"Horizon Forbidden West" is due to release on February 18th for the PS4 and PS5. It is billed as one of the most hotly anticipated games of the current generation, but if you haven't played the first game yet and can't for some reason, here is a story breakdown of 2017's "Horizon Zero Dawn."
This screenshot was taken while our writer was playing the game.
This story recap, however, will not include the events of the Frozen Wilds DLC and will only cover the main game's campaign.
So, without further ado, let's begin!
Part I: Before "Zero Dawn"
Around 1,000 years before the events of "Zero Dawn," the world is feeling the nastiest effects of global warming. World leaders and corporations try to come up with various solutions to solve the problem. Among these solutions was genius roboticist Dr. Elisabet Sobeck, recruited by the robotics company Faro Automated Solutions.
Dr. Sobeck's work at the company was originally to focus on using robotics to deal with environmental degradation. But in 2048, CEO Ted Faro decided he wanted to make more money by completely forgetting all environmental stuff and focusing on making autonomous military bots instead.
These bots are part of a model line called Chariot, and they have everything that screams "robot overlords threaten the existence of life on Earth." One of their scariest abilities is consuming biomass as fuel in order to keep themselves functioning. It also allows them to self-repair, if necessary.
Another scary thing about the Chariot robots is that should anything go wrong with them (i.e. they suddenly decide to eliminate all life on Earth), they don't even have a definitive killswitch that will shut them all down. Call this ominous foreshadowing, if you will.
Machines Start Going Rogue
Fast-forward several decades, and Chariot robots have mostly replaced human armies. But all it took was for one Chariot swarm (since the bots operate in swarms and are basically a hive-mind) to go rogue and stop responding to their operators' inputs. An unknown glitch in the programming spelled the beginning of the so-called Faro Plague and the beginning of the end of life on Earth.
This screenshot was taken while our writer was playing the game.
Eventually, the problem grew so big that the same glitch affected all Chariot robots. They start consuming as much biomass as they can, basically bleeding the Earth dry of its resources and killing anyone who stands in their way. And they're doing all this while being protected by an impenetrable security system that will take decades to crack.
The Faro Plague continues and keeps on devouring the world's biomass along the way, also decimating armies as they go. It came to a point when they killed more people and consumed biomass faster than the Earth's militaries were taking them out. The planet is running out of time until the plague will have turned the Earth into a barren, lifeless wasteland.
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Ensuring Life's Survival Beyond Extinction
This was when Project Zero Dawn was initiated-a project not intended to save life on Earth from being extinguished but instead to help it bloom again. Dr. Sobeck heads the program, which basically means one thing: let everyone die (because they can't be saved anyway) and let an extremely sophisticated AI named Gaia (basically Mother Earth in AI form) bring life back by terraforming the world.
Project Zero Dawn spawned the numerous machines that roamed the Earth during the 31st Century. This is the world that "Zero Dawn" protagonist Aloy grew up in, and it is up to her to figure out why that is.
This screenshot was taken while our writer was playing the game.
Part II: Aloy's Journey
Fast-forward to over a thousand years since the collapse of modern human civilization, and humanity has bloomed once again but seemingly regressed to a more Stone Age-like state. They're scattered all across the globe in different tribes, basically meaning that Sobeck's Project Zero Dawn succeeded in some way.
This screenshot was taken while our writer was playing the game.
Aloy is born into one of these tribes called the Nora. However, she grew up to be an outcast. The young girl's only chance to get accepted is to run in a coming-of-age ritual known as the Proving, which she wins.
But after winning the Proving and becoming a true member of the Nora tribe (called a Brave), a large group of men attack from out of nowhere and manage to kill a few of the participants. Aloy rises and defends the tribe from the attackers but manages to survive being killed narrowly.
Aloy survives and is brought to heal inside the mountain that Nora considers sacred, believing it to be the home of their goddess called the All-Mother. The "goddess" turns out to be a door that scans Aloy and deduces that she is Sobeck for some reason. But when she tries to open the door, she can't, as the "All-Mother" says there's data corruption preventing entry.
After the incident, the High Matriarchs of the Nora tribe appoint Aloy a Seeker. Her mission is twofold: discover the reason for the Proving attack, and learn more about her origins by solving the corruption at the All-Mother.
Journeying Out
With her newfound purpose, Aloy is now free to go beyond the confines of Nora's territory to search for answers. Her main path leads her to the city of Meridian, which is the domain of a tribe called the Carja. There, she hopes to find answers explaining the attack on the Proving. She is then led to the location of a few of the men who led the attack and discovered the reason why they did it.
The men were apparently digging up old machines; basically, our old friends, the Chariot bots of the Faro Plague, based on a directive from a "voice" called Hades. Hades told the group of men, known as the Eclipse, to dig up the bots and build up a massive army for a yet-unknown goal.
While scouting out the place where the dig is taking place, Aloy hears a voice come through her Focus (a device she uses that works like a communicator, among other things). The voice identifies himself as Sylens, who helps her defeat the Eclipse cultists.
