Main Plot explained?! (obvious spoilers)

[Sokurah]

So i just finised the main story. I actually got quite invested in the story what rarely happens these days so congrats to the devs :D

I just wanna summarise the main events and maybe state some questions. So if i make mistakes or you wanna discuss and add something feel free to do so.

I just kinda need to write this down to wrap my head around it.

1) evil robot glitch / bug in a warfare companie cause death on earth the old terminator way. (well sort of) Consuming all biomass.

2) Project Zero Dawn as last hope (revive life after everthing has been eaten up by robots and they go idle)

=> both systems kinda work the same way. Self buildung and consuming biomass

3) the robots you fight are actuall the "good" ones. Only corruptor and deathbringer are old war machines (you can tell from the look of both)

All the other machine are actually cleaning earth

4) a signal corrupts HADES which was a useful part of project zero dawn (what signal? from the swarm AI? Sylens talks about it at the end, that part i dont really get.) Anyway HADES goes rogue even tho everthing is going fine with gaia and zero dawn.

5) Gaia blows herself up to take hades down. It kinda works. Hades is only brought back by chance from Sylens.

Hades also sends a virus in defence but that kinda just seems to corrupt Gaia so nobody is getting in the cradle. This kinda does not seem to effect the events in a big way? It should just show that Sobek tought Gaia hope? Or does the virus plays a bigger role? (not so sure about this part)

6) Aloy is brought to life just to revive Gaia. Because Gaia knows the system wont be able to work on its own for long. "derangement" (is that the reason the machines that rebuild the planet are hostile? They should know ppl and not attack them?!)

7) ppl dont know nothing about zero dawn and the machines because Apollo was destroyed from the man that caused the swarm AI extinction, thinking knowledge is a curse.

8) Hades trys to destroy the earth again setting project zero dawn back to the beginning. It would do that by reanimate the war machines that where controlled by the swarm AI. This is done by the tower in the spire that was build as part of zero dawn. (that also doenst add up. Why would the swarm AI not just wake up after it finds out there is biomass again. Why would it go into a complete idle state? Or does it have to do something with the signal. But why would they need hades to revive them? How did zero dawn hold the swarm AI down? Did it at all?)

9) Aloy fighting Hades and saving the world was just luck. She was never brought back to fight hades because gaia could not possible know hades would survive or get revived.

10) how in the hell could get hades in that device Sylens has made. I guess is just a thin connection to a Horizon 2 but it kinda makes no sense. What is he after? How did he knew hades will survive. Does he just wanna learn? He seems to have bigger evil plans?

Thats how i understand the story. I need to say i only watched and listend to logs and holos. I didnt bothered with logs that you need to read. Maybe i missed something there.

So if anyone could tie some lose ends that would be great.

Also i ask for indulgence with typos. Its late and i have to call it a night thx

[lelorrain]

AS far as I remember, all the questions you ask were answered in the game ... except the one about the signal that wakes up Hades, which I think is one hint to future sequels.

may be by playing again the game in story mode you will find the answers yourself.

[Squirtle]

My interpretation of the Old World Swarm AI that destroyed all life in the first place is:
Faro develops machines that 'heal' the wounds of climate change and is hailed a hero
> ends up going into the warfare / militarisation industry and makes robots to fight wars, again perceived positively as his war machines prevent human soldiers from harm
> ends up making more advanced war machines that can heal themselves from scrap of other robots, then an upgrade that allows them to make new ally robots from the scrap of fallen robots, then an upgrade that allows them to heal / make new bots out of biomass
> some glitch makes all linked Faro robots just go on an endless loop of consume biomass to make new robots
>apocalypse

I'm fairly sure I remember reading a bit that basically says they're working on developing a deactivation code that will shut down all Faro robots, but that it would take like 15 months or so, maybe 3 years (can't remember), which by that time, all life on Earth would be consumed, so I thought that happened alongside the GAIA project, but dunno if it was a specific function of GAIA or if the deactivation code development was a separate project.

