Horizon: Zero Dawn - Spoilers in your face

Arrrgggghhhh, here be spoilers.

So I’m still pretty early in the game, but the conceit is cool. I like the head piece that can activate stuff, etc. I worry that the monster spawns will start to get irritating.

Anyone using traps? I use them a lot, but I run out of crafting mats for them pretty quick.

I am curious to hear about the plot since I’ll likely never play this. I watched someone playing this on Twitch last night, looks absolutely beautiful, but I couldn’t really follow what was going on. A coming of age story with giant robotic creatures?

Seems almost like a Fallout 3 type story… search to find your parent, learn about what happened to the earth, etc. But then this notion of some group of baddies who are “corrupting” the robots and making them into aggressive death machines.

The overall game world actually seems akin to an elder scrolls type world? At first, you get the impression that it’s all about cave people and shit? But you quickly encounter other groups, and it seems (I can’t totally confirm this yes) that it’s really only YOUR group who are essentially naturalistic native american type society. There are other realms which seem more industrialized (although all are still pretty primitive compared to modern times… but with little bits of salvaged tech sometimes). Like, some of the folks I’ve met thus far had stuff like forged steel weapons and armor and crap.

I’m eager to go out and see more of the world, to see what this stuff looks like. There’s talk of some big city somewhere, that I’ll eventually get to, and it sounds like it’s way different from the tiny villages I’ve encountered thus far.

I’ve also seen some ruins of contemporary times… and the first time you jack into a long-neck, it was pretty badass.

I love the start of the game but after a while it feel somewhat “safe”. Safe in every direction. Like, the machines are a danger, any machine can kill you, but you can also kill any machine. There are mountains but are not too deep…the ceiling is not very high. The design of the map have a bit too much civilization for my likings. Like… too many information panels with directions, and too many bridges in the rivers. Is again, too safe.

Heres a question I can’t do in the unspoiler thread:

  • What stop me from using mounts everywhere? I could mount one of the machines, then charge and kill everything with it. Seems much more powerfull than simply arrows, with no penalties. Theres even a skill to ask for a mount if you have none.

I’m really enjoying the game as well. I will say I found the beginning to be quite sad. I’m not sure if it’s because I have kids, but the very beginning almost made me give up on the game.

Eh, while I would agree that the mount is good for killing the trash mobs, I think I prefer the stealth enabled by the bow most of the time, especially against tougher creatures.

Woot, i just override some supercomputer thing and now i can capture even more creatures :DD

This game have cool things.

Did it get all confused trying to understand this thing we call “love”?

This sums up the game.

I got to an underground base, where I ran into a reaver… which is a saw tooth, but with a huge cannon on its back.

I blew off the cannon, then picked it up, and murdered everything.

The weird thing is that when I hacked this supercomputer, I got a achievement and it say is superrare, only 10% of the players completed it. This tell me that 90% of the players are outside, following the story of the game or roleplaying hunter&gatterer, that few people are like me.

I got that too. It’s weird. I assume you mean the Cauldron? The dungeon thing? It was pretty cool.

I have found something weird in the east coast. Beyond the building with floating pilos there was a hole in the water, sucking the water. I was not able to get there because was beyond the playable area.

Did it look like this? https://tribfox40.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/glory-hole.jpg

Yes yes I know it’s called a glory hole but it’s a water runoff method that looks cool and horrifying at the same time

I ask because I think this game is on Earth and I keep trying to figure out where. They mention Wichita and stuff like that in the notes I’ve found. It’s pretty interesting.

Not sure if everyone knows this, but this game apparently takes place at Colorado Springs.

That’s cool, could lead to some interesting places.

Yes, it was exactly like this thing, but was not near enough of the coast to have a good view.

now that you talk about it, … I think I saw a building like this one:
https://cdn-co.milespartnership.com/sites/default/master/files/styles/media-player-large/public/USAFA_PR.jpg

And this is meridiam!

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/3PGvJoAK6Jg/maxresdefault.jpg

If you compare the terrain features, the Nora lands match up reasonably well with the area around Colorado Springs. Puts Mother’s Heart around Cheyanne Mt., and Mother’s Watch down somewhere near Penrose or Portland CO.

The Ring of Metal is supposed to be the stadium in Denver too. I really like how they aligned the area to a real place like that.

On a money note. I was curious about the 10 shard loot boxes that merchants sell. They cost 10 shards each and each merchant sells 10 boxes at a time and so far they have dropped either a random number of shards, or a rock. I’ve bought 6 or 7 sets and counted up the amount I’ve gotten back and so far I’ve always come out ahead on shards. The least I’ve had was 107 shards and the most was almost 400(which included one box that had 250 shards). I’m sure there will come a time where I lose out vs the 100 shard investment, but so far so good!

