Horizon Forbidden West, the story so far

Horizon Forbidden West

Horizon Forbidden West is preparing to make its debut on PS5 and PS4 in February, leading us on a new adventure as Aloy, the huntress Nora who this time will have to cross the borders of the Lost West in search of the origin of a red plague that it is destroying the world and corrupting the Machines.

How did we get to this point? Who is Aloy really what are her ambitions? What place is the scenario in which she moves? Who are her allies and her adversaries? Where do the Machines come from and what is their function? Let's retrace, in view of Horizon Forbidden West, the story of Horizon Zero Dawn told by the action RPG series by Guerrilla Games.

The Earth of the future

Horizon Zero Dawn, Aloy has reached a high ground and gaze at the scenery The events of Horizon Zero Dawn take place beginning in 3022 in what remains of the United States, centuries after a devastating cataclysm that wiped out society as we know it. Men have resumed populating the territories after somehow losing their knowledge and their history, organizing themselves into tribes and dedicating themselves to hunting and breeding to survive in a particularly hostile scenario.

The wide valleys and the mountains that once belonged to the states of Wyoming, Colorado and Utah are in fact manned by herds of machines, robotic beasts that immediately proved hostile to man and that are divided into various types, more or less dangerous , which reflect the traits of now extinct animals: from the Corsiero to the Longipede, from the Cervavito to the Vedetta, passing through the more powerful Secodonte, Divoratuono, Spezzaroccia and Keratauro.

Aloy

Horizon Zero Dawn, Aloy and Rost We know the protagonist of the game, Aloy, when she is still a girl of six: an orphan who lives as an outcast of the Nora tribe due to of her mysterious origins and can only count on the support of Rost, also an Outcast but at the same time a skilled hunter and fighter, who teaches her to defend herself and to move in the best way within the world of Horizon.

One day little Aloy falls into a sort of quarry that turns out to be actually a centuries-old settlement, full of lost technologies, inside which she finds a Focus: a small triangular device which, once worn as a headset, allows you to get a lot of information about the environment and interact with other electronic devices.

Horizon Zero Dawn, Aloy and his Focus on the ear Rost looks with suspicion at the Focus and at the lost technology in general , but there is no doubt that the small device gave Aloy a substantial advantage over anyone else. Thanks to it, in fact, the girl manages to learn a large amount of notions, obtaining a more complete training than what a simple hunter could have offered her.

This greater awareness pushes the protagonist to desire even more ardently to go out. from the condition of Marginalized, but to do so there is only one way: to pass the Test of the Bold, a hard exam that young Nora undergo to become hunters, to have their skills recognized and thus obtain the respect of the entire tribe. | her mentor, who as an outcast will not be able to follow her to the capital Nora. Once in the city, the girl must once again deal with the prejudices of the other members of the tribe, but she also meets young hunters who support her and the High Matriarch Teersa, who entrusted her to Rost as a child after finding her at the foot of the Sacred Mountain.

The community has gathered in the capital together with delegations from other tribes, and among them Aloy sees a man, Olin, also endowed with a Focus: he is the first to see and wants to know more, but the meeting turns out to be very unfriendly and is interrupted by the arrival of Erend, hunter of the Oseram and future head of the Meridiana Vanguard, intrigued like everyone else by this young Outcast who wants to become a Bold. br>
The next day the test finally takes place and Aloy manages to pass it despite the great difficulties, but the celebrations are ruined by the sudden attack of a group of ferocious fighters who kill many of the exam participants. The girl manages to eliminate the attackers, but their commander is too strong and Aloy manages to escape only thanks to the sudden intervention of Rost, who sacrifices his own life to prevent his protégé from being killed.

Awakened in the belly of the Holy Mountain, the protagonist of Horizon discovers that the patrol has been sent to eliminate her. But why? Focus analysis reveals that her face is identical to that of a woman who actually lived nearly a thousand years earlier, Dr. Elisabet Sobeck, one of the masterminds behind the Zero Dawn project for restoring the human race after the event that destroyed the world in 2066.

The epic of the Seeker

Horizon Zero Dawn, some of the machines in the game The truth about Aloy and her resemblance to Elisabet Sobeck, as well as the role of the doctor compared to what happened, it is actually revealed only in the final part of Horizon Zero Dawn, at the end of a long epic that will see the protagonist be awarded the title of Seeker by the matriarchs to have free access to all territories and be able to conduct their own investigations on the origin of the attack as well as discovering what is really hidden in the heart of the Sacred Mountain.

