Horizon Zero Dawn is Aloy’s story, and “A Gift From the Past” is our introduction to her. It is our first time watching her interact with the world and hearing her thoughts about what she experiences.
It characterizes the woman she will become with the child she is.
We see her grapple with questions raised in the opening cinematic while she, like us, is still trying to understand the world around her.
Running from Her Father to Seek a Mother
A young Aloy runs from Rost as he frantically calls after her.
This might be the instinct of a naughty child, worrying her caregiver, but something about the way she hides in the bushes and checks to be sure he hasn’t found her makes us suspect that she is doing something she knows she shouldn’t.
She spies on a woman picking berries with a group of children her age.
She’s more interested in the adult caring for the little ones than potential playmates—a strange attention for her age when play should be the only thing on her mind.
Aloy tries to offer her some berries too, vying for the same attention the other children receive.
She’s smart enough to copy their actions in hopes of receiving the same kind of motherly affection the others are graced with—
The woman’s face hardens the moment she sees her, but Aloy’s hands are raised with her bounty, a hopeful look in her eyes.
—but doesn’t comprehend the social interactions at play. She doesn’t see, doesn’t understand the look the woman gives her, or predict how she will act next.
Rejection Without Understanding
The woman collects the children and turns away from her, whispering about “outcasts” and “shunning.”
It’s a cruel gesture, turning from a child that only wants what she freely gives the others.
We wonder, again, how a child can be shunned from birth. Especially now that we’ve seen the Nora are no monsters, that they care for their children just as any other people would.
Alone and angered by the rejection, Aloy squishes the berries in her fist and runs off.
The sentiment is justified, especially for a child who has done nothing to deserve it. With no explanation as to why, we can hardly blame her
She falls down a deep hole in her haste to get away.
This only magnifies her position; alone and denied the “village” to help raise her, Rost can only do his best with a rightfully angry and understandably willful child.
Little Person, Big Adventure
A pool of water breaks her fall, but as she calls for Rost, she realizes she is on her own in the cave.
This is the first time, among many future incidents, that will force Aloy to walk her path alone. That she is so young must only cement the mindset in her: she has to rely on herself.
Amongst damp stalagmites and stalactites, moss, bats, and rats are the only things living in the cramped system.
Despite how small Aloy is, the caves feel claustrophobic. It lacks any direct threats but still feels . . . dangerous.
She stumbles upon a cavern that is clearly man-made, and far beyond the capabilities of her hunter-gatherer society. The place is worn and ancient despite the advanced technology it holds.
A ruin of the Metal World—”one of the old places.”
The juxtaposition is still confusing, even after seeing it in the opening cinematic. The level of degradation amongst technologies beyond real-world, modern-day equivalents, is both haunting and frightening.
The question lingers in our minds, “How did this happen to a society so advanced?”
“Rost said never go in places like this . . . but I have to find a way out.”
There’s no danger that we’ve seen, so why tell her to stay away? Considering the primitiveness of the Nora, one would think they could use any remaining tech that might still function under the layers of the ages. Surely there is something worth taking?
Scientific equipment is encased in sediment deposits, desks and bookshelves grey and rock-like. The place looks . . . fossilized.
It looks like a tomb. We feel the death here even before we see it.
She wanders through the silent ruin, and only the sounds of creaking rock and water droplets echo to answer her.
Little and rambunctious as she is, Aloy still shows a level of caution that does credit to her intelligence. Though she might not understand why the ruins are forbidden (any more than she understands why she was shunned), there must be a reason for it . . .
A Gift in a Warning
At the bottom of the steps, illuminated by a column of sunlight lancing through the dark, an ancient, withered corpse, as grey as the metal, but lying in a soft bed of moss and flowers.
It’s a shock, but not surprising.
Their hand reaches up as if to grasp the light.
The gesture is as if the corpse sought something more, something better, in its final moments. Ascension beyond whatever horrors found the occupants curled up beneath the earth.
Cautious but unafraid of the “dead person,” Aloy notices something on them.
She likely puts together that this body is from the old world, despite its relatively well-preserved state, and whatever killed it is no longer a threat in the eons since.
She carefully takes the focus from their temple, examines it, and then tries to place it on her where the body had it.
This curiosity defines Aloy more than any other act in the game. Where others see death and taboo, Aloy sees knowledge hidden behind superstition. She makes connections, even as a child, that few others in the game do. “If they put this on their temple, what happens if I do the same?”
It snaps to her, lighting up with an electronic whir. She frightens, throws it off, and backs away.
That willingness for experimentation shows up again and again as she gets into situations (usually by her inquisitiveness) that only her quick thinking can get her out of again.
Curiosity gets the better of her and she crawls back to it and tries again. She’s prepared this time.
