The first quest in Horizon Zero Dawn saw us take control of Aloy as a child, explore an Old World ruin, discover her focus, and learn what it can do.
After Rost hoists her up from the subterranean grave, he promises to teach her how to survive the wilds.
After the Ruins
The next morning her bow and arrows are left behind on the porch. Rost finds her playing with the focus, the lights of which he is unable to see.
This is just another symbol of Aloy’s alienation from the people around her. Like some kind of witch from ages past, now she sees, in a literal sense, beyond the eyes of others.
She is trying to figure out the language and the UI, and when Rost hands her a bow, the focus identifies it and she connects the letters to the object as the word changes to green.
Though this is just her first “lesson” throughout the decade or so gap between curious child Aloy and genius young adult Aloy, this shows the depth of her potential.
The thought of a kindergartener learning to read without prior knowledge of written word as a concept, nor a human teacher, is just as fantastical to me as robots taking over multiple ecological niches worldwide.
In the valley, they pass a small fort or lookout tower and it feels as if they’re leaving the safety of the Nora’s protected lands for wilderness, despite staying within the Embrace.
Walking away from the structure—despite staying in “protected” territory—feels like walking into danger for some reason.
Rost explains that the wilds are dangerous, that Aloy needs to stay close to him and do as he says.
This is, until the Proving over a decade later, Aloy’s entire life. Though she is as rebellious as any teenager can be expected to be, Aloy can reiterate through multiple dialogues that even after she is accepted into the tribe, she intends to stay close to Rost, if not do what he says.
Before the massacre as the Proving, and Rost’s demise before her, Aloy would have followed him to the end of the world. In the second game, his memory continues to push her into new lands as she follows his words as much as Gaia’s or Elizabet’s—she might not need the tribe (or the world), but the tribe (and the world) will need her.
She says she knows.
She’s already more knowledgeable about the world, despite her isolation and age, than others within the tribe, as we see later on when she helps Teb.
Teaching the Basics
What follows is a tutorial of basic gameplay mechanics, most of which are common among the genre. There are, however, story elements hidden among the button presses.
Rost tells her she’s still hurt from the fall into the ruins and tells her to take a medicine pouch to learn how to fill it. She ties it to her belt.
He shows her a Salvebrush, a lavender brush flower that doesn’t stand out much from the grass.
She takes it and he tells her to eat the berries, topping off her health.
She “bleghs” and he tells her that they might be bitter but they’ll save her life.
Much like the advice he gives her throughout the early part of the game.
While walking through the lush valley, a flock of geese startle at their approach through the vine-covered pines and fly off.
It’s a beautiful area of greenery and stone, with less snow than other places in the starting area. It feels more alive, more lively, without the dampening crunch beneath Aloy’s feet or a gray, claustrophobic sky blinding her with flurries.
It doesn’t have the same feel going back after the quest, making me think it might have been Rost and little Aloy that added the character.
Aloy asks where they are and Rost answers that they’re still in the All Mother’s Embrace. She rolls the word “Embrace” around as he explains that the Nora watch the lands and “usually” keeps out “the most dangerous machines.”
I like the way Aloy focuses on “Embrace” instead of “All-Mother” here. It’s kind of a tell, in that, for a girl so obsessed with finding a mother that her single-minded goal changes the trajectory of all life on Earth—multiple times!—it is the connection, the embrace of her mother figures that matter most to the story.
In addition to that, keep in mind that this is only seven or so years after the extinction signal destroyed Gaia, and Hades and Hephaestus were set free. We’ve been told the changes to the machines, the Derangement, happened slowly. At least at first.
If the machines are already a threat when before the signal they only killed or hurt in their attempts to flee hunters, that is a huge leap in the span of less than a decade to both produce the sentinel classes like Watchers, as well as make them fight back.
Remember that Hephaestus is under direct orders not to “hurt” humans and has to get around that with each new “update” to the machines.
And in seven years, they’re already deadly. In ten(?) more, it is producing hunter-killers and whatever it was doing in the Frozen Wastes. Imagine what it will come up with next if Aloy doesn’t leash it back to Gaia (or what it could make with her help to fight Nemesis). . .
He tells her that further downriver they’ll find a “herd” of machines and he will teach her how to hunt them.
I think this drives home just how . . . organic the machines are. Like I said above, they’ve taken over ecological niches that larger animals aren’t around to fill, they were made in the likeness of animals long lost, they graze in herds like the inspiration for their shape.
They have become (or still are) a vital, necessary part of this world.
She asks if they are dangerous.