Then with the New Dawn Project, I thought you had it mostly right, except the part about HADES, I was under the impression that HADES was created to intentionally destroy the first few iterations of GAIA's creations by whatever means it could, as they felt like GAIA most likely "Wouldn't get it right the first time", so HADES activated and managed to convince people to form a cult to achieve it's function; i.e. I thought that HADES was working as intended and not just a glitch.

All of that was my interpretation though, could be wrong, I didn't read all lore, but I tried to read most that I could...

[Xautos]

1. it wasn't a malfunction. a swarm of robots from Faro went rogue and refused to accept any further commands, there was no explanation how this happened.

These old "peacekeeper" killer robots consumed biomass as an emergency means to restore it's power and return it to operation. however these robots also had replication technology as well, meaning they can produce endless amounts of themselves so long as they had the resources to do so. The machines effectively exploited a backup feature to build an unstoppable mega swarm.

2. Project Zero Dawn was a means to rebuild Earth from the faro plague (the machine swarm that destroyed everything on the surface of the planet, including the atmosphere after it went rogue). This project was created by Elisabet Sobeck and she conscripted people from around the world to create GAIA and its nine subordinate functions with their own codenames.

Once everything was made extinct, GAIA worked on creating a shutdown code for the rogue swarm which was now dormant to conserve power with no biomass left to consume. MINERVA created the spires and broadcast the codes which shut down the swarm, After these Faro robots were shutdown, GAIA created a means to terraform Earth back to where it was by using all the resources at its disposal. HADES itself was the primary terraforming subordinate that carried out GAIA's instructions and if something wasn't right HADES can destroy everything on the surface and start over.

In order to help facilitate the purpose of terraforming, GAIA designed animal like machines that roamed the planet and the main purpose of these machines was to help the terraforming process of Earth. HEPHAESTUS was the subordinate that built the machines that GAIA designed from the various cauldrons dotted around the planet.

Once Earth was in a good place in terraforming, trees and plants were shot out of metal flowers to help bring life back to the planet and crucially sustain the atmosphere. Then basic animal life, this started out with rabbits, foxes, geese, turkeys and so forth. These were the case study for GAIA to determine suitability. Eventually ELEUTHIA was tasked with creating new humans from the various cradles.

Had APOLLO not been deleted by Ted Faro in his own madness, these humans would have had more than grade school level understanding. Instead that is all they had and once the cradles ran out of resources to support these humans, they were kicked out. The Nora came into existence because of this and eventually forgotten their origins over the generations.

3. Actually there were three Faro robot designs of note, the metal devil/Horus, deathbringer/Khopesh and corruptor/Scarab. The metal devils created the corruptors and deathbringers. The machines you see around are of GAIA's construction, although the ones up in the cut are of HEPHAESTUS design, those are specifically designed to kill humans.

The derangement was when HADES became an AI and severed GAIA from the other subordinates which became AI's of their own. HADES took over these machines and started making them more aggressive. Before this GAIA had control and the machines were always peaceful. There is no "good" left in any old or new machine.

4. It was not explained where the signal came from or why it was sent almost 900 years later, shortly before Aloy came into existence. It's presumed the forbidden west installment might explain this.

Sylens is only speculating on what might be the cause, so i wouldn't put any stock in that as a clue or an answer, besides this, Sylens is a known liar and cheat, but he also known as a survivor. If he feels Aloy was treading on an answer he doesn't want her to know about he can spin a tale for her benefit.

5. HADES actually severed connections with GAIA and her subordinates before it escaped and yes corrupted the alpha registry at the door. it was a failure however, HADES did escape and was found in the wreck of a Metal Devil and Sylens then presumably put the AI within that containment cell and took it to a dormant core and released it within, from there he learned a lot from HADES, this allowed HADES to build part of its plan with the Eclipse which would become part of its plans to revive the Khopesh/Deathbringer machines to help with the destruction of this new Earth.

