back onto the surface – punk-rock vocals and rhythmic pipe clanking sounding in my ears – I was struck with a strange sensation. I had played dozens of hours of the game up to that point, but it was only in those brief few minutes I realised the true beauty and desolation of the post-post apocalyptic land I had been walking in. Aloy standing there alone in the morning sun, surviving despite all the hardships she’s gone through, almost as if she herself was the last girl on earth.

Horizon doesn’t shy away from showing the hubris that arises from corporate greed, in fact, it’s why the apocalypse starts in the first place, but the Waterlogged quest shows its effect on a much more personal level. And I think that’s why it has stuck with me, because I’ve also had to sit in meetings where my boss described the company as a “family” or had to say goodbye to work colleagues as our jobs were being made redundant. I know there is the inevitable hypocrisy in having an anti-corporate message in something produced by Sony (which is itself a massive corporation), but I like to think that the mind that this quest sprung from was writing it in earnest.

It’s strange to think that an optional quest in the expansion add-on for the game would be the thing I walked away praising the most, but there we are. Not to say I didn’t enjoy blasting metal chucks off robot dinosaurs (because I did), but these stories from the past involving random nobodies help contrast and frame all that epic drama and destruction. And for those who haven’t heard the song yet, I present to you the Last Girls on Earth: