General Discussion

Yeah! The comic was supposed to be out already, but Covid took care of that.

Talanah is the main character from my understanding-really want to know what she's doing as the Sun Hawk and how things are after the Eclipse attack.

https://www.polygon.com/2020/3/26/21195946/horizon-zero-dawn-comic-book-series-aloy-talanah-free-comic-book-date-release

I'm annoyed that they call her an apprentice hunter. She's the ******* Sun Hawk of the Lodge. Give her her due!

Sylens could also be getting ready to take on HADES's masters/whoever it was that freed him and the other sub functions. Which is something Aloy has yet to focus on/figure out. For all she knows, her mission is to stop the sub functions, bring them back under control and remake GAIA. So he may actually be more ally again, but with some loose morals that we know and expect from him.

I wouldn't be surprised if while Aloy's pondering and trying to put things together, he pops in and is like 'hey yeah, I already know what's up, can't believe you didn't catch this and here's what's going on/the true source of the issue.' Sylens is able to be ahead of the game because he's older and has had more time tinkering and figuring things out compared to Aloy. But at the same time, Aloy going after the sub functions is still a critical task all its own, even if it's not the root of the issue.

@ashotinthedark

Ooh! ngl kinda bummed Aloy isn't the focus (i'm biased and just really like her xD) Talanah's an interesting one tho. I'll think about getting it when it's released! I mean, there's mention of new machines, so I just might. And yeah, she's definitely no apprentice. Must be a mistake on the article's writer's end. :u

Oh, yeah, you're right! It'd be interesting if we find out about the source of HADES' awakening and introduce us to new enemies. But yeah, I hope Gaia gets revived in this game, or at the very least, maybe near/at the end of the game. I really want to see Aloy interact with her.


XD I can just hear the sarcastic remarks coming from Aloy to Sylens. xD "gee thanks that'd've been helpfUL 10 MINUTES AGO." [as she recalls some pivotal situation that could've relied on Sylens' information to save time and/or end with a better outcome but nah fam he just watched like he always does] "I'll give you info if you live."

Hhhhhhhhh I'm so excited for Forbidden West.

I just watched the trailer and HNNNGGGG! NEEED! SO much need! It looks amazing!

As far as what I think might be behind the signal that 'woke up' Gaia's subfunctions... It might be far fetched but I think it was Apollo, the Apollo supposedly 'lost' when the spaceship exploded. If it even did explode. It might be wishful thinking but I don't think H:FW will be the end of the story. Part of me could easily see this series build up to the point when Aloy gets to see space, going up to the orbiting spacecraft.

There was a HZD sequel announced? Dang, how did I miss that. Looks like it’s going to be awesome!

@ashotinthedark @Sinnabelle

I totally forgot about the other AIs momentarily! I could see DEMETER being a part of the story though, as even though she's not 'evil', they were hinting at her a good amount in the og game. And then with the fauna dying...perhaps HADES has corrupted or seized control of DEMETER (due to the characteristic red colour of the plants)? But what would he gain from that? It is possible though, given how HADES was able to resurrect supposedly 'dead' machines. He's got a lot of power. Although, with Sylens at the reins, anything is possible. I bet you he's trying to use HADES again to resurrect another Horus machine to try and figure out where the original signal came from that made the Chariot line go insane (my money is on something to do with VS. They mentioned it too many times in the og story for it not to become relevant again at some point).

Hmm...I don't think HEPHAESTUS has to do with the plants, since he's strictly machine-based. The reason he took control of CYAN was so he could create more machines, so I don't think he'd deviate too far from that directive. But DEMETER is a good guess, and HADES is always there.

Sylens is definitively getting to a dangerous point of knowledge-seeking...I could see him being a potential antagonist showing up in the second half of the game.

There's raptor mounts?? Please please please let me ride raptor machines, I'm begging you...

Comic sounds cool! I'll have to look into it.

Anyone notice the 3 meteors that blaze through the sky before they show Sylens? It might just be flair for the trailer, but what if it's something more? I just keep thinking about that spaceship or whatever - it's gotta be a plot point at some point.

Also wondering about what made people who went to the Forbidden West go insane, as is stated in the games. Is it the native tribes of that area, doing it to scare other people away? Hmmm...

@/Sinnabelle

Ahhh, yeah, I've been pretty stingy with my money so I've got a bit to spare so far. But a long way to go before I can think of getting it. Thankfully, it'll probably take a bit for the game to come out, so there's some time to save.

Yes, I need to know more about Sylens! He's really interesting, and we didn't get to see a whole lot of him in the og game. And learning about Old Ones' world would be so cool. I want to know about the technology of the time, how they lived, all that. Seeing the giant rusted planes brought such a sense of awe - I need to know more!

New tribes are excellent!! I'm excited to see what makes them 'unique', since I hope they are not just a barbaric tribe like the Tenakth. I hope they have something interesting to them, and seeing them ride the big mammoth machines excite me! Speaking of Tenakth though, I'm secretly hoping they expand a bit on the two tribes we barely see, the Tenakth and the Utaru? But I don't have high hopes since we're going to a completely different place.

Oops I wrote a lot ahhhh

@Deramadus

It looks like those meteors might actually be parts (or whatever else) coming from the Odyssey. They even appear to be very red, so, does HADES have control over the Odyssey? Hmmmm

Meanwhile, I'm gonna have to read up on DEMETER because I have no memory of it. ; ; Was it mentioned in a datapoint (or side quest that I just barely paid any attention to)?

I feel like we're definitely gonna learn a lot more about Sylens, so I'm excited about that! (if you look closely in one scene where he's looking at the folks overriding a machine, he has his original lance with what appears to be the master override still attached) We're doomed.

Seeing the trailer a second time, in one scene, the person picking up the rotten vegetable actually looks to be Utaru. I hope it is, anyway!

@Deramadus

What if the red is a red herring? Something else entirely from HADES? HADES controlling DEMETER would be interesting...but we also don't know if HADES escaped or not. So could be a red herring.

Same for the red meteors-they could be from the Odyssey (or whatever's left of it), Old One's satellites or even satellites from GAIA being jacked or simply falling back into the atmosphere from lack of maintenance.

Vast Silver-I've considered that it may be behind various events. But that's provided that it was smart enough to upgrade itself as well as hide for so long after escaping. Supposedly it was captured but then there's that one data point of a horror forum and someone claiming to be VS. That's up in the air.

Odyssey-Possibly. Given that the entire thing was so secretive and advanced, even to the people working on Zero Dawn, it's possible that the news of it blowing up was a lie. But the bigger question is-would it have successfully seeded a new planet or would the proto APOLLO build on there become sapient and decide to just return to Earth-maybe it adopted a more intense version of Ted's ideas to the point that all life is a threat and only machines should exist.

Ted Faro's clone being out there-While I would love to murder Ted, I would see it as a massive setback/hypocritical to treat Aloy as her own being but not that of Ted's clone just because we like her and Elisabet. I admit it does bother me seeing people want to murder a clone of Ted and forget that Aloy's a clone too, and yet still her own person.

Better yet, Ted found a way to make himself both man and machine. That way no possibly innocent clone gets caught up in it.

I've thought about that data point about the Forbidden West. I've thought that maybe it's much like how places and creatures were described by someone after returning from travel and the person hearing it making their own conclusions as to what the place/creature looks like. Like how rhinos became unicorns type of thing. Plus the people telling the story could have gotten into something that makes them trip out or something like that too.

@Sinnabelle

Yes, DEMETER was mentioned in a datapoint. It's one of the more background functions, plus CYAN will say about how the metal flowers are made from the sub function if you ask her about the metal flowers.

What I find interesting is this-you remember the Zero Dawn facility where things were talked about and some functions had holos detailing them by the Alpha in charge? HADES, HEPHAESTUS and ELEUTHIA. Of the 3, ELEUTHIA has yet to make a major debut like the other two have.

I agree that we will probably find out most of Sylen's backstory. Perhaps he was involved with the other outsiders that took Nora hostages and killed Rost's wife and daughter? Would kind of bring it full circle-provided the timeline lines up.

Really looking forward to seeing what the new tribes look like. The ones in Zero Dawn had a lot of detail and effort put into them to make them distinct as a tribe but also as individuals. I expect the same for the new ones. Oh! Maybe The Claim is hit up at one point? It's around Idaho to my understanding.

@ashotinthedark @Sinnabelle
Ha, well it is red, isn't it? Perhaps it is a red herring. :P But in all seriousness, the colour red could have just been chosen so that the player automatically knows that it's something unnatural. Although there are a lot of other colours that could have been used if they just wanted to get across that it's unnatural. The colour red just sort of seems like a motif by now, with the way HADES is represented through red (same with the initial virus) and how the machines' eyes glow red. Although again, maybe they just chose red cuz it's an easy way to denote something as 'evil' or 'threatening'. But you're right, we aren't sure if HADES has escaped Sylens or not, but maybe he's doing something through Sylens? Like Sylens has instructed HADES to do something in his constant pursuit for knowledge or something...I dunno, I'm just throwing ideas now.

This is true, I didn't even think of that but it would make a lot of sense! The meteors could really just be satellites falling back to earth, or any other number of space debris. But with the Odyssey being another possible plot point, we can't put away that possibility.

That's true, Vast Silver would have had to have actually escaped instead of being caught like it said in the textpoints. But that one textpoint where it said VS showed up in that horror forum...I just can't stop thinking about it. That little nugget of info had to have been intentional, since it put the possibility that VS is still out there in the players' hands. I feel like it'll come around some way, either in a major way through the main story, or maybe just in a small way (VS story concluded through datapoints maybe).

So I'm wondering, since you reminded me that APOLLO was also on the Odyssey, do you think there would be humans cloned/'born' on the Odyssey as well? And then, since APOLLO is still around, the humans on the ship would be more advanced than those on earth. And then perhaps they will come back down to earth, and that will start another conflict? Hmmm, possibilities...

Oh yes, I hope there is a Ted clone out there, even if I don't think it'd be likely (the only reason Elizabet's clone was made was because of desperate circumstances, and given that Ted created some of those desperate circumstances, I'm sure the AIs would not want him back). Although, perhaps the now rogue AIs would want to make a Ted clone for some reason...but in any case, I agree. I do not want to kill a Ted clone if he has done nothing wrong in his new life. Who knows? Maybe the twist is that Aloy will team up with a Ted clone. That'd be interesting.

If Ted found a way to preserve himself within an AI/machine, that would be even cooler! Then I would have no bad feelings about mopping the floor with him. :D

Yes, that's what I thought too. Maybe people coming back we're just exaggerating stories of the creatures they had seen. But I just can't shake the feeling that the people who came back 'insane and babbling nonsense' might have eaten more than an hallucinogen. Maybe it's something to do with the new plant? Or maybe it's a new machine's doing, or even one of the new clans? Or of course, the new lands could just be deadlier - "brought to me near death, poisoned, mortally-wounded, or driven witless" (what the datapoint said about people who returned from the West).

Hm, did Sylens actually have his spear back with the master override on it? If so, how did he get it back from Aloy?

You're right though, they did look like Utaru!! :o Exciting! Also, after reading the datapoint again, these are all possibly new tribes:
"One spoke of drinkers of machine blood, their lips and tongues stained, their teeth replaced with metal. Another described youths as pale as ash, all wearing the same faces, who hunt silently and tirelessly in the night. Still another told of a tribe, seen only from afar, whose folk busied themselves digging deep pits in the sand only to fill them in again for unknowable reasons, while another tribe was only glimpsed on the waters of a great lake, riding their thin dark boats."
So many things could be gleaned from this, but I have to stop writing before I take up a while page haha. What do you guys think?
EDIT: what if the clan of people with 'the same face' are all clones of the same person or something?? Like, maybe this is an example of ELEUTHIA going rogue???

I would love to visit The Claim though, and on Sylen's origins? He could be tied to the death of Rost's family, but I can't remember how his story goes exactly (been a while since I played the DLC). And ELEUTHIA will be brought up at some point, she has to.

I WILL STOP WRITING SO MUCH NEXT TIME SORRY AHHHH I just keep goinggggg

EDIT 2: So I rewatched the trailer and there seems to be a large emphasis on the weather. Like, in a lot of the scenes there's a swirling storm/tornado with red lightning bolts raining from it. Again, I immediately think of VS since VS was an AI to regulate weather. Although, it could also be one of GAIA's subordinate functions, the one that was tasked with cleaning the air? AETHER maybe? Just thinking out loud.

