Ted Faro, what a letdown

[sinsorrow1]

So I just finished the Faro's Tomb quest and saying I feel robbed is an understatement. That quest could have been much better. They don't even show you what became of the guy for god's sake. They don't even let you kill him, literally a noname guard kills him with a single torch in a second off screen! You can't even fight Ceo, he just insta dies, he doesn't even suffer. I really hope the rest of the game will be better. I loved ZD but FW has some questionable choices.

[Alcator]

1. They do show you what he looks like.
2. If Aloy killed him, she'd trigger a dead man's switch that he had, causing the meltdown.
3. What's the point of killing something with MINIMAL BRAIN ACTIVITY?
4. Ceo falls and breaks his back, that is painful enough, and then has a classical "Disney death".

But the "Fridge horror" aspect of this is that Ted Faro was like this, inside his bunker, for ~900 years. He got what he deserved: He lived for 40-50 years as a normal guy and then 900 years as a blot wrapped around a nuclear reactor.

[sinsorrow1]

1. They do not show you, you only see a hologram of the facility with the mutated biomass highlighted in red, but you don't see the actual biomass yourself.
2. As I said a literal unnamed generic guard killed him off-screen, resulting in self destruct anyway, robbing you of the satisfaction of killing the man who doomed the world.
3. You don't know that he has minimal brain activity. Also revenge for dooming humanity, or simply out of pity after seeing what he has become, it could have been a great character development point for Aloy.
4. He dies in 5 seconds and you didn't even cause it. I know it is ironic that the head of his own statue killed him, but they could have handled it much better.
5. Where are you getting this from? How do you know he was only "normal" for 50 years? Also there was no nuclear reactor, that was a geothermal reactor.

I am no game developer or writer, but this is how I would have handled it:
Ted Faro is completely insane but still somewhat conscious and when he sees Ceo and Aloy enter his chamber, he decides to toy with her before trying to kill her to silence Elisabet Sobeck one more time. He also captures Ceo but does not kill him.

Faro obviously has a focus and his biomass fused with the facility throughout the years, so he can control the environment, opening/closing doors, pumping in water, electrifying the ground, creating a deadly puzzle in every room. Aloy would have to bypass these traps and get the omega override from the core of the geothermal facility.

Once Aloy acquires the override, Faro's main "head/body" would appear and you would have to fight him. After defeating him, he would have a last laugh, stating his death will now initiate self-destruct.

Aloy starts to flee, finding and freeing Ceo on the way up, but he betrays her stating the truth about Faro can't leave the facility and they fight in the statue room. After defeating him, the statue collapses, but it does not kill him, only pins him down, and he will die in the rising lava.

Aloy escapes with the override and goes back to base.

[SzAman43]

I think it was a good choice. After that quest I went straight to youtube and watched video about ted faro. This quest really sparked the interest for the character as a whole. If we were to see him, that effect would be much lesser imo.

[teg]

Ted Faro, what a letdown

Everything about this mission was a let down. I expected Ted's hideout to be an amazing shangrala filled with beauties and magnificent art works. What we ended up with was a boring concrete bunker no better than what some peon could have created.

As for his death off screen, if you consider the whole game, much of the best parts happen off screen. The ending is almost completely off screen. Aloy ends up cleaning up a few remnants but the rest of wiped out in about 2 minutes. Quite a let down after the whole game's build up. This game is a classic example of "throw things in there to make the plot happen". Like the Zenith shield mcguffin.

I found the whole game to be disappointing. Nerfed compared to the first one.

[Alcator]

Originally posted by sinsorrow1:

1. They do not show you, you only see a hologram of the facility with the mutated biomass highlighted in red, but you don't see the actual biomass yourself.

3. You don't know that he has minimal brain activity. Also revenge for dooming humanity, or simply out of pity after seeing what he has become, it could have been a great character development point for Aloy.

5. Where are you getting this from? How do you know he was only "normal" for 50 years? Also there was no nuclear reactor, that was a geothermal reactor.

ad 1) Yes, they show you that he is basically a blob of biomass spread thin across the reactor area.
ad 3) It says so on the bioscan Aloy sees -- the same one that shows the extent of Ted's mutation.
(Edit to add): ad 5) It's pretty clear that suicide of Kanya and Dr. Somtow (sp?) happened at most few years after they all locked themselves in the bunker (Kanya is still a 'child', in Ted's eyes, when the two die), so that would mean Ted was alone since approx. the year 2070. The games takes place between 3021 (Aloy's birth) and approx. 3040 (Forbidden West), which means Ted was alone in his bunker for 970 years.

ALONE.
IN HIS BUNKER.
FOR 970 YEARS.

That would drive anyone absolutely insane and death would be a rescue/mercy for them, not a punishment. When Aloy hears the audio log about Ted's mutations 'calming down', she gets a mix of surprise and sadness in her face, which I interpret as 'You got what you deserved, Ted'.

I'd also like to point out that the Thebes mission probably went through multiple iterations and that different variants were prototyped and tested - perhaps even the one you propose - and the one we see in the game is simply the one they ultimately chose.

(In one teaser trailer, there was a shot of Erend being a captive of the Tenakth and transported in binds, with Aloy observing; in the final product, there is no such scene. Just to give an example of plot lines that they considered and eventually scrapped.)

Anyway, thank you for the civil debate :-)

[Somnorila]

I found the whole game to be disappointing. Nerfed compared to the first one. [/quote]

I agree, worse in almost every aspect. I may understand about the story that coming with something even better is not so easy. But regarding gameplay and mechanics i would expect to build upon what you have, not make it worse. All i see are some side steps and backsteps not one really obvