So, last week I was pretty devoid of ideas, evidenced by the fact that I wrote an entire article about the sexuality of a fictional wolf, but this week is different. See, this week, Horizon: Zero Dawn was released. I haven’t played it, but I have watched a few hours of the game and I have a lot of ideas about the story. If you want to watch the let’s play that I have been watching, it is by ChristopherOdd on YouTube.
The actual gameplay starts with young Aloy(her name being a bastardization of ‘alloy’) falling into a metal ruin. As she explores, and listens to audio logs with her new little head device, we get some new ideas about what happened. There was a very advanced civilization of humans, who built the machines and everything else dangerous and forbidden by the tribe, but something bad happened. One audio log is actually a suicide note ending with the sound of a gunshot. Another audio log and later a text log, mention a nurse handing out pills for an ‘easy’ way to go. Some catastrophic event, possibly involving the ‘Metal Devil’ led to the demise of the advanced humans. Some remained, and somehow their descendants lost all understanding of technology.
Later we find out that the ‘All-Mother,’ the goddess of the native people, is actually a door, and that Aloy was found as an infant in front of that door, and that she looks just like a woman scanned by one of the focusers, except the woman wears simple clothing with a clean haircut. Aloy mentions that there are people behind the door. So, I am thinking that some of the people who survived the disaster holed up behind the door, probably a bunker, and taught their descendants about technology. Then the woman, most likely Aloy’s mother, put Aloy outside the door for the leaders of the tribes to find. I have no idea for what purpose, but it must be related to the men who attacked her tribe, the killers.
And then there’s Rost, Aloy’s adoptive father, an outcast from the tribe. We know literally nothing about him, except it was mentioned that he chose to leave the tribe. Why? It was not that he disagreed with their laws, because he still follows them. Did he do something bad? Did he kill someone? I have no idea, and it is driving me nuts. I cannot find anything on the web to satisfy my curiosity on this particular topic, so I guess we’re out of luck until later.
All in all, Horizon: Zero Dawn has a pretty compelling story so far, and I definitely recommend at least checking it out. I do not recommend buying it unless you have money because video games are really expensive right now, dag-nabbit. In my day a new video game cost thirty dollars, not sixty.
See you next week,
Caitlin
What's in a Game? 