He replies that all machines are dangerous. That “their power must be respected” but he will be beside her.
As they crest a hill, he crouches. He warns her that a machine is coming and to follow him into the tall grass.
It took me far too long to realize the unmistakable “hiding grass” (bright red by day and lights up with fireflies at night so the player can easily find them) is red in-game because it matches Aloy’s hair so she can blend in.
Watchers
They spot it and Rost tells her to lay low. She calls it a “little one” and he corrects her.
Something about this is sweet, the way Aloy anthropomorphizes the machines in such an affectionate way. I also like that she calls it “little,” implying she’s seen bigger ones as even the Watchers are larger than humans.
This makes me wonder about his earlier comment about how often “dangerous” machines get into the Embrace. At least enough for little Aloy to have seen them to think the Watchers are little.
Maybe the Nora are doing worse in the Sacred Lands than I would have thought.
“Such machines are called Watchers.”
He tells her to learn to avoid their gaze as the bipedal robot glances around, the blue light of its eye glaring as it passes over them.
I want to point out how much I like the light flare from the machines as a stealth mechanic. Knowing what’s near you without having to look at it, and knowing if it saw you by the color is a great way to incorporate game and world mechanics.
He will teach her to survive them if she will “listen close and do as I do.”
Aloy, on top of being incredibly intelligent and curious, is a little mirror to the world around her. We see how she copies the things she sees and hears (like back in the ruins, putting on the focus where it was on the corpse and repeating the hologram’s words).
From this tiny interaction, I wonder if it’s Rost who instilled that instinct in her as part of raising her.
They stop and wait for the Watcher to pass, our first true interaction with a machine. It trundles down the path, more following after.
Maybe it’s because we see it from the perspective of a child rather than an adult, but the Watcher feels bigger in this moment. For a “little” machine, it towers over the hunched humans, surprisingly lithe for its size.
Rost and Aloy crisscross tall grass between the flares of blue light, heavy metal footsteps stomping around them as they go.
The way the Watchers take different paths while heading in the same direction feels like real animals migrating together. They might be heading to a cauldron instead of nesting grounds, but there’s nothing mechanical in the way they move, like salmon flowing through a river.
They aren’t lock-step and perfectly symmetrical the way we think of robots, they don’t necessarily take the best, most economical path. They wander, look around, and shake themselves off like animals.
The last passes by, the herd ahead.
Brave or Foolhardy?
Across the stream, Aloy sees a young Nora free-climbing a pillar of rock.
When she asks who it is, she’s told to ignore him as he dashes across a log ledge and drops precariously to a handhold.
Though the stunt might pale in comparison to the things Aloy does later in life, that kind of recklessness among warriors in a hunter-gatherer society tells us more about how they fought against a militaristically superior army during the red-raids.
When you can throw yourself off cliffs without hesitation, death in the face of glory—whether it’s from showing off for your teammates or in battle against an invading force—made the Nora a unique threat to and equal of the Carja.
She asks why he’s up there as the man makes a daring leap to a log bridge.
He turns, looks back at them both, and smiles.
Aloy remarks on this with wonder.
I also wonder about this. The Nora seem fairly tight-knit and most recognize outcasts like Aloy and Rost on sight. I think he knew who they were and showed them a touch of humanity anyway.
It would certainly make sense with the character we come to know.
“Teb” is called away by others in the distance, told to “get back where [he] belongs.”
Like any good Nora, away from the outcasts and back with the tribe—something Aloy refuses time and again.
Rost again tells Aloy to ignore him, that they are outcasts and he is one of the tribe.
When Aloy speculates that Teb might not like the tribe, Rost says that would make him a fool.
I find that an interesting word to use, “fool.” Rost doesn’t use a word that means disrespectful or sacrilegious—two descriptors I think would better characterize such an idea to him.
He calls him someone with poor judgment and/or intelligence. Sure, it only makes sense to stay with a tribe that protects, feeds, and provides for you, but what of Aloy? She never “likes” the tribe and she is far from both of those things.
This is obviously speaking to Rost’s personal worldview, very much tribe-centric and revolving around his own past as a Death-Seeker, but I think it also speaks to the heart of the game.
Denying the people of the world to pursue your own goals, at least in Aloy’s case, can and would lead to the end of that world.
Prey Animals
They head back down the path across woven stake bridges and under sprawling willows. Rost points out and names the Striders across the stream.
He yells and scares them off to teach Aloy how easily some machines will spook.