It’s her refusal to give up, even in the face of fear and danger, that defines Aloy as a character. She is the epitome of the saying “Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.”
The focus lights with the same sound, Aloy’s world overlaid with a purple mesh of triangles.
This is her first look, our first look, at what the old world was capable of. Augmented reality of light . . .
The electronics in the room, screens, and equipment begin to light up with glitching purple displays.
. . . and knowledge. All at the fingertips of civilization countless years ago, but no longer.
She smiles, in awe of the sterile, imperfect life breathed into the cavern.
Problem Solving
She leaves the corpse behind and finds a red light glowing from a metal door.
It blocks her path but she wonders if the device can help her through.
I cannot overstate how incredible Aloy is for conceiving this, even as part of a gameplay mechanic. She doesn’t call it magic or become overwhelmed by a new world opened up to her by the lights. She takes it in and wants more, considers connections between mechanisms she has no history, no prior understanding of.
I have worked with children and technology made for them and taught them how to use it. They take to it quicker than adults because they want to play and don’t assume they are “over their head” but it takes time all the same.
Children in modern times, who have been raised with technology, learn it slower than Aloy in a hunter-gatherer society. This speaks to a level of intelligence I can only compare to Tarzan (of the books) teaching himself not just the concept of language, but to read through picture books.
We later learn that Elizabet was a genius in her time, but this conception solidifies in Aloy the same intellect.
The images it highlights for her lead to another room, and she knows they’re connected somehow.
She figures out the lock puzzle and makes her way through.
I know this is a basic game mechanic that the developers needed the players to learn, but they could have let Aloy fail. They could have left her stymied by the technology, given her another way around and let her learn to use the focus through the years. They didn’t.
They chose to show that this child had a greater capacity to learn than the overwhelming majority of humans. In that regard, Sylens is Aloy’s only equal.
The world starts speaking back to her as she finds audio bites, and the cave system is lit with a haunting purple light as the machines respond to her focus.
Though she’s denied the love and affection that drove her to the depths of the Metal World, she finds knowledge to soothe her wounds.
There is another body curled up before her. She scans it and a hologram plays.
Old Tales
A male figure wearing simple, futuristic clothing hunches before her, speaking to someone who isn’t included in the hologram.
We understand from the little bit of unintended conversation that something was wrong.
He waves, and she looks around for the person he’s addressing, but it’s only little Aloy and the man.
Someone, even if intended for another, finally acknowledges her.
He smiles and offers a happy birthday and love to “his little big man.”
That affection she sought from the living woman above.
Aloy regards him curiously.
He says he can’t be with his son and wife, but still wants to celebrate. He blows on a noisemaker with a false sense of levity that fades with a weak laugh.
Aloy doesn’t seem to pick up on the stress of the hologram, the strain in the man’s voice, the distance from his family . . . but we do.
Instead, she smiles at the message, asks it to replay again, trying to interact with it and copying sweet words to a child that she’s never heard.
A child so intelligent to instantly pick up and use a brand new technology, but she can’t see the strain in the man’s face, can’t hear the stress in his voice.
She focuses on the false sense of joy, the attention she can pretend is hers for a moment.
That she misses the true emotion buried under the mask is, I think, just as important to her character. She is wildly intelligent, but the human element regularly vexes her, even when she yearns for it.
She continues forward, squeezing through a gap in a door that closes behind her. No way back now.
The First and Last Question
She can find more audio logs, but these are far darker. Adults speaking of adult things, destruction and death. The final words of the damned.
The game doesn’t have her react to the audio logs, and maybe that’s a good thing. How could even the most intelligent child come to terms with mass suicide?
She understands that the people died there, their bodies littered about the living quarters, but she doesn’t know from what.
We understand the how, but can only guess at the why.
Rost’s voice echos distantly above, calling Aloy’s name, and she exclaims that he found her and calls out to him.
She climbs up and he reaches to pull her the rest of the way.
This foreshadows the Proving, where he comes back one last time to save her, to push her down, back toward the living world.
He says she “doesn’t belong down there” and tells her that such places are forbidden.
She doesn’t belong in the Metal World, a place long dead. That’s the struggle Aloy fights for the rest of the game. These old places call to her, answer her back when the new world wouldn’t, but their people are only ghosts now, and she has to learn to fight—and exist—for the living.
He tries to take the focus from her when he learns where she found it, but she refuses and he relents.
Her stubbornness, that unstoppable forward movement, is just as iconic to the character as any other part of her personality.
At an impasse, he decides to teach her how to survive on her own if she won’t stay with him.
He knows, even as a child, he can’t shelter her forever and has to give her the ability to protect herself.
She follows after with a skip, excited.
There is more learning to be done . . .