I believe @Teiman is correct. There isn’t anything more to it - Sylens is the kind of guy whom in modern ages would have discovered gravity or the theory of relativity. And then he found a door, opened it, and is desperate to get back to it once it had been closed from him. I think he’s the key to re-igniting Apollo, and while I suspect he’s going to be the Big Bad in the next game, if there is one (duh), I wonder if his end game won’t be something I think is kind of awesome. Would be great if the RPG elements allowed you to side with him, if that was the case, ala Fallout New Vegas or something.
Some stuff that could have happened:
During that meeting when Faro was yelling at the guys to stop trying to access the system, right before killing them, maybe have it be that the AI programmer guy did something fast to cache some development copy of Apollo.
Even beyond Apollo, all of the AI systems have some fairly vast knowledge of things… and there are a total of 9 separate subsystems that broke away from GAIA. You could definitely make some sort of vast game out of subjugating those systems to bring them back under GAIA’s control, in order to re-start the overall biosphere maintenance system.
Stop trying to access the system!
I was heart broken after the Apollo reveal. Up to that point I was thinking Sylens was an incarnation of Apollo, perhaps as a badly skinned servitor.
What I want is a sequel where a copy of Apollo is found and you have to progress through their gated progression levels to unlock all of his knowledge.
Really? They had the subdermal tubing as well? Missed that. Hrm.
I am so glad I went into this completely blind. This is not a game you want to spoil for yourself.
Ya, the Banuk shamen had that kind of thing… basically the same as primitive tribes in the real world where they stick bone or sticks through their skin.
@divedivedive - it’s time for anotehr installment.
So a quick recap: Elizabet Sobek had General Herris (his name, basically the chairman of the Join Chiefs) go round up pretty much every “expert” in some field they could get their hands on. Any field. Even artistic fields. It is noted that, essentially, some of these people may be “in the care of” other governments or corporations. Herris says no problemo, he’ll handle acquisitions.
Early in the game a strange voice speaks to you over your focus. This voice occasionally offers guidance but won’t respond to queries. Eventually this voice gains a face, although not a name at first. This person appears to you as a holograpg via your Focus. And then eventually a name: Sylens (voiced by the terrific Lance Reddick, probably most popularly known as the Continental front desk man in John Wick and Olivia’s boss in Fringe). Sylens alternately helps and urges you on in your quest. He eventually also reveals his motive: acquisition of knowledge. And one other: he “helped” eclipse when it was in it’s infancy and wants to rectify that mistake. Sylens is kind of a dick but sometimes also very on point. He’s more concerned about the search for Knowledge than Aloy’s search for her origins. Although he shows some capacity for compassion. He, observing through your focus, becomes your companion as you get through these story missions. He’s quite handy with focuses, and he can hack most of them with ease. Eclipse poses another problem. But you inspire him to take a different tack and you both endeavor to crash the Eclipse focus network, giving Aloy some much needed breathing room (the network is explained as “an invisible web connecting all of the focus users, allowing them to speak instantaneously across distances” to which Aloy suggests “is there a way to tear the web?”).
Unfortunately for you, doing this puts you front and center with Hades. Hades is, possibly, a Horus titan class peacekeeping unit of Faro industries manufactore. But it’s also immobilized. I say possibly because to this point there has been no suggestion that these machines are sentient. The robotic swarms that are on pace to destroy all life on earth are simply acting on their internal programming, glitch inclusice. But this is clearly a sentient entity. So how did Hades come to be there? Won’t take long to find out.
Destruction of the communications network allows Aloy to slip into the orbital launch site and investigate just what it was Elizabet Sobeck was up to. As previously noted, all projections indicate there’s 15 months before life on earth is destroyed. Further, the atmosphere will become uninhabitable before this. Humanity will be all but wiped out by the climate upheavel and lack, of food supply before the robots are done. 15 months isn’t enough to do anything at all really. . . except construct emergency underground facilities to implement Horizon Zero.