(Im so sorry it took me forever to respond i was out of full-writing-juice; also sorry my responses may be short ;w; )


@ashotinthedark
I'm gonna have to read up on that datapoint and listen to CYAN again. Replaying the game now actually. xD And seeing you talk about Vast Silver...I guess I'm gonna have to read up on that as well. My poor memory ; ; lmao

Oh man ELEUTHIA. And I have similar thoughts as @Deramadus with that Forbidden West datapoint. Since, that person encountered the strange pale youths wearing the same faces and hunting tirelessly" I honestly want to assume it's either, clones in masks, or WHAT IF it's the servitors that worked under ELEUTHIA?? It kinda makes sense. The key bit being "hunting quietly and tirelessly". And just imagine having Aloy face human-like-machines. I just think it would cool and freaky honestly lol. (Read a joke someone made on reddit saying, "it's a bunch of Travis Tate clones" and I just about died lmao)


Oh I almost forgot about the Nora hostages! Yeah, that would be really interesting to find out more about that time if Sylens was involved. Speaking of Rost, since he was in the FW too at one point, I bet you some tribes folk may have stories to tell Aloy of him. It'd be great to hear more about his journey in FW.

I hope we can see the Claim too! And speakin' of, I hope we see Erend again. I love that guy. ;v;

Ted Faro as part machine??? Sign me up. That sounds like something he'd probably try to achieve to do. I agree, Deramadus, we can end him without guilt that way. xD At the same, I would love to see an innocent Ted Faro clone. It would just be so interesting.

I love the idea of advanced humans on ODYSSEY thanks to APOLLO. What if those meteors ARE them? Flying down to Earth? ooooohhh...~

I'm so excited to see the new tribes aaaahhh; I agree, their designs look so killer.

And now it's time for me to replay the og game for the 80 millionth time.

@Deramadus

The Odyssey did have a manned crew, but the bulk of it was seed stocks/embryos/etc. The idea, from what I remember, was to find another planet that could be terraformed to support life-so basically like Zero Dawn but on another planet entirely. There wouldn't have been space for a lot more humans than the crew they already had. The APOLLO copy on that ship didn't have the safeguards that Zero Dawn did, so if it (the mission) was successful and on par with GAIA in regards to terraforming and releasing life, there's a good chance that things could have gone real bad. Perhaps total annihilation on that new planet or those that dominate over the others are looking back to Earth to see if a new empire could be made. No safeguards means anything's possible for a successful Odyssey mission.

Vast Silver, from memory, was a true AI meant to control the weather. I remember the creators of CYAN were concerned about her mental state, as one of the creators stated that Vast Silver was terrified upon being made aware and that's why it fled. Said creator would go on to help Elisabet with making GAIA, and we all know that Elisabet wanted GAIA to care about life and what she was doing. Well, if VS is still out in the wind, and capable of 'upgrading' itself (growing by experiences and research), that fear could have turned to hate that its creators didn't care enough to help it not be afraid. Could have plotted humanity's downfall by studying and waiting for hubris to be made evident.

VS would have to do that upgrading thing first though-I can't see the first true AI being on par with GAIA unless it can further develop. And I did see a theory on TVTropes that the Chariot line of robots could have had recycled VS coding in it that VS could access. A backdoor that isn't a backdoor. Said theory also had it that Elisabet could have been one of the people that helped make VS. Had to look on the HZD wiki to see about timeline-she would have been in her 20s when VS was made, so it's entirely possible that she could have been on that team and it would help explain how she was able to come up with GAIA and have her be an extremely sophisticated AI. Furthermore, she would have been at Faro at this time, making green robots. Firebreak turned out to be a Faro project, VS could have also been one as well. They don't say who made it, but it was stated that Faro really got into green tech/environmental causes and that helped put the company on the map. So VS being made by them isn't out of the question.

Aloy left Sylens's spear in HADES's ball o' doom, so it's entirely possible that after Sylens caught HADES (and probably messed with the spear in some way to make this happen prior to giving it to Aloy), he went to retrieve his spear.

That data point on the tribes in the west to me, again, comes off as rumor/misinterpretations of the people that live there. There could be a grain of truth to it though; as the game did have a Banuk that liked to drink machine blood.

The people with the same face-that would honestly depend on when the data point was written as ELEUTHIA couldn't be responsible unless this tribe popped up within the past 19-20 years. It's possible, but again, timing.

I'm thinking the storm has to do with AETHER. If VS is behind the swarm glitch and/or the transmission that freed the sub functions and made them AIs, I doubt it would be upfront. Why be upfront now when it can just sit back and watch as the other AIs go about doing their thing? Their goals probably align with VS's own or at least enough that more direct action on its part isn't needed.

Edit-Ack! I replied right after Sinnabelle. Though I think my post pretty much mostly covers what's said there?