This makes me consider the Derangement, and if there will be a time when they always fight instead. Even by Forbidden West, Chargers have taken the place of the comparatively docile Striders.
Grazer, Lancehorns, and Fanghorns still exist, but how long before they’re modified like the Stormbird for combat?
He has her gather rocks and rebukes her questions.
I imagine she asks a lot of questions that can’t or isn’t ready to answer, even to himself.
Further along the path, he hunches under another willow and explains his plan to her.
He says it’s time to throw her rocks, and when she doubts that they would damage the machines, he explains it’s to draw attention.
Another very animalistic habit of the machines, to spook and check for threats.
He points out the Watcher amongst the Striders keeping watch. He tells her they should be taken down first so they can’t warn the others.
Aloy asks how it does so and Rost explains the machines “speak to each other (. . .) unless they are first silenced.”
It’s funny that, in this case, speaking to other machines means letting off an alarm, but I wonder at the fact that they don’t (as far as we know) have a more sophisticated system of communication.
Gaia had Minerva’s spires that she could have used like cell towers as Hades does to reawaken the Corrupters and Deathbringers. And if the cauldrons can make Stormbirds, they most likely have the capabilities to create satellites.
I’m sure Hephaestus would love to utilize something along those lines as it would make the machines much harder to kill if they are working together with hive-mind pack tactics.
He might not have the ability to use Minerva’s spires without her, but he also hasn’t engineered anything other than recon-class machines to better keep all his creations intact.
Does that make sense? Yes, he made Thunderjaws and strapped cannons to the back of Ravagers, but what has he done with Striders to make a herd safer?
Rost tells her to stay on the ridge and lure the Watcher to him as he jumps down into the tall grass again.
He whistles for her cue and tells her to throw, and all goes according to plan as he skewers the curious machine as it nears him, putting out its yellow light for good.
This is just a personal comment on gameplay but I miss the whistle in Forbidden West. I took out so many machines in stealth with it . . .
He calls to her once it’s done, telling her it’s safe.
He tells her to harvest the kill, the metal corpse still on the ground as he promises to teach her how to make arrows.
Again, I adore how much the machines are treated like animals. Once they’re hunted, they’re carved up like any other prey.
She leans down and fusses with the carcass, pulling the parts she needs. She gathers some Ridge-Wood at Rost’s behest and crafts some arrows.
He tells her as long as she knows how to make them, she’ll never run out of arrows.
A utilitarian sentiment that suits Aloy. She is forced to rely on Old World tech that’s spent a thousand years in neglect, but when push comes to shove, all of her weapons and armor are things made recently and from materials at hand.
The Shield-Weaver is the only permanent exception, and it’s lost by Forbidden West.
Rost says it’s time to put the arrows to use.
They sneak up to the herd and Rost tells her it’s time to make her first kill.
At seven years old. With a bow and arrow. She takes down the much larger, far more advanced equivalent of that robot police dog thing. Just saying.
As they move in close, he tells her the Strider is one of the weaker machines, but that even weak machines can kill careless hunters.
She is charged with studying her prey, to learn where the “hide is thick” and where it is vulnerable—like its glowing blue eye.
A gameplay mechanic that again speaks to Aloy as a character. She’s up against enemies she can’t hope to beat in a frontal one-on-one assault, she has to assess her targets and think strategically. This goes for the machines and the major villains of the series.
He asks if she can see another weak spot.
Aloy scans the machine with her focus and learns about the canister on its back. She offers that for an answer.
It isn’t as economical in Forbidden West, but destroying/using the cargo on machines is so incredibly satisfying. In Zero Dawn, my favorite thing to hunt was Bellowbacks by busting them like tics.
Admittedly a disgusting mental image, but the explosions were irresistible.
Rost doesn’t believe her when she tells him the “device” showed her.
He calls it a plaything and tells her to stop messing around.
An early example of how most people react to the focus. Their (lack of) understanding revolving around technology only adds to the legend of Aloy.
He tasks her with taking down the Strider by eye or canister and to be ready to roll out of the way if it charges.
The sun begins to set as she takes down her mark.
She takes what she can from it and he praises her hunting prowess but warns there is much more to learn. He says they will train again tomorrow as shouts echo from further down the valley.
Disaster Falls
Aloy thinks it must be the boy they saw running the brave trails.
Rost runs to help, making sure Aloy is right behind him.
If there was any doubt Rost was an honorable man, it evaporates in this moment. He may be gruff but he’s going to do what he has to—even breaking the law of the tribe that he holds above all else—if it means saving a life.