Thus begins a journey that will lead us to discover the vast open world of the game developed by Guerrilla Games, and in which Aloy will have the task of visiting the Carja, Oseram and Banuk tribes in search of clues about the instigators of the assault. How to move within such large territories? The answer comes at the end of a furious fight against a group of Machines led by a Corruptor: once the mechanical monster is defeated, Aloy recovers from her body a device that makes her able to perform the Override and therefore to make the Machines meek. , for example to be able to ride a Courser.

Horizon Zero Dawn, Aloy riding a Courser After various adventures in the capital Carja, the girl finds Erend and decides to help him find out what happened to his sister Ersa, leader of the Vanguard kidnapped by the so-called Carja delle Ombre, the group born during the civil war that upset the tribe and questioned its values, as well as the role of the Sun King. moves Helis, the warrior who killed Rost and who with his men is trying to reactivate an army of Ancient Machines to conquer the world.

After discovering the truth about Olin and the blackmail he suffered because does not reveal the group's plans, Aloy is informed that a Carja sect of Shadows, called Eclipse, is responding to a mysterious entity named ADE, who apparently is connected to the Zero Dawn project and the civilization that inhabited the world up to a thousand years ago. To reveal all this is Sylens, a man who manages to communicate with her through the focus and pushes her to visit what remains of Faro Automated Solutions, the company that with its military robots equipped with artificial intelligence has brought about the end of the world. .

A thousand years ago

Horizon Zero Dawn, Aloy uses Focus to analyze some Machines As mentioned, the world of Horizon Zero Dawn is the result of a rebirth that took place about a thousand years after a event that led to the extinction of any form of life on Earth. In fact, when Ted Faro's Faro Automated Solutions created an army of enormous automated robots, capable of understanding and adapting to any situation, a process was triggered by which machines have identified the human race as the main threat to the future of the planet. deciding to eliminate it.

Elisabet Sobeck and her team then worked on the Zero Dawn project, making their clients believe that it was a war technology capable of dealing with the threat of robots, when in reality it is not there were hopes of winning that battle. The only possibility left was therefore to create the conditions for which humanity could be reborn thanks to the GAIA terraforming system and a large amount of embryos to be reintroduced into nature, which however would have had to maintain their knowledge rather than start over from scratch as it did for due to Ted Faro tampering with the system.

Sylens

Horizon Zero Dawn, Sylens Who is Sylens? The man who contacts Aloy is a scholar who also came into possession of a Focus and was soon obsessed with the knowledge of the previous civilization, to the point of going too far and awakening ADE, which is actually an artificial intelligence. created to restore the starting conditions of the planet (and therefore exterminate all forms of life) in case of problems, thus allowing the GAIA system to start its procedures all over again.

It was precisely the early activation of ADE to determine the birth of the Eclipse, while the threat of the Machines is something much more remote and is linked to the malfunction of another artificial intelligence belonging to the Zero Dawn project, EFESTO: a system assigned to the creation of robotic beasts, which over the years he has perceived humans as a threat and has programmed his creatures to become hostile and more and more powerful.

The Final Showdown

Hor izon Zero Dawn, a spectacular combat sequence Having finally identified the nature of the looming threat, Aloy returns to the Embrace, the land where the Nora tribe lives, and is able to access the heart of the Holy Mountain, where she discovers that she is a clone of Elisabet Nobeck (hence the great resemblance to the woman), as well as the whole truth about the Zero Dawn project and what went wrong on the front of the preservation of the culture and knowledge of the previous civilization.

The huntress comes to this point identified as the Chosen One, she comes into possession of the Main Override and with Sylens's help she develops a weapon that should allow her to face Hades and disable its functions. However, the battle is fought by all four tribes with which Aloy came into contact: Nora, Carja, Oseram and Banuk field their best warriors and the battle that takes place is absolutely spectacular.

Epilogue

Horizon Zero Dawn, Aloy in the final sequences of the game Hades stopped and the Eclipse defeated, Aloy decides to leave to find the resting place of the mother he never had, Elisabet Sobeck. Finds her body among flowers and century-old pines, takes her pendant to keep it as a souvenir and listens with the Focus to a recording in which the doctor confesses that she would have liked to have a daughter, if circumstances had allowed it: in that description Aloy is he finds himself perfectly.

The game does not end in this way, however: a secret scene reveals that Sylens has kept a device on which ADE is, eager for the artificial intelligence to reveal everything it knows about who it is. has reactivated as it prepares to cross the borders of the Lost West and lay the groundwork for the now upcoming sequel, Horizon Forbidden West.

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