As our first look at the story of the Horizon games, Zero Dawn’s opening cinematic acts as our introduction to the world. If you’re anything like me, you were too busy being wowed by the scenery to pay attention to much beyond the robots and nature. I decided to look back at the beginning and found a couple of (in my opinion) interesting things.
But first, a recap:
Setting the Scene
Snow dusts a cabin reminiscent of a Viking longhouse. Sun rays pierce the cloud cover and through dense trees to land amongst primitive workbenches, staked fencing, and a practice target like an oddly shaped deer…
The cabin door of rough-hewn logs and brightly woven cord creaks open.
An intense man with dark brows and a long, plaited beard steps out. There are deliberate streaks of blue paint across his face and sprinkled through his hair. His clothes are heavy furs for the snowy land, a patch of hand-embroidered leather beneath a shoulder piece of an anachronistic pauldron of bound plates of white metal…
He looks out beyond his bordered territory. In the distance, two mountain peaks hide the sun.
He looks down and speaks, gently, kindly, to an infant reaching up at him from his arms.
“We have a ritual to perform you and I.”
He puts down his feathered spear to lay the babe in a carrier. She smiles and reaches for him again. He places a pendant around her.
“Here… wear this. It belonged to my daughter.”
He hoists her onto his back and picks up his spear.
“Today I speak your name, girl.”
At the porch of his home, built from his hand, he marches down the steps with a purpose.
“But—will the goddess speak it back?”
He moves through the snow of an aspen grove, rosy morning sun warming the world through a delicate brushing of golden leaves and white bark.
A dirt path amongst greenery, a shadow of a looming gate.
“Normally, it would be the mother who declares… if you had one.”
Thick posts are carved and painted with woven, geometric symbols, and behind him now, the gate is topped with countless spikes.
“The whole village would attend, and Matriarchs perform the ritual.”
The sun glints down from blue skies and soft clouds, through a shadowed canopy. The child reaches for the light.
“But… we are outcasts.”
The forest turns dark and jungle-like, with gnarled twisted trunks sprouting moss and ferns. Mushrooms fan in clusters.
“Even so, we keep the tribes rituals.”
Behind him, a structure towers, dark and foreboding in the mists. Angular, points line the top like the gate, but this is advanced, exact, and metal, not haphazard wood. Like a cathedral lost to time, whatever it was, it is now a crumbling ruin that nature has reclaimed.
“Otherwise we might become like the faithless Old Ones, who turned their backs on the Goddess.”
More ruins, a city’s worth. Rusted and decrepit, home now only for adventurous trees that sprout from their shade. Ancient, obliterated cars line a river. A statue of two men on horseback watches the water. The stone has faired far better than the rest.
“But their wickedness doomed them.”
Amongst the green and trees, the guns of an ancient tank aim at some unknown machine of war. The sun behind it throws its details into shadow. Only its purpose can be deduced: death. Its rust and dark metal stand in stark contrast to the verdant forest.
“To us were left the splendors of creation.”
A strike of blue as a river cuts through a valley. Mountains tower in the distance, imposing and vast. Pines follow the water’s rocky edge, stark and hardy. The clouds soften the morning sun, radiating rose-colored light across the world.
“Beasts of air, water, earth…”
In quick shots, salmon leap from a stream in abundance, a boar darts between vine-covered trunks.
“and steel.”
Across a field, two towering machines stride, straight-necked and proud, across the ground. A host of smaller, deer-like versions leap and gallop between when the foot of a third gargantuan machine thunders to the ground before our narrator. All the machines continue on their way, oblivious to their witness, when another, hunched and bristling with weapons, stalks across in the opposite direction. An identical machine follows after, stops, shakes its head in a uniquely animalistic way, and glances around. Our narrator falls back, weary eyes on the new additions.
“It is one thing to hunt a beast, another to hunt a machine.”
Beneath a sprawling willow, two deer-machines perk up as if alert to a sound. Blue light shines from their eyes and tubes of green trail down their necks and into canisters of the same hue fastened like spines across their backs.
“You must be humble and respect their power.”
The man spies a herd of them from the shadows. Most dig into the ground with rotary disks atop their antlers, but one is alert and looking his way.