They dash down the path and through the stream, over the remains of an ancient, rusted plane wing and under its massive body. More Old World husks dot the trails.
Ancient death looming over a near miss.
They make it to a ridge overlooking a clearing thick with machines. A dead, twisted tree leans toward them like a wicked, grasping hand, a verdant willow on the other side.
They see Teb on the sheer cliff face, hanging on for dear life.
He groans, struggles for purchase, and screams as his fingers slip.
He hits multiple outcroppings on the way down, sending the machines around his landing into yellow-eyed alert.
Years later, the fall still makes me wince.
He rolls to his stomach as if to crawl away but gets nowhere as the Striders search about.
Rost holds Aloy back from the scene.
Her instincts are the same as his—to help, regardless of what they might lose in the process.
He says there is nothing he can do, that the machines will find him soon and kick him to death, but if he shoots, the stampede he causes will trample Teb.
Aloy touches her focus while he says this, bringing up the glowing mesh over the world around her, lighting up the machines and highlighting their paths.
For a moment, despite the genre, it looks like a video game.
She tells him she can see the paths they take, but Rost demands she stop telling stories.
We get another look at the situation, Teb on the ground just out of sight of yellow-eyed Striders, and Aloy insists she can sneak through.
She never stops when she’s underestimated and knows what to do.
Rost holds her back. She looks at him, as if she’s giving in, looks out, and runs forward.
Rost grabs her back to try to stop her, only succeeding in pulling off her bow and sending her tumbling into the lion’s den.
She looks back at him from the ground and continues forward.
Leaving him behind to do what only she can.
Hidden in the tall grass, Aloy says to herself she needs to move slowly and quietly as a Watcher blinds her, staring right at her position amongst the red brush.
She weaves among the machines, avoiding a single detection that would end the game.
In this scene, she understands the machines, moves through them with ease. Seeing their paths, their glowing pieces that only she has insight into, she is more at home amongst metal than man.
Help from Outcasts
Behind an ancient crumbling wall she finds Teb bruised but not broken.
Not a tree or bush, not the husks of Deathbringers or the carcasses of more recently killed machines.
No, she finds him sheltered behind the last remnant of human structure meant to house and protect.
There aren’t a lot of Old World assets in the game, we see far more of old war machines. I think it’s significant that this is what saves Teb.
She grabs his shoulder to get him up and shushes him as he asks what’s happening.
I want to point out that she never actually breaks taboo by speaking to him. As an adult, she’s much more liberal with the laws of the tribe, but as a child, she does follow Rost’s example. Not once does she speak to a Nora other than her father.
Waving him on behind her, Aloy leads Teb through the machines.
He asks questions as she evades their paths but she doesn’t answer him.
They make it back to the mossy ridge where Rost waits to pull her up to safety.
Rost swoops in to save her from a bad situation, again foreshadowing the end of the Proving where he comes to her rescue one last time.
As Teb gets up behind them, father and daughter share a look and Rost hands her back her bow, acknowledging her abilities.
He knows now that though she might rush headlong into danger, she can be capable of getting herself out of it again. With the right training.
She takes it and he strokes her cheek, admitting the focus is no plaything. She nods.
The touch of her cheek, even just to get a better look at the focus, is so tender. Rost cares so much for her and has such a hard time expressing it, but it always comes across loud and clear in clutch moments like this.
They stand and Teb tries to speak to them, breaking taboo by asking them to wait, for the All-Mother to bless them both.
The rest of his party finally shows up, three braves walking up the path.
As Teb says to Rost that Aloy saved him, a grizzled older brave calls to him. He tries to say more but the brave shuts him up.
And here we see the aggressive side of shunning, how threatening a member of the tribe can be, even—especially—to a child.
The gray-bearded warrior shouts in Teb’s face, threatens that they are outcasts and that Aloy is “motherless.” Rost steps between a shrinking Aloy and the brave.
Aloy backs away from the aggressor but is clearly focusing on his words.
The brave calls the others away, back to Mother’s Heart, smacking Teb for daring to speak to them.
Violence against a member of the tribe for daring to speak to an outcast. If Rost or Aloy had been the ones to break taboo, we assume much worse would have befallen them.
When they are out of earshot, Rost remarks that Teb shouldn’t have said anything to them, that it was against tribal law.
His words are stern, unyielding, but the look he gives the retreating figures is one with a touch of regret. If not for his own state, then perhaps for a young man to take a blow because of kindness for him.
Aloy turns away and stalks ahead when he says they will head home, gruffly retorting that she knows the way . . .