Horizon Zero is a reboot. An AI is created named Gaia. Gaia is given a series of “helpers” (although not sentient) or perhaps better explained as “expert systems”, each with a specific focused and named after something in Mythology. Haepestus will be responsible for creating new robots as needed, in facilitation of I’ can’t remember which’s terraforming task )or whatever else they need to do). Apollo will be the sum of all human knowledge, ready to re-teach the human race once it returns. The human genome it self is to be the sole province of another of these systems. Further, there’s a hedging and an actual colony ship is created to carry people + a copy of Apollo as well as other tech to a new system (Sirius X). Just in case. But that fails (the ship explodes when it engages it’s experimental propulsion technology at the edge of the solar system). Hades is the system that will be responsible for killing off the machines.
To do all of this, technology will be used to extend the life of Sobeck’s team as long as possible, out to 100 years. That’s how long it will take to code all of these things and create the initial tech. Haephestus will take care of creating additional tech as Gaia instructs from then on. One of the systems is responsible for cracking the machine codes and disabling the swarms that are now roving earth’s surface. From there it’s estimated hundreds of years before the environment is restored to some semblance of normal, using seeds and biomass that are stored at the time of the project’s inception. Eventuaqlly new humans will be birthed, grow, given access to Apollo, and sent out into the wild. But Apollo contains the sum total of human knowledge and it’s clear nobody has that out in the world. And Each of these sub-systems is not an AI. So what’s going on?
Interlude: this mission shows off HZD’s strengths but also one of it’s weaknesses. There’s a massive exposion dump across both audio logs, the occasional holographic movie, and text logs. It’s a little much although it’s all fascinating. But it took me a long time to beat the mission from all the reading. There’s a lot of great world building flavor. Each prospective member was given 3 choices (1) sign up for zero dawn (2) accept indefinite confinement (3) medical euthanasia. Some opted for the latter (although one person who did was being a bit histrionic for my tastes). There was a lot of understandable freaking out at being brought to this site and then having the information revealed, as one might expect. The ultimate goal at this site, however, was in retrieving an alpha something or other which would allow you to access the vault back in the mountain where your tribe’s god lives.
So the next mission sends you back to the beginning. Eclipse has attacked (Helis, the bad guy who you met during the attack on the brave ceremony and who killed Rost, shows up and captures you and then goes bond villain so you can escape). You break the siege and then head into the mountain. And here you find out what happened.
For one, humans were birthed but they were ultimate trapped in the upper levels of the facility, unable to access Apollo for some reason. There were helper robots who took care of the children but eventually there was rebellion. Entering the heart of the facility and you get a message from Gaia directly. A message for Elizabet Sobeck. . . but for you.
There was a catastrophic anomoly. A data transmission of unknown origin is sent to the facility, which transformed those subordinate functions/systems into “unregulated, self-aware entities of a highly chaotic nature”. Gaia states that HADES will now seize control of the terraforming and reverse all operations, rendering all life extinct in 58 days. As such, Gaia decides to blow Gaia prime’s reactor, to destroy Hades (but also, unfortunately, Gaia). So that fixes that problem! Except without a central governing intelligence, the terraforming will continue to run erratically before breaking down. I believe it was this decision that must have shut off Apollo (I think it was mentioned Apollo had no power).
Hades, sensing this or possibly in anticipation, launched a virus to “remove the code shackles holding it in place”. Gaia switches between referring to Hades as it/them. the virus is also what destroys the Alpha registery, preventing easy re-entry into the mountain.
Gaia is your mother. And she deliberately re-creates Elizabet Sobeck, as you, as closely as possible. Gaia figures you will find a way to overcome the Alpha Registry issue, and thus you will be able to enter the facility. Harnessing the existing technologies, you will eventually be able to rebuild the system core and reboot GAIA.
