The story is quite good thus far for me. I’ve learned some more about what wrecked the world.
Hey, that’s really thorough! Thanks for all the info.
I’ll update when I know more (if someone else doesn’t).
So where we we? This post will contain spoilers through the Maker’s End and Grave-Hoard story quests. @divedivedive this one is for you.
Let’s briefly talk evil machines.
Corruptor: 6 lets, prehensile, whip-like tail, rocket pod. This thing is fast and jumpy and can fling rocks with the tail. It can control other machines. It’s what the bad guys are trying to dig up en masse. This is, by itself, a huge force multiplier. A troupe of hunters can kill it certainly but it will likely exact a lot of kills in response. If it gets defeated at all.
Deathsomething - rumored to be another kind of machine that the bad guys - now known as Eclipse - have also dug up.
The data items you find scattered througthout the world start paining a picture. There was a war. People fought, were excited to fight (oh, woe was them though), and there was a belief at one point in the public that they might be able to defeat the threat. There’s talk of fighting “scarabs”. There’s also talk of using something called Blaze as a stimulant. Which is fascinating because many of the robots in the modern era have blaze canisters attached and appear to make use of the substance. You collect these canisters and use it to make fire and explosive ammo/devices. There’s also talk in some of these pieces of “Zero Dawn”, and how it will be mankind’s savior.
As you keep assembling the pieces, a bit of meta-knowledge suggests the thread was robots on ramapge. This is confirmed in a story mission knwon as Makers End (also the location of where the mission takes place). That said, before we get to those story points it’s clear that mankind was making increasing use of robots in everything. There’s some data stuff (one or more, I can’t recall) about a famed Chinese robotics firm that experiences a huge setback (I don’t recall why) and how layoffs were rumored. There’s also talk of climate change and how this has a pretty dramatic effect on society at first (although robots aid in the cleanup efforts and things appear to get much better after things looked dire). There’s even talk of doing the “let’s send colony ships out into space” thing. The government attempts at this failed but a private firm stepped in, one of the world’s leading mutlinationals. And they claimed they would be finishing what various governments started.
But 20-30 years after the cleanup initiative was done, everything went to hell. And at the center of it was Faro corp, run by famed trillionare (the Earth’s first!) Ted Faro. They were at the forefront of robotics. And Maker’s End takes you into the remnants of Faro’s private office. Faro corp practically ended modern warfare. Or rather, evolved it (where it became a corp versus corp thing, fought with robots and away from civilian centers). Faro Corp had 3 main designs:
The Scarab - our Corrupter. Recon & infiltration unit. Capable of hacking other bots and slaving them. Also a field repair bot, which can fix up other bots. Carries weaponry of course. Can run on Biomass in emergencies.
The fuck I forgot - Our Deaththingy. A heavy weapons platform that can be outfitted with any number of configurations. Can run on Biomass in emergencies. We have to fight a partially disabled one on the way in. It’s got machineguns, rockets, mortar, and it’s sort of terrifying. Not as terrifying as Thunderjaws. Later, we’ll fight another that is fully capable. Fun!
The Horus - a massive “Titan” class battlecarrier. Powerful weapons as well as the ability to replicate other robots. Can run on Biomass in emergencies.
There is mention of other types of bots from other corporations, but nothing specific. Faro press materials brag that their Titan class ship was by far the best “Peacekeeper” robot ever created.
Something caused the Horus line to go off-mission. There’s a great piece where Faro is begging his tech guys to back door in and shut them off. And they explained to him “you forced us to code it without back doors. We can’t”. This glitch basically caused them to start gobbling up any biomass they could get thei rhands on and making more robots. Presumably with Humanity fought back the machines interpreted this as a threat and had the dual purpose of (1) eliminating threats and (2) “oh look at all this biomass how wonderful”.
Faro called in the one woman he thought could fix this: your ancestor Elizabet Sobeck (whom you discover lived hundreds of years ago. Also, there’s no H, don’t ask me why). What’s really amazing, though, is that it’s already too late at this point. Through data you gather at Farocorp it’s clear that in 15 months almost all biological life on earth will have ceased to exist. the Machines are replicating too fast, and they are too powerufl. Faro retools all his production lines to create Human controlled weapons. They’ve got super advanced 3d printing technology (one datalog mentions how they’re printing barracks for called up troops) but they can’t beat the machines on the economic front.