Well, one in which the coming of age is interrupted at the finish line (quite literally) and this sends our blossming young woman on a quest.

I have no idea what caused the world to fall, but it did and it fell hard. Aloy, as a child, gets to explore what is apparently a secret research facility and it’s where she gets her “focus” (you find out what it’s called the night before she is to take her trail to become a “brave” for the tribe). This both acts as the in game mechanic for scanning not just enemies but your environment. And it ties into the old world. That exploration is extremely curious: apparently the facility received an urgent communicae and this lead to the director to propose group suicide. The door was opened at 1500 that day for 15 minutes for “anyone who wanted to make a go of it on foot” and everyone else participated in the suicide at midnight. I can’t recall how much of this is only discoverable when you return to the site grown up, mind. The message contents are unknwon but the director mentions in a log that “the Salient has fallen”. She notes, in her message to the group, that “our work has not been in vain, at least”. What that means I don’t yet know. Or, for that matter, what their work was (there’s no hint of it).

Aloy is an outcast, but all children who come of age can take the trail to become a brave. Her circumstance is curious, called “motherless”, she is given by the tribe’s wise mothers to care of another outcast. As Outcasts typically h ave a fixed sentence, it’s curious that this man (Rost) is permanently outcast and it’s self-inflicted and I still don’t know why. While everyone who finishes the trail becomes a Brave the winner gets a boon, and it’s her goal to find out who her mother is or was.

A band of strange masked men attack at the end of the trial. They kill all the braves and a wise mother, but Aloy kills a bunch of them. The game’s first villain/possible antagonist is introduced (you know, I can’t recall his name, it’s why I call him a possible antagonist; he’s far away right now in effect and there appears to be another entity that drives his behavior), but Rost dies saving you. What you find out in the aftermath is that the place where the holy mothers stay/chant/etc - in the Mountain the village sits at the foot of, where it is believed the tribe’s god rests - has what is basically a vault door in it. Aloy, standing before it, is told by a strange voice that she is a 99.4% DNA match for a woman that is (1) clearly older and (2) strikingly resembles her (the woman is displayed via a hologram). But she is denied entry for the time being. Aloy learns during the attack that she’s the specific target and a “resemblance” is mentioned. It appears that someone knows her mother and is targeting her for the relation.

From her your goal is to avenge the tribe (the raiders have retreated and the tribe warriors want to follow, but it’s into a forbidden place) and track down the man you met who also had a focus, who also helped the raiders it turns out. In fact chasing him basically takes you to Meridian, which is probably the main hub in the game. But getting there can easily lead to 20 hours of gameplay with side quests and such. Aloy is named seeker which basically exempts her from tribal taboo in the pursuit of her goal (which is basically find out why she was attacked).

What you find as you explore paints a strange picture. There are other vault like places out there, of course. Aloy discovers that she can tame certain machines. In one vault place (called a Cauldron) she secures an upgrade to the focus that allows her to tame yet more machines (but still a relatively low % of all the types, heh). Some of these places tell a fascinating story just by what you see on the way to them. Strange machine wreckages (obviously tanks of some sort with what appears to either be energy based or rail-based weaponry). Data logs with snippets from the old world. There’s even special vantage points that when viewed through the focus give you snippets of one person’s audio log and a literal glimpse of the shining old world.

I have a suspicion about where it’s going. Or at least who the shadowy figure behind General Fuckface (my new name of rthe bad guy) is (not Mom, mind). Aloy’s journey is also about discovering her Mother (and father? Although she clearly considers Rost that as you might expect), what her Mother was up to (something), and what the mysterious group GF leads is up to.

Oh, it’s worth noting two things. One, the GF’s people can control machines and use them in battle. This obviously gives them a huge tactical edge, even though the various tribes in the region all have hunters who hunt machines with some regularity. It’s one thing to hunt and take down a machine, especially in a group. It’s quite another when a bunch of bad guys show up with many machines and some of them are very clearly designed to do one thing: make war. These machines are markedly differerent from waht you encounter out in the world. All machines are dangerous, but the rest of them, from Scrappers to [Redacted], dont’ appear to be designed specifically for war. There’s been whispers that the machines being used by the bad guys aren’t the only ones they have access too.

The second thing is that some of the “wild” machines have become corrupted. Nobody knows why, but it appears to impact their behavior and make them more dangerous. Not every machine is hostile. Some, if attacked, will simply run. But a corrupted machine is a danger that will fight to the end.

The story has been really good so far, as I dive into it layer by layer. I still don’t have the foggiest notion of what is really going on (excepting my one guess, but even that doesn’t explain a lot of things).