This screenshot was taken while our writer was playing the game.
She then learns that the cultists attacked the Proving because they saw an image of a woman who looks like her (Sobeck) at a place called Maker's End. Sylens tells her to go to the place, which is where she learns about what happened to the so-called Old Ones (basically us) a thousand years prior.
Part III: Exposition, Exposition, Exposition
At Maker's End, Aloy ventures into a ruined building where she finds a holographic recording of Sobeck and Faro, talking about the Faro Plague and Project Zero Dawn. It is there when she learns about the history of how the Old Ones' civilization fell (described in Part I), and how the machines came to roam the land.
This screenshot was taken while our writer was playing the game.
Next up, Aloy is directed by Sylens to go to another place that used to be the main operating base for Project Zero Dawn. In it, she recovers a data file known as the Alpha Registry, which gives our heroine access to all facilities controlled by the terraforming AI Gaia.
She also learns that these facilities "gave birth" to the machines, whose sole purpose is to terraform the Earth, and that they also repopulated the planet with humans and other animals. Each facility is run by a subset AI designed for a specific role, and one of these subset AIs is Hades. Yes, the same "voice" commands the Eclipse to do what they do.
Hades' purpose is simple: to wipe the slate clean should Gaia screw something up, allowing the terraforming process to start all over again. It's basically a doomsday murder AI.
Finding Out The Truth
Everything that Aloy learned there pointed to one thing: Hades is bringing back the Faro Plague to eradicate all life on Earth once again. Seeing as this is an obviously bad thing, Aloy tries to gather her wits while at Sobeck's old office in the Zero Dawn HQ. But she is ambushed by the Eclipse and is brought to some sort of arena, where she is supposed to be a blood sacrifice.
Aloy breaks out with the help of Sylens, defeats a horde of machines basically by herself, and then runs back home to the Nora. But when she arrives, she finds that the Eclipse has attacked it with a massive corrupted machine called a Thunderjaw. Our heroine takes the machine down with the help of the tribesmen and proceeds to enter the cave of the All-Mother to try and get through the door again.
This screenshot was taken while our writer was playing the game.
She finally gets through and discovers that the All-Mother is basically an artificial "birthing facility" designed to repopulate the Earth with humanity. However, she also learns that a so-called "unknown signal" triggered Hades to execute its doomsday protocol again. Not to mention, the subset AI now wants control of Gaia.
To protect against Hades' takeover, Gaia initiates a self-destruct protocol. This basically ends all terraforming processes on Earth, but not before she doles out a major bombshell.
The bombshell confirms that Aloy is actually a CLONE of Elisabet Sobeck. Her main purpose is to gain access to Gaia's facilities and core functions, restore them to their original state, and destroy Hades.
Even More Answers
Aloy is directed to go where Gaia basically killed herself to search for more answers and gain the master override that will destroy Hades forever. In there, she learns that Sobeck (who is now basically her sort-of mother) sacrificed herself to protect Gaia's location from the Faro bot swarms.
Another thing Aloy learned is that Ted Faro was actually responsible for how humanity regressed back to the Stone Age. One subset AI of Gaia, called Apollo, was supposed to hold all of humanity's collective knowledge on, well, everything. Faro decided to erase Apollo, believing it would give humans a clean slate "free of the sins of the past."
Also, need we mention that Faro does this by murdering an entire room full of Project Zero Dawn's lead people?
Aloy gets Gaia's Hades-killing override while also learning how Sylens was the actual founder of the Eclipse. He said that he was the one who found Hades in a wreck, basically meaning that his efforts put everyone in a tough spot in the first place.
Part IV: Confronting Hades
Sylens tells Aloy that Hades is looking to resurrect every single dormant Faro murder bot on Earth, but he needs some way to broadcast his signal. That comes in a tower-like thing in Meridian called the Spire. Furthermore, these bots are marching on Meridian with the Eclipse cultists at their side.
This screenshot was taken while our writer was playing the game.
Calling on anyone who can help, Aloy musters a small army of her own to fight against the Faro bots and the Eclipse. She pursues Hades to the Spire, where she uses Sylens' spear to stab the rotten AI and "kill" it-"kill" being the operative word. Either way, she stops the AI's planned murder spree, and everyone celebrates their victory.
Part V: Ending
In a post-credits scene, Hades is revealed to be not that dead. It flies out as some sort of a glowing red orb, which Sylens capture in a lamp.
Cut to Aloy, who now ventures on a pilgrimage to where Elisabet Sobeck was born. She finds her "mother's" body and pays her respects to the woman who single-handedly saved life on Earth from extinction.
And that is where the story of "Zero Dawn" ends, ready to transition into "Horizon Forbidden West," where Sylens' intentions with Hades will likely be revealed.
And that's it! Now you're prepared for your "Horizon Forbidden West" playthrough. Good luck!
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Story posted on GameNGuide
Written by RJ Pierce
