The Horizon Zero Dawn Story Recap You Need Before Playing Forbidden West

With the release of Horizon Forbidden West today, players may need a story recap of the previous game. Here is everything you need to know.

THE WORLD OF HORIZON

The Earth is in the late aftermath of an apocalypse that nearly destroyed the world centuries ago. Now, it is controlled by various tribes that hunt wandering, animal-like machines, and harvesting their parts has become central to their way of life. Lately, the machines have become more aggressive, and more dangerous ones are being made every year.

ALOY DESPITE THE NORA

A newborn Aloy is placed in the care of an outcast named Rost. The Nora tribespeople are forbidden from speaking to outcasts, and this now extends to Aloy. As a child, Aloy is ridiculed by the other children and ignored by the adults and ends up finding herself in the ruins of the old world. Inside she discovers a device called a focus, which allows her to hear the voices of the old ones and see the unseen.

In order for Aloy to discover the origin of her birth and no longer be an outcast, she trains for the Proving, a test of skill for young Nora to become warriors. After Aloy wins the proving, a group of cultists attacks the group, killing most of them as Aloy defends the survivors. Rost arrives just in time to save Aloy but is killed in the process.

Aloy is then brought to a cave inside All-Mother mountain, normally forbidden to anyone but the matriarchs, in order to recover, and is told that the mountain itself is Aloy’s mother. The matriarchs found her in front of a large door that has never opened and still refuses to open for Aloy.

The matriarchs make Aloy a seeker, a unique title among the Nora allowing her to explore the old world and leave the Embrace. Aloy makes it her goal to discover who she is, and find the woman who might be her mother.

LEAVING THE EMBRACE

After investigating where to find the man who might have sent the cultists to attack her at the proving, Aloy finds him at a dig site, where cultists are unearthing strange machines, and he tells her that the cultists are a group called the Eclipse who serve a demon called HADES. He also tells Aloy that he has seen the woman she is looking for at a place called Maker’s End.

Along the way to Maker’s End, Aloy is contacted by a strange voice through her focus that wants to help her uncover the past. At Maker’s End, a ruin of the old world, Aloy discovers that the woman is Dr. Elisabet Sobeck, and she used to work for a company called Faro Automated Solutions, which designed the strange machines the Eclipse are unearthing, as well as the focus devices. The CEO of the company, Ted Faro, asks Dr. Sobeck for help after the machines started going rogue and threatened to wipe out all life on earth, able to harvest biomass and replicate exponentially. Dr. Sobeck suggests Project Zero Dawn as a solution (wink).

As Aloy leaves the ruins, the voice tells Aloy that his name is Sylens, and where Aloy can find the place Dr. Sobeck left for, a place called the Grave-Hoard. There Aloy learns of a military operation called Enduring Victory, its sole purpose was to give Zero Dawn the time it needed to complete, though anyone not working on Zero Dawn were unaware of what it actually was. A recorded meeting between Dr. Sobeck and a group of military leaders hints how dangerous and extreme the project seems to be, and where Dr. Sobeck was given the space she needs, an orbital launch site.

ALOY VERSUS THE ECLIPSE

Sylens tells Aloy that the launch site is underneath the seat of the Shadow Carja, a place called the Citadel. After destroying the Eclipse focus network so that she can enter undetected, Sylens leads Aloy to a secret doorway leading to the ruins of the launch site beneath the Sun Ring, but Aloy isn’t able to access it without alerting the Eclipse.

Inside the facility, Aloy learns the true purpose of Zero Dawn. Since the Faro plague cannot be stopped, and all life on earth would inevitably perish, Zero Dawn would be a fully autonomous AI, aided by a number of subordinate functions, that would rebuild Earth’s biosphere once the Faro robots became inactive and all life on Earth was gone. The AI was named GAIA, and the subordinate functions important to the story are:

MINERVA: a codebreaking AI that will create massive spires, like the one outside Meridian, and generate the deactivation codes necessary to disable the Faro robots, which would take more time than humans have alone.

HEPHAESTUS: Responsible for giving GAIA the tools to build and design machines that will help rebuild the biosphere.

ELEUTHIA: A way to bring humans back to Earth once it is safe enough to be habitable, using Cradle facilities hidden underground.

APOLLO: A database containing the whole of human knowledge, which would also be used to teach these new humans about the world before.

HADES:  Made to destroy all life on Earth if GAIA were to fail, allowing her to try again.

In Elisabet Sobeck’s office, Aloy finds an alpha registry, which would let her open the door in All-Mother mountain, but is attacked and subdued by the Eclipse in the process. In the Sun Ring, the leader of the Eclipse and the man who killed Rost, Helis, destroys Aloy’s focus and sacrifices her to his Faro machines. During the fight, Aloy is saved by Sylens, riding in with overridden machines, and gives Aloy a new focus, with the alpha registry intact.