“I will teach you this, one day…”
He hikes across a snowy, jagged peak. Totems mark the way, the same carved and painted wood, with banners, candles, and ornamentation. In the distance, across more heights, signs of similar life.
On a narrow stretch of trail, twisted cords rope off the side of the path. Jugs, incense, and weavings lie forgotten and snow-dusted under icicles that seem to point to something hidden in the white distance. A sprouting length of something too large to be real…
A waterfall is ornamented with concentric circle paintings and more totems. In the distance is a single, lonely outpost adrift in the mist that covers the mountains.
He ascends and looks back over the path of his journey. A pendent of concentric circles like that of the painting and totems, hangs above his head as he regards the distance. Mountains ring a smaller range in the foreground, mist-covered.
The world is red with the coming sunrise as he strides toward a ledge at the apex of the waterfall. Candles and pedestals line the wooden floor, the former topped with bowls and incense. A figure waits at the edge.
“High Matriarch Teersa? What is she doing here?”
“Does she mean to forbid the ritual?”
Teersa waves him forward, long white hair beaded and twisted down her aged back. He takes the baby in his arms and tries to kneel to her.
“No-no-no,” she says, a hand reaching out to him, “off your knees! It’s nearly time.”
He stands, incredulous.
“And yes,” she continues, waving him on, the gold disks lining her hip glinting in the coming sun, “you may speak to me!”
He holds the baby out, to her.
“You came to bless the naming?” His voice is unsure but quietly joyful, he smiles through his words.
“Have not six months gone by since we entrusted her to you?”
“But,” he looks to the child who watches him, “we are outcasts.”
“You by choice,” she retorts, “and she, well…”
Teersa dips practiced fingers into a small pot, dabs a streak of blue across the child’s forehead.
“I’m a High Matriarch, Rost. I bless whom I choose.”
“Then… you honor us.”
“Yes, yes,” she rushes him, “Now, go! And be ready to declare! Go!”
He walks to the edge of the precipice, a tree extending past the tip, banners hanging from the ledge. He gingerly takes the steps and the mountains spread before him in the mist. Something cuts across two peaks miles in the distance, something jutting in an angle too hard to be natural…
“All-Mother,” Teersa intones, great, lit pillars standing behind her. “This child needs a name by which to know her, that your love may warm her life as the rising sun warms the earth.”
Rost holds the child up to the sun beginning to rise over the distant mountain. Her arms reach out to the light as it illuminates something impossible huge and insectile that appears as if halted mid-climb to the summit.
“Speak her name!”
Rost lifts the child above his head. She smiles and reaches into the distance.
“ALOY!!!” he bellows.
The sun crests the two peaks, bathing the world in warm light. As his echo quiets, Rost pulls Aloy back to his chest.
“And so her name is blessed!” Teersa proclaims.
Aloy giggles in Rost’s arms.
“Stop this!” a new voice demands. “At once!”
An aged woman like Teersa sporting a down-turned headdress with dangling gold disks, a spear in hand. Behind her stand men with weapons.
“What have you done?”
Teersa raises her chin.
“I’ve blessed the naming of a child.”
The woman’s lip curls as she turns from Teersa and sets her sights on a kneeling Rost.
“Stubborn woman! You call that curse a child?”
She looks down at him, hunched over the newly-named Aloy.
“What did she tell you about its birth, outcast? Answer!”
She bangs her spear in outrage, leans over them both.
“I’ve done only what you asked-”
Rost will not even hazard a look up at her.
“To raise it, yes,” she near hisses. “We said nothing of love.”
“Enough!” Teersa interjects.
“And you…” The woman turns to her, sneer on her face. “Blessing its name, like it was one of the Nora, one of the tribe!”
Rost cradles Aloy in his arms while the women argue, her little face is, for once, not smiling. The pendant is still around her neck. She fusses.
“I know my duty to them—and to you.”
“I’m here. And wherever you go… I will follow.”
Aloy coos again as the camera pans back to reveal the full sight of the valley as the woman stands over them. Hidden in the white of the distant mountains, dark metal arches are twisted across the landscape.
A Closer Look
Though it’s obviously not our first look at the world, what with Horizon being six years old at this point—and garnering quite a bit of interest when it was announced—Guerilla still intended and wrote it to be our first taste.