HADES itself also failed, when Sylens escaped, when Aloy was identified and escaped from a massacre and a failure to destroy the alpha registry in Sobeck's lab which allowed Aloy to override the corrupted registry at the door of the cradle.

The Hades virus is just a means to an end, it's just a way of attacking everything electrical that it could control.

6. The derangement was because of HADES when it severed GAIA from its subordinates and HADES took over the network to make the machines more hostile and less peaceful.

Aloy was designed for one purpose to bring back GAIA, but HADES must be destroyed first before GAIA can be repaired. GAIA's last act before the self destruct was to create the clone from Sobeck's DNA. GAIA planned a lot of things in advance, so it knew the clone would eventually learn the truth on everything.

7. Ted Faro was already half way gone mentally by the time he designed these machines. When he joined the programme he was strong-armed into an agreement by Sobeck and was conscripted. when it came time for APOLLO to launch, Ted wiped the AI from existence, completely and utterly.

From his point of view, he believed any Humans coming afterwards should remain innocent of what humanity became before hand and didn't want the future Humanity to turn into what they became. He saw all these collected works and recorded history as a disease, one that should not be passed along to spread around once more. After wiping APOLLO he murdered all the alpha leads to cover his tracks.

8. by 2070 the Faro swarm had consumed everything on the planet and GAIA could not start terraforming Earth until the dormant machines were shut down. GAIA's first task was to generate shut down codes and MINERVA created the spires and then transmitted the shutdown codes. It would take a long time to create those codes.

Once the swarm was shutdown GAIA got to work rebuilding Earth. Once HADES was freed, it wanted to wipe out everything because it believed this was a failed terraforming effort. the various Khopesh's were buried under dirt, sand and snow for hundreds of years. These were shut down, but at the battle of Meridian, HADES transmitted the signal to reactivate and this allowed what remaining Faro machines were left to consume biomass and begin their next purge.

9. GAIA knew there was a chance that HADES could escape and that is why Aloy was created and why GAIA tried in vain to self-destruct to prevent it. GAIA knew Aloy would find all the answers, it was not luck, it was deliberately designed. Because Aloy is the clone of Sobeck, every installation would recognise the clone as Sobeck and Aloy would get access.

10. I can only speculate that it's a containment cell and that it was activated by Sylens to draw the now dormant and possibly damaged and weakened HADES out of the core and into the cell. Sylens is after knowledge, he is willing to take any risks to learn more of everything.

Sylens is expected to appear in forbidden west, so what part he and HADES plays is a mystery.

[Eye of Newt]

Once Earth was in a good place in terraforming, trees and plants were shot out of metal flowers to help bring life back to the planet and crucially sustain the atmosphere.

This is an interesting possibility, since we know that in Aloy's time, the "metal flowers" you find all seem very recent - so something must've dismantled the original ones after they were no longer needed for seeding life on Earth; presumably GAIA had HEPHAESTUS's collector-class machines (Glinthawks, Scrappers) recycle the metal back into the cauldrons to make more machines.

[Xautos]

Originally posted by Eye of Newt:

Once Earth was in a good place in terraforming, trees and plants were shot out of metal flowers to help bring life back to the planet and crucially sustain the atmosphere.

This is an interesting possibility, since we know that in Aloy's time, the "metal flowers" you find all seem very recent - so something must've dismantled the original ones after they were no longer needed for seeding life on Earth; presumably GAIA had HEPHAESTUS's collector-class machines (Glinthawks, Scrappers) recycle the metal back into the cauldrons to make more machines.

Considering the purpose of glinthawks and scrappers, that would be a certainty (especially given when you destroy a machine nearby and glinthawks and scrappers are nearby, they go after the wreckage to scavenge from). also consider how many hundreds of years that have passed from the initial terraforming to when Aloy starts her own adventure, glinthawks and scrappers recycle old machines that no longer work and keep the planet clean.