ALOY’S ORIGINS

Rushing back to the Embrace, Aloy discovers that the Nora are being attacked by corrupted machines and Eclipse soldiers. Fighting the remaining soldiers off with help from the surviving Nora, Aloy heads inside the mountain and opens the door with the alpha registry.

Inside, Aloy discovers that this is a Cradle facility, and for some reason, the humans inside were unable to access APOLLO and had to leave without learning about the truth of the world. Further inside, Aloy accesses a message left to her by GAIA, warning her of a rogue transmission that unshackled her subordinate functions from her control, and threatened to destroy all life on Earth. To prevent this, GAIA self-destructed herself along with HADES. GAIA tells Aloy that she is a clone of Elisabet Sobeck, and she made her to rebuild GAIA and purge HADES with a master override now in the ruins of GAIA Prime, where she overloaded her reactor 20 years prior after Aloy was given to the Nora in the hopes that she would find this message in the future.

At GAIA Prime, Aloy learns that it was a facility containing the alpha scientists, who made sure GAIA and her subordinate functions were ready to self-automate once they died. However, Dr. Sobeck gave her life to save the others, closing a malfunctioning door from the outside, which at this time was devoid of life and overrun by Faro robots.

In the alpha control room, Aloy witnesses a recorded meeting between Ted Faro and the other scientists. Ted Faro deletes APOLLO, claiming human knowledge as a curse, and kills the other scientists. Aloy finds the master override among the bodies and leaves.

ALOY SAVES THE WORLD

Outside the ruins, Aloy is met by Sylens, in person, who confesses that it was him who first discovered HADES, and in exchange for knowledge, he built the Eclipse and raised an army so that HADES could take the spire outside Meridian. Which he now understands is a plan to erect all the disabled Faro robots and end the world. Sylens only stopped working for HADES once he asked one too many questions and had a kill order put out against him. Sylens then says his goodbyes to Aloy, and she leaves for Meridian.

In Meridian, Aloy warns the Sun King of the Eclipse’s plan to take the spire, and with the help of the vanguard and her allies, Aloy fights off the Eclipse and kills Helis. However, Aloy isn’t able to get to the spire in time, and HADES is already there, erecting the Faro robots. After a final boss fight, Aloy purges HADES and deactivates the remaining Faro robots.

PRE AND POST-CREDIT SCENES

Aloy travels to the home of Elisabet Sobeck, chasing a rumor that she meant to head there after leaving GAIA Prime to close the malfunctioning door. Aloy finds her body, still inside an environmental suit, holding a locket and surrounded by a triangle of flowers like that of the ones Aloy discovers on her journeys.

At the site of the spire, HADES escapes from the eye of the Faro machine and flies away in a stream of black and red. In another location, we see Sylens capturing HADES inside a device, claiming he still has much to show him, including whoever sent that signal that awoke HADES in the first place.

PREDICTIONS FOR FORBIDDEN WEST

The main antagonist for Zero Dawn and the Frozen Wilds DLC were one of GAIA’s subordinate functions gone rogue. I would be surprised if the main antagonist of the next game is not one of these functions, but we are able to narrow it down pretty significantly.

HADES was already featured heavily in the first game, but Sylens has captured it and it remains to be seen how HADES will come back. APOLLO, ELEUTHIA, and MINERVA are functions where their ability to threaten human life is a stretch, and APOLLO was deleted regardless.

AETHER is meant to detoxify Earth’s biosphere, and we know so little about it that it will probably be featured in some way. Along with POSEIDON, designed to stabilize Earth’s oceans, and since the trailer for Forbidden West shows Aloy swimming in the ocean, as well as new types of underwater machines, I would be surprised if this isn’t a function we learn more about.

We know that HEPHAESTUS will make a big comeback, not only implied at the end of Frozen Wilds but also the Forbidden West trailer. However, I believe that DEMETER, a function designed to bring back plant life, will be the main antagonist of the next game. The trailer shows the plant life poisoning people and animals, as well as completely deteriorating, while also sprouting strange new ones.

As far as returning characters go, I’m excited to see more of Varl and Erend, and especially Sylens. I fully expect Sylens to be causing trouble for the new tribes we come across, as well as throwing aside morality for the pursuit of knowledge. I don’t think Aloy and Sylens will necessarily try to defeat one another, but Sylens will definitely become an obstacle for Aloy at some point, and since Aloy is still wearing the focus he gave to her, Sylens will have an edge depending on the modifications he likely made to it.