A first look, a first chapter, is an important introduction. It gives us a baseline of knowledge to work with, and it’s supposed to tell us what the creator thinks are the most important facts of the world.
So what does Guerilla share here?
We’ll get to the natural world later, but it’s important to note that the first shot is of the environment.
Let’s start with the architecture.
Rost’s Cabin and Yard.
What pops out from the shot is the cabin. It’s makeshift and wood, deceptively primitive from afar. It tells us, not the timeframe, but the level of sophistication of the society we’re looking at. It looks, it feels viking-ish.
That then makes us correlate this unknown civilization with the one we recognize. What do we associate Vikings with? Marauding, warlike? Dangerously capable over more “advanced” civilizations?
Or do you think about the Vikings more positive connotations? Cleaned and perfumed hair? Women in more equal place in society? Shieldmaidens and money-handling?
There is a fence of sharpened stakes bordering the yard ominously. Something poses a significant threat to warrant them.
But then there’s that strange target dummy…
The woven cords are so bold against the neutrals of the wood and snow as to be ostentatious. For a moment, they beg you to look at them. Where or how would these primitive people get such a brilliant dye, just to use it on cording?
The logs used to make the cabin are uneven and rough as if whoever made them lacked the tools and knowledge necessary for a clean cut.
Rost
Rost is introduced with a long, braided beard and blue markings on his face. Thick, dark brows pull together over his eyes to give him a stern, perceptive look. The hair on his head looks twisted or dreaded, the sides shaved and lines cut horizontally. He wears lots of dark furs. All these things reinforce the Viking comparison, if through a modern and biased lens.
Two things stand out on his apparel; an embroidered leather patch, and incongruous metal plates.
The patch has more of the blue cording in a looped pentagonal motif. It’s decorative and serves no purpose other than ornamentation. It’s fastidiously stitched, with three lines of orange between the loops of blue, a cross of orange at the center.
We see nothing else, either on him or the house, that is purely decorative like this. His hair is tied back with a bit of the blue face paint, the sides cleanly shaved. His beard is braided but unadorned. There are small beads or wraps of leather in a few pieces of hair swept round his neck, but they blend in with his hair and furs.
This seems to suggest that Rost isn’t the one who made it. If his clothes and dwelling are all utilitarian, with no ornamentation, then who’s made this patch for him?
Above the patch is a set of white, metal hexagons, lashed together like a pauldron. Though the mystery of their origin is short-lived, it still produces a quick bit of anachronism that stokes the imagination. Why doesn’t he use it for more than armor?
The shot of the mountains has the spear-fence hovering near the bottom. I’ll come back to that.
Rost mentions the ritual, and it’s worth pointing out that this ritual is what Guerilla chose as the plot of our introduction. Why?
Aloy
He gives Aloy his daughter’s pendant, but notice he doesn’t say that he made it. Aloy is also already sporting her signature blue silk, which seems ostentatious for a baby…
We see more of the metal on the carrier for Aloy, and maybe this is reaching here, but I feel that might be foreshadowing how she is revealed to be “carried” or birthed by another machine, if for no other reason than the metal has been used so seldom up till now.
Rost mentions speaking Aloy’s name and the Goddess speaking it back. I assume this is referring to the echo of Rost’s voice when he calls Aloy’s name from the mountain top—keeping in mind that it is the mother, thus a feminine voice, that usually makes the call and “replying” echo.
Nora Architecture
More of the stakes lining the top of the gate out of the Embrace, meaning whatever Rost was trying to keep out was a much larger problem.
We also get a much better look at Nora carvings, much prettier than what Rost had around his cabin. Maybe the workmanship and the uneven logs were more due to his lack of decorative style, as long as it functions, what does it matter what it looks like. Perhaps the rest of the Nora are not as “primitive” as Rost’s cabin led us to believe.
Nora Culture
The whole village attending a single naming, climbing all the way up the mountain for a single child, says as much about Aloy’s empty naming as it does about the Nora as a whole. Yes, Aloy is an outsider and exists beyond tribal societies, but also, to the Nora, children are infinitely important. Considering children and grandchildren are the requisites for power and authority amongst the Nora, their entrance into society is equally magnanimous.