The metal flowers had a purpose to spread plant life, it might be that the metal flowers only held so many seeds of various species of plants and trees and they'd be removed since they'd serve no further purpose. In order to disperse that much greenery around, there would of had to be millions of these metal flowers at one point dotted around various landmasses. GAIA clearly cared about what it did and it would stand to reason that she'd have those metal flowers recycled rather than cluttering the planet.

Edit:
Also one other point i didn't account for right away: When the derangement started, it might be entirely possible HADES deleted the directive to remove the last of these metal flowers and this was roughly 19 years earlier, just before Aloy came into existence. So the last of these flowers Aloy finds and trades are just empty and haven't been recycled.

that might be a bit of speculation but it fits the available facts known in the game, at least until something better comes along.

[Sokurah]

Well yes i forgot that part with the code. So it was part of zero dawn to shut down the swarm with the code while they were asleep.

I also can now remember that part were all subprojects became different AIs

I guess all is mostly clear for me now. thx.
When is the next DLC dropping? Need to do the other one first tho.

One last question. How big is the Zero Dawn project area?
Obviously the different facilities are the original ones. But does that mean the project is still contained in this very small area?

That kinda makes no sense or it cant be. There would be the need of copies of facilities all around earth, or at least the cauldrons / Hephaistos would need to have spread all around earth. You cant rebuild the ecosystem just in a contained area. And Zero Dawn is obviously no closed system ecosphere.

This is never really touched in the game or did i just missed that too?

[Xautos]

The current game is located between Colorado and Utah, roughly south along the border of two other states. the DLC is located in Wyoming, Yellowstone park. That's a fairly big area.

There is no way a small area on the earth would be fully terraformed and the rest of the world would be barren with no atmosphere. So yes, it was a world wide terraforming effort and there would of been thousands of these underground facilities and a lot of them would have been controlled by HEPHAESTUS when it was a subordinate to GAIA.

[Eye of Newt]

That also raises an interesting question: why is HEPHAESTUS hacking cauldrons it already directs and controls? Did GAIA put in place a last-minute firewall that forced cauldrons to only produce machines with the original terraforming directives?

[Xautos]

Originally posted by Eye of Newt:

That also raises an interesting question: why is HEPHAESTUS hacking cauldrons it already directs and controls?

I'll give answers in two parts:
It's possible HADES severing GAIA from the subordinates was to blame, after all the derangement was when it deciding to give all the machines a more aggressive stance against humans. it may have had a more adverse effect on the other subordinates.

Then again it is also likely GAIA could of booted HAPHAESTUS out the system microseconds after it became an AI and locking up the system by raising the firewalls and having the security consider HAPHAESTUS and HADES a threat.

It might also be an answer of both halves that HADES derangement set off GAIA to lock out systems before HADES could get to it itself.

With the DLC: HEPHAESTUS wasn't at that cauldron in Yellowstone, but it did oversee the production of hunter-killer machines like fireclaws, frostclaws, scorchers and HEPHAESTUS controlled machines which were even more tougher than their regular versions. However it only had control over this cauldron for a few years, before this CYAN was responsible for the cauldron and surrounding facilities.

CYAN was an illegally developed AI that was kept hushed by its creators but it's no match for one of the former subordinates of Project Zero Dawn, the purpose of the AI was to monitor and keep the Yellowstone caldera stable so it doesn't erupt. But similar at other cauldrons, there was sophisticated cyber security protecting them from being hacked but the difference in this instance was that CYAN itself was the weak link.

Due to the geothermal energy and where the caldron was placed, HAPHAESTUS had unlimited ability to produce its own hunter killers.

Originally posted by Eye of Newt:

Did GAIA put in place a last-minute firewall that forced cauldrons to only produce machines with the original terraforming directives?

It might be possible, but like the current terraforming for Project Zero Dawn, without leads to keep the cauldrons running or the terraforming project on track, eventually it will come crashing to a halt. There is only so much an ordinary computer programme can accomplish to run the facilities in the cauldrons as much as the project itself.

One thing about the terraforming project, it has a few decades left before the planet becomes uninhabitable again as things start unravelling, so it's not just about Aloy being there to bring GAIA back, but to save the current new world as it is known as well. Meridian was just one conflict, Aloy has a bigger role to play out still.

[TommyEV]

Just wanted to say thanks, Xautos, for the detailed replies!

[Xautos]

Originally posted by TommyEV:

Just wanted to say thanks, Xautos, for the detailed replies!

That's just from bits and pieces in the game and occasionally a quick glance for something on the wiki. :)

I know the wiki mentions that Hephaestus just created the cauldrons and tried to gain access to them and used them during the derangement, but the thing with a wiki is that it's never 100% accurate because there are many sources contributing to the project and they could conflict.

I'm fairly sure based on available information in the game that Hephaestus had more control in the cauldrons than simply building them, but also operating them and making sure these machines are produced, it would have to keep an eye on all of them over that time to make sure they didn't fail. so it doesn't make sense it would be left to programmes in a central core as the core itself might fail.

Also based on the way Hades attacked the moment it became an AI after Gaia learned of it during that recording in the Eleuthia-9 cradle, i'm certain that Hephaestus wasn't the main instigator in the derangement, but rather Hades was the predominant architect of the way things went. I'm not convinced that Hephaestus was behind it despite its obvious goals to destroy humanity or its attempts to gain access to cauldrons when building machines to kill humans. There is likely two different scenarios going on with two separate agendas that looked the same and may have been confused as such; mainly re-programming machines to kill humanity.

Anyway i enjoyed creating those explanations. So i'm glad to provide some insight. :)

[Eye of Newt]

Aloy herself has a line of dialog that runs something along the lines of "So HEPHAESTUS is the source of the cauldron intrusions", and you get datapoints from each cauldron override that ends up with this:

https://horizon.fandom.com/wiki/M/ALL-US-W_CM_LOG_329G

[Xautos]

Originally posted by Eye of Newt:

Aloy herself has a line of dialog that runs something along the lines of "So HEPHAESTUS is the source of the cauldron intrusions", and you get datapoints from each cauldron override that ends up with this:

https://horizon.fandom.com/wiki/M/ALL-US-W_CM_LOG_329G

Doesn't say when it happened which is the problem with these logs, it also doesn't say if Gaia initiated a lockout the moment the nine subordinates became AI, but it does fill in some of the motivation regarding Hephaestus however, namely that it wants to destroy humanity.

I doubt Hephaestus can affect the planet in the same way Hades can, after all Hephaestus was designed for a specific purpose to build cauldrons and operate them for Gaia. Hephaestus has no specific knowledge of terraforming or how to poison a planets atmosphere, it wouldn't make any sense why it would know anything about a subject that is outside the designed parameters.

This log could state that it regained access to the cauldron through hacking attempts. But by itself it doesn't explain that it was responsible for the derangement and the game later states that Hephaestus couldn't easily hack into other cauldrons because of sophisticated cyber security. A world wide derangement couldn't be explained by Hephaestus taking over 6 cauldrons in the game area of HZD where it can't get into others.

Put it this way, if Forbidden west has these animal shaped terraforming machines out there that are just as hostile, then it definitely points to the fact Hephaestus wasn't behind the derangement because it had no access to cauldrons outside the HZD map and there was another power at work.

As for Aloy talking to herself, by thinking out a loud? Based on the way you paraphrased, she clearly didn't know and she still might be missing pieces of the puzzle.

[Eye of Newt]

GAIA's initial function was as a worldwide terraforming system, so by definition her subfunctions have the same global reach. So I think it's more a plot hole than anything that the Derangement extends beyond the HZD lands, since HEPHAESTUS is clearly the source of the Derangement.