I wouldn’t call this a twist exactly but it’s a pretty cool unexpected turn in the story. I mean it was pretty obvious you were “hatched”. And it was obvious that somehow the machine swarms had been defeated. Finding out that Horizon Zero was not so much a last gasp effort to stop the machines but instead a complex project to shut them down and then reboot all life on earth was really interesting and unexpected.
Who sent the signal? No idea. But now we know what Horizon Zero was, and why it was so controversial. And we know how it got derailed.
I am digging this, and I appreciate your taking the time to write this up. I feel like this game more than any other challenges my resolve to not buy a PS4. But maybe I’ll go for PSNow …
I don’t think I can help much on the resolve front. Hmmmm. . . the Netflix app is shit on toast. So there’s that!
@divedivedive - Done. So I fee like I might have missed a key lore item or three. A lot of the lore you find out in the world is just background flavor, not critical to the plot. But there are questions I don;t think were answered, beyond the ones that deliberately weren’t answered (more on that in a sec).
So it will be interesting if anyone else picked up on something I didn’t.
When we left off, we had gotten all the answers we needed in terms of what threat we were facing. Hades, an “uplifted” AI that was hellbent on re-carrying out the Faro Plague (as they started calling it) and wiping out life on earth. Sylens dispatches us to go get the code override thingamajig we need to destroy Hades (it’s talked about in the previous mission, I just sort of glossed over it). Getting it is easy. What we find when we get it is. . . well.
The facility the “alphas” wound up at (these being the people who chaired each of the individual sub program initiatives, Hades, Apollo, Minerva, etc as well as Sobeck) had a glitch. Everything was supposed to seal “within 2 millimeters” to make sure the machine swarms couldn’t detect it. A hatch at this facility malfunctions and only seals at 10 millimeters, and there is a swarm approaching. Sobeck summons everyone to discuss what to do about it. You get to see a holo of them arguing, only to realize she’d already made the decision. She heads outside to seal the hatch and cutsherself off from safety. This sacrifice saves the project. You get to see a memorial Gaia creates inside the facility as well as listen to eulogies from various members. Including ted Faro. She mentions something about going home and that’s the last we here of Elizabet Sobeck. Sylens congratulates you and leaves, saying he’ll simply return to questing for knowledge. The last thing we learn from him is that it was he who found Hades (tracking it’s signal with a focus he had repaired). Hades had bargained for knowledge, trading what it knew for knowledge of the outside world (not clear at first, but designed to geet an idea of how vulnerable the Spire was and then to create an army it could manipulate to secure the spire). Like any good devil, Hades began pushing for more and more from Sylens and then turned on him when it didn’t need him anymore (Helis, the high priest of the Shadow Carja, and the shadow Carja proper were basically it’s to command at this point).
Ted Faro is inarguably the worst human being of all time. It’s admirable that he did everything in his power to fight the machines (inevitable though their victory was) and also to see that Horizon Zero could get off the groud and succed. Except, it turns out he didn’t. So Faro, who unleashed a plague so devastating it destroyed all biomass on planet earth, had a crisis of conscience. This crisis did exactly what you might expect in someone as arrogant as Faro. It lead to him unilaterally making decisions that were, frankly, fucking bad. He announces all of this to the remaining alphas, via Holo, in the “council chamber” they had assembled. Faro pulls the plug on Apollo because “knowledge is tainted and we can’t let humanity repeat our mistakes” (your mistakes, Ted). He then vents the oxygen in the chamber and kills all the alphas. So Faro destroys all life on earth and then decides it needs to “reboot” without the curse of blah blah blah. What a gigantic asshole. One I suspect we’re not done with.
From here, you have to rally your forces and get ready for Hades’ attack. This invovles some canned sections where you get to forcefully murder Helis and blow up lots of robots. It culminates at the spire. This was the device used to broadcast the codes to dismantle the swarms. Well there’s a whole bunch of them across the entire planet (obviously one wouldn’t be enough due to line of site issues). Hades is going to access it and broadcast the Faro virus and basically re-start the swarm apocalypse.