Elizabet’s plan is dramatic: Zero Dawn. Still don’t know what it is but Faro thinks it’s worse than the disease. Several generals seem to be in agreement. But as there is no actual choice because humanity is facing immediate extinction. She is given leave to assemble a team of top minds (“I’ll handle procurement” says the General) and told to set up shop at an old orbital launch site (and that, incidentally, is the next story mission, but two missions after you head to Faro Corp).
There’s some great “view from the front lines/citizenry” lore to find. There’s a solider who talks about his Battalion taking down a Horus and how proud this makes him. Ther’s these gut wrenching and increasingly distressed emails from his wife as she says he’s not answering or responding to any of her questions/pooints, and that the letters seemed like they’re phrases cut and pasted together (and eventually, they are). There’s soldiers who clearly are losing faith in Zero Dawn, whatever it is (they certainly don’t get told). And they’re also losing faith at what they are seeing in the war.
In the mission to “Grave-Hoard” (the one after Faro corp) you learn that a group of generals basically decided, after agreeing to Sobeck;s proposal, to decieve the public by using Zero Dawn as a propoganda piece. They need time for it to complete and thus they need to throw everything they have at the machines, including the citizenry. Militias are drafted and given what training they can be. One officer remakrs “the worst are the ones that believe the lie” (that they will make a difference, in effect). Also, Earth’s climate is taking a turn for the worse again. There is some rioting, and the governments are being extra cagey on e.g. why soldiers are being issued re-breathers. There’s also an ugly scene described in Vietnam where American troops are evacuated, leaving the locals to their fate at the hands of a machine swarm (as they are being called). The AA guns turn on the retreating American transports when it’s clear they are being abandoned.
So what we have is an invasion force that has all the tools necessary to grow itself, replace losses, and stay in operation. Biomass is certainly plentiful.
Aloy is sharp and she notes that there’s nothing wrong with the air that current humans breath. She also notes that no machines have demonstrated the ability to assimilate biomass, or to self replicate (of course you haven’t seen any Horuses. In one amazing twist, when you start the game there’s strange metalic wreckages up in the mountains around Aloy’s village. What appear to be large segmented tentacles. It’s Horus wrecks as you eventually learn. They’re massive). In act the machines that you see - outside of the warmachiens Eclipse has unearthed - aren’t like anything described. Yet.
Lastly, it’s worth mentiong that we’ve discovered an entity called Hades, who is behind Eclipse. I’m pretty sure Hades is an AI since it’s voice is described as “metal screaming” and also that when you are seen, it’s description of you is simply “system threat detected”. Nothing has changed that idea since, although there hasn’t been that much to support it. But I suspect we’ll discover that Hades is an AI that somehow survived whatever Zero Dawn was, and is fearful that it could be activated again.
What I don’t know yet: how humanity was expected to survive. But it’s clear they were, and I suspect the vault door in the mountain back in the holy place of the wise mothers is the answer. We’ll see!
I just beat the main line. Pretty legit ending. I got the super weave armor from the vault before the last fight, and it helped.
The super armor basically makes you invincible.
Hey that all sounds really cool, thanks for that write-up. I love good speculative sci-go. Since it seems like PS4 games are being added to PSNow I may just end up playing this someday. Still cool with story spoilers though.
THE SPOILER!!!
Even on a spoiler thread, you may not want to read this. This is Zero Dawn is about:
Machines will exctinct life, nothing can stop it. Zero Dawn is about to create a machine system that can quickstart life again, including humans and humans civilization.
It gets so much crazier even after you learn that.
Did you pickup the bit where Gaia would need 50 years or so to crack the password to the swarm and shut it down, so it went ahead and did that, turned off the machines, and THEN rebooted life. I liked that nifty little touch.
I finished it last night. A truly amazing gaming experience. It felt complete.
And yet…that Marvel style scene after the credits… They are clearly gunning for a sequel. As much as I loved the game, I can’t really see a sequel as being nearly as interesting or special. The story is told. Any new story would lack the overall mystery which was what made this game truly shine.
Do other folks feel like H:ZD Sylens’ Downfall or whatever needs to be made? Will it be half of the game this one was?
That part was truly tragic and special. It made me think about “post apocalyptic” as a genre. It makes most other versions seem weaker somehow. It wasn’t just a misstep and end of human civilization. This was truely the end of all life down to a collapsed biosphere and husk of a world. An end the humans could see coming as a result of their reckless hubris. And nothing could stop it. All they could do is let it happen and let a machine sit in the long dark to finish the work needed to try to rebuild. This was so well complimented by the “three options” that recruited staff had, the vista point texts (read the text for those in your log if you haven’t), the tragedy of Operation Enduring Freedom, and even the nuggets from the very first bunker that Aloy finds as a kid.