That outcasts still follow the Nora’s practices (or maybe just Rost), says they still feel like they are a part of that society, albeit on the far periphery. Maybe even a necessary piece of the whole.
Old Ones
Faithless Old Ones turning their back to the Goddess is a massive piece of foreshadowing. It is basically the entirety of the old-world plot with one difference.
Our first look at that old world—our world, as we later find out—calls to mind a malevolent cathedral. It is dark, pointed, and triangular. It’s ominous and wicked-looking. We later find out it is an Air Force academy, but our first taste of the old world is acrid and bitter.
If we had any doubt of who the Old Ones were, the statue of the men on horseback makes it clear that it’s our culture left to ruin. Brick, stone, and rust seem to be all that’s left of us.
The statue, while beautiful and haunting in its present condition, is an odd inclusion. As far as I can tell, it’s for a modern-day, old-west-larping organization. I… don’t know what to do with that information but I guess its better than a southern civil war monument?
Machines
War machines and wickedness are a striking couple, but it was really only one man’s wickedness that doomed the world. Later on, those tanks fill you with a different emotion than the foreboding they instill in the cinematic.
Regal, imposing Tallnecks stride across the field, Grazers darting about between them, only to have one massive foot slam down before Rost to fully grasp their size. We are wowed by the machines, their complexity, and how out of place they seem with the spears and furs of the Nora.
Then the Thunderjaws make their appearance, and if we weren’t sure before, we know they’re dangerous, if not lethal. Rost’s spear seems so insufficient now.
With the Grazers leaping about and the head-shake of the Thunderjaw, the machines are presented as animalistic, as if they fill an environmental niche.
And Rost fills us in on their rung of the food chain: prey to humans.
Then we get to see their ecological niche as the grazers till soil for some yet unknown purpose.
Mountain Ascent
The totems along the mountain path are somewhat ominous coupled with the stark landscape. They call to mind a spinal column topped with ram horns, and like everything else there, are dripping with needle-like icicles.
We see again, as Rost gazes back on the range, how far the Nora go for their children. Perhaps foreshadowing all that the extinct humans did for those that now live…
Teersa
And then we are introduced to High Matriarch Teersa, one of the most powerful people amongst the Nora, and there to bless Aloy’s naming, despite her outcast status. Remember that Rost said namings were blessed by regular Matriarchs, not High Matriarchs. Yet there she is, only her and Rost for Aloy.
Her dismissal of Rost’s kneeling shows us she’s too practical for ceremony in the sense of etiquette, yet has made the long, arduous journey for the naming because she is the only one who will, and she firmly believes in the rituals and faith of the Nora. This aspect of her character makes her one of Aloy’s strongest proponents amongst the Nora, and later she readily accepts her explanations, even when they challenge all she knows and believes.
Questions and More Questions
We learn Rost was “entrusted” with Aloy, but in a matriarchal society, why would they pick him? We later learn why they chose an outcast, but why a man? Why would Guerilla choose a man?
Teersa calls on the All-Mother for a name for Aloy, “by which to know her.” Aloy struggles with her identity for the entire game. It’s a name that she’s after, and in a sense, it is her own—thought she doesn’t realize that until the end.
“That your love may warm her life”—yet Aloy never finds Gaia, never receives her “warmth” (at least in this game), and only “connects” with Elizabet’s image, and later, remains.
Rost calls out her name to the mountain, and Aloy is blessed.
Lansra’s interruption shows there’s far more controversy here than we were initially led to believe. Her armed guards against a genuflecting Rost with a baby in his arms looks absurd, but it’s the same way Aloy’s enemies later treat her—with an excess of firepower (like Helis himself slaughtering his way through a tribe to kill a single, 18-year-old “savage” hunter).
“We said nothing of love.” Lansra’s words cut to the core of the plot’s motivation. Love is the reason Rost sacrifices himself for Aloy, it’s love Aloy is seeking while looking for her mother (even if she never admits it out loud—think of how she runs from Rost to try to give berries to the Nora Mother as a child), and it’s Elizabet’s love for the world that caused her to save it.
Parting Words
Rost’s final words in the cinematic echo throughout multiple games. After he dies, Aloy (can) frequently return to his grave to tell him about whats happened. In Forbidden West, she tells Beta that he is the reason she is who she is—not Gaia, Elizabet, or fate. Rost. His love is what shaped Aloy into who she is, and drives what she does.