After you blow up the Deathbringer it was possessing and the machines it summons for help, you use the thingamajig on Hades and stop it and save the world as you know it. Everyone is super happy.
A nice coda is that Aloy ventures to where Sobeck’s home was and gets to hear a few more audio logs Sobeck had in her suit, including one where she tells Gaia about what she would have wanted in a daughter. It’s a sweet moment. It also seems to indicate that one of the collectables out in the world - strange metal flowers, always in the center of a triangular bed of red flowers - were tributes by Gaia in honor of Sobeck. Pretty cool.
Post credits, we see randos approaching the husk of what was carrying Hades (just some sort of core, not an actual Horus). Something stars swiling and then what appears to be Hades flies out and away (how, I dunno, it’s supposed to be destroyed). Then we cut to Sylens in a desert area. He’s carrying a strange device. Then he sees Hades streaking through the sky, and holdes up device and Hades is drawn into it. Then he turns to a wreckage of a Horus and starts talking about bargining for knowledge. Sylens is searching for Hades’ “masters”. Fade to black! I will play a sequel gladly, althoughb it sounds like an actual expansion is on the way and maybe the story will resolve there.
What the game does not reveal, seemingly purposefully:
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Who sent the signal to activate Hades? It’s masters, but what are it’s masters. We’ll have to wait to find out. I wonder if this will trace back to Faro. He was secured away in his own underground facility. I wouldn’t be surprised if something got away from him again. I can’t see why he was so opposed to Horizon Zero (I can understand being afraid of the plan - it involves us going extinct - but there were no options), and also somewhat opposed to Gaia.
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Hades survived how? We didn’t need Hades’ survival to have another game or expansion set up. The masters were already out tehre, and it’s a rather pressing question.
What I’m not sure of:
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The exact evolution of the robots on the surface. This is both because I don’t know why there were “normal seeming” bots (essentially equivalent to big cats, deer, rams, etc) and other bots that were clearly designed for other purposes (Glinthawks, Stormwings, Ravagers, Thunderjaws). Further, some of these bots were clearly armed to the teeth. The Thunderjaw is basically a T-rex that has rapid fire laser cannons on its head, a big gun looking thing on it’s back, and “disc launchers” mounted on it’s sweet muscular thighs. Disck launchers are essentially “fucking awesome rocket launchers”. The top gun does some sort of orbital strike attack (not sure if it’s an actual orbital strike). Ravagers have these super sweet lightning cannons. Incidentally you can knock those off Ravagers and disc launchers off TJ’s and use them. Some of the bots simply don’t appear to serve any sort of role except combat (possibly Gaia felt it needed defenses, but this isn’t clear).
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I’m not sure if corrupted machines were supposed to be signs of Hades or not. It makes sense - Eclipse is unearthing actual Scarabs/Corrupters and one of their functions is to control other bots. But it doesn’t explain the random zones of corruption you run into (you do fight corrupted bots along side eclipse forces at times, which does make sense).
The combat oriented machines didn’t start showing up until after Gaia detonated and the AIs splintered and went rogue. They refer to the machines becoming more fierce as the derangement in game. If you read the Cauldron logs it seems Hephaestus was attempting to hack back into the Cauldrons, and was beat back at 2 of them, one was offline, and the fourth it managed to take over. Hephaestus, appears to be responsible for the change in machine behavior, and one of the logs talks about encroachment and a cull being required.
[details=Logs]
Active: Production/Oversight/Analysis
Active: Additive/Manufacture/Type
Alert: Intrusion/Source: External
Active: Countermeasure/Phase-shift
Alert: Intrusion/Denied
Alert: Reboot/Purge…Successful
Alert: Intrusion/Denied
M/ALL - US - W CM LOG 329G
active: Countermeasure/Diagnostic/wurm.nxt
alert: Trace/Intrusion/Detect: successful
alert: Trace Result: HEPHAESTUS
alert: Infiltrate/Intrusion/Retrieval: successful
alert: Command Template Acquired
alert: Decode/Initiate: Successful
alert: Result: ENCROACHMENT THREAT: HUMAN
alert: Result: FAUNA THREAT: HIGH
alert: Result: FLORA THREAT: HIGH
alert: Result: BIOSPHERE THREAT: HIGH
alert: Result: DIRECTIVE: CULL
alert: Result: PRODUCTION OVERRIDE INITIATED
alert: Result: ALL OTHER PRIORITIES RESCINDED
alert: Result: /End[/details]
It’s either a sign of Hades or a side effect of bringing the Faro bots back online, Corruption looks to be a nanoswarm, we see it end game actually go out and collect biomass to bring a destoyer online.
Again, thanks. I didn’t understand all of it but it all seems really cool. Maybe I can catch a decent Let’s Play of this someday.
Rost’s backstory is easily missable, but it sounds like it may actually have tied into events leading up to the events that kick things off. 12 bandits not from any tribe, and the Nora braves unable to stop them or even get within bowshot, seems like they may have had access to some high tech.
Loved the detail that the Hades designers were metalheads.
There’s a free exclusive theme for getting the platinum trophy. Mine came emailed as a code the day after I finished. I’ll be sticking with my Persona 5 theme but love devs that add little touches like that.
About Hades:
This is explained in the Zero Dawn instalation, I think.
The terraformation process can fail. Gaia can get things wrong and we can end with a ecology without enough oxygen for humans or with violent storms. Hades is a kill switch that will take over the Gaia process and kill all life, so Gaia can start from scratch again. Hades and Gaia are evolutive systems and they are tryiing to learn new ways to fulllfill their mission better. Gaia lie to Hades so Hades think theres no need to kill switch, and Hades may forcefully take over everything even when is not needed. They probably made a mistake by making the systems evolutive, but withouth humans around, theres no other way to create a system that would survive to any type of event that can happen.
TL:DR:
Hades is the kill-switch system of the terraformation process. It resets the terraformation to zero, killing all life, so gaia can try again.
Which I thought was absurdly cool and well thought out. Especially given Hades roll as the antagonist. Talk about a great back story.
Yeah, the whole backstory is impeccable and surprising and inventive. You spend like 35 hours thinking the animal robots are part of the Faro swarm that converts biomass before you discover they and the military robots are actually totally unrelated. All the tales from the military fighting a hopeless battle in a Terminator-like future are also incredible.
Really enjoyed the game, but I felt mechanically it was not quite there in too many areas and fell short of greatness. Some of this story stuff didn’t work for me at all.
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One of GAIA’s sub-functions is able to wipe out all life on earth, how is that not going wrong?
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Their solution to the Faro swarm that can instantly hack any machine is an AI?
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Why can’t they tell us what the signal that corrupted Hades is?
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This system has a single point of failure, why aren’t all the components independent? It cannot possibly work.
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Why was Ted Faro ever given any kind of admin access into this thing?
And then they lost, and every living creature on the entire earth died.
That’s the part which is pretty innovative, to me at least.[quote=“Richard_Holt, post:57, topic:128715”]
5) Why was Ted Faro ever given any kind of admin access into this thing?
[/quote]
Seriously, why was Faro not just executed? Seems like he committed THE MOST CAPITAL CRIME EVER.
Just finished this last night.
So there is one part where you learn the kids are kicked out of the cradles because they run out of food. Isn’t Gaia equipped to make any robots she needs? I figure she would have a few robots gathering up foxes, turkeys, rabbits, etc. There should be plenty to live off of rabbit salad the rest of their lives.
It does seem odd that GAIA didn’t do any problem solving to come up with a plan B now APOLLO had been deleted. She just allowed the cradles to make people without anything to do with them once they were not babies.