I dunno, there’s still some giant world out there. Exploring that world beyond the little area where they built Gaia prime would be entertaining.
Plus, there’s stuff to do. All of the subprocesses of Gaia have gone rogue and are doing stuff apparently, so the are potentially things to do there. Plus, building up Gaia again.
I also concur with the idea that their take on the Apocalypse was pretty good, where humans didn’t so it. The world died completely, and they restarted a new one, and every human died.
Oh, for sure other stories in the world can be explored. Probably some good ones. What Tom Faro did after he killed the alphas for one. I see a lot of room for him to refuse Elizabets solution and quietly reboot the cloning genetics option. However, I just wonder if the hooks would be nearly as good without the overall “what the heck happened here” of the world. It would be a normal sort of bad guy does bad in a new Eden type story. I guess the mystery and tragedy would seem deflated. Or so would be my worry.
Yeah, it’d be difficult to come up with a suit as interesting as this one. But hey, that’s what good story writing is about.
So, as a guy who is just keeping up with the game from a distance but not actually playing - did they just put some folks in suspended animation and wake them up after the robots shut down or did they actually have to “regrow” humans from the ground up, evolutionarily speaking?
As far as we know…it was a total world reset. Everything down to every molecule everywhere died. Even preserved human knowledge was lost with purging of the Apollo project. Everything was gone. The only things left were AIs seeded to do specific tasks. Gaia AI was a major one given sentience and the creativity to rebuild a biosphere. There was also a complimentary AI, Hades, that was there to wipe the slate clean if Gaia got something wrong. In the background there was some super computer cranking away at breaking the code on the biomass consuming machines that ended the world (this could not be done well before all biomass/ life was eaten by the original world ending FARO machines).
There is wiggle room in the story. I think. Why is there at least one clone? Did the world reboot once before? If Apollo was purged, what was left to help Gaia seed or the nursery servitors to raise new humans spawned in the cradles? Not much is known about the other 10 or so AIs. What happened to Tom Faro? Did Elizabet do anything before she “went home” when trapped outside of Elysium?
Edit: And actually, is Sylens of the new world or the old? He knows a hell of a lot supposedly from the barely linguistic Hades who he calls “old friend” in the post credit scene. Plus that creepy drop about “happy birthday Isaac” from an early game voice recording late game.
What if the sequel took place hundreds of years later while you (the player) are exploring how civilization was created from a long dead man named Sylen’s whom had re-learned and taught everything from the old ways?
Well, I think he calls Hades old friend because he was the one who originally found Hades hiding in the Shell of a Horus unit, 19 years ago. I’m not sure what that thing was that he used to contain Hades though, or even what that red magic flying thing was supposed to even be. That was weird.
I’m pretty sure he’s not from the old world though, as it’s been nearly a thousand years since the swarm, according to some of the recordings (was like 355 thousand days since things collapsed).
I think he was just a smart guy, who got even smarter by learning from Hades, until Hades tried to kill him.
Oh I agree. That is what we know about Sylens. And yet… The game is so careful in presenting Nora, Carja, Shadow Carja, and Oserom tribes. Why does Sylens look so different? He is the only character in the game with machine parts used as body modification rather than decoration. When I say “old world” I don’t mean necessarily that he has lived the whole time, but there is room in the narrative for him to have cropped up unnaturally and or with history.
Also Hades was not like Gaia. Hades was not groomed and taught to be an artificial philosopher king by humans. Hades was barely functional in communicating with humans as it was just an AI routine meant to be an evolutionary safety valve on Gaia. It uses broken or stunted sentence structure (when not struggling to quote Carja scripture). Heck when not grunting out a robotic line it is described as metal screaming. This seems hardly the guru-like vessel from which a curious, but primitive, Sylens could soak up so much knowledge.
This is all I mean about “wiggle room”.
My theory is that the red smoke is supposed to be clouds of nanites.
Sylens have blue tubes below the skin, like that tribe that lived with the robots peacefully. I think Sylens has not mystery, is just a dude that love to know more about the world more than everything else, so he collect more and more and want to know more. He is mostly a neutral / chaotic force.