It’s Rost’s words that carry with us through the last shot of the cinematic. The Metal Devil is there, in the background, a threat but not the focus. It is the people of this world, and the love they share, that is integral to the story—not the machines.
Conclusions:
Let’s look a little deeper at some of the images the cinematic presents us with.
Rost’s Patch
Like the pendant he passed on to Aloy, he likely did not make it. As the only pieces of ornamentation, we see, both the pendant and patch were likely made by his wife or daughter who were killed.
Aloy’s iconic blue silk was also likely their’s, as it’s pretty and not practical for the harsh cold of Nora territory. Gifted to her by Rost the same as the pendant.
Spear Fences
From later in the game, we know that humans in Nora land are seldom a threat to each other in recent times (barring bandits and the Eclipse). This could make the spear fence one of two things.
The first, and less likely scenario, is that the spear fence is for the machines. This presents an interesting behavior that we don’t see without outside interference; the possibility of them attacking settlements.
Throughout both games, we see lures (a recent Oseram invention) and overrides (made exclusively through salvaged Corrutors) used to make machines attack settlements, but neither of those would see use eighteen years before Aloy’s Proving and in Nora territory.
The second option is that Rost still has the kidnapping of his daughter fresh in his mind, and has the fence and gate as a deterrent should such a freak occurrence happen again.
Keep in mind, Aloy is a baby. The extinction signal that let loose Hephaestus is little less than a year ago at the time of the cinematic. Though we see hunter-killers like the Thunderjaw and Sawtooth, they would be VERY new to the world. Barely enough time for the Red Raids to be called for, and very likely not enough time for them to push into the fiercely defended Nora land.
The spear-topped gate is likely for the same threat, and neither look like new additions. This added protection after the kidnapping likely also helped them repel the Red Raids later, as they were already set up to deter human infiltration.
The Naming Ritual
What does so much emphasis put on a ritual of the new human society tell us? That humanity’s descendants, the people and culture, are most important to this story. Not the wars, the machines, or even the old world; it is the people who still exist that are the main focus. It is their knowledge, their cultures, their beliefs in the forefront. They—the people now, not the people before—are the focus of the story.
Old Ones
“Faithless Old Ones who turned their backs on the Goddess” is a summary of everything revealed to have happened in the time of the Old Ones.
If the goddess is mother nature, then yes, they turned away from nature and began polluting the earth (even after the Clawback). But truthfully, it wasn’t really all the Old Ones, or even most.
Ted Faro was single-handedly responsible for Earth’s extinction, and he was the one, time and again, who turned away from the goddess figures in the narrative; first mother nature when he began building robots for war, then Elizabet when she left the company because she couldn’t convince him to stop, and finally Gaia when he destroyed Apollo.
Rost
Why was Rost chosen for Aloy?
There’s something to be said about aging developers creating protagonists and characters in the last few years that reflect fatherhood more than the brash young hero archetype (God of War, The Last of Us, The Witcher, Dishonored), but others have delved into this phenomenon with more insight than I ever could. I’d rather focus on the in-game and story rationalizations.
Later on, we learn the High Matriarchs chose Rost because he lost his own daughter, but in the plot of the game, I think it would hinder Aloy’s pursuit of her “mother” if they had chosen a female outcast like Odd Grata.
If she had a woman raising her, Aloy would already have a mother, even if they weren’t her biological parent.
If Aloy wasn’t in a matriarchal society where so much emphasis is put on mothers, then striking out into the world to find her own wouldn’t have been as thematically justified.
Rost, as a character and her father, gave her the narrative ability to seek out her mother.
Naming
The All-Mother needs a name by which to know her. If the All-Mother is Gaia, then Rost calling out Aloy’s name to the mountain parallels Aloy’s whisper of Elizabet’s name for the Master Override at the very end of the game.
Aloy is the woman changing the world now, but Elizabet casts a long shadow. In Forbidden West, we find Aloy chasing after her and emulating her self-isolating, do-it-alone mentality to her detriment.
Though Aloy is chasing a name and identity in Zero Dawn, in Forbidden West (and likely the next installment) she needs to find out who she is beyond Elizabet’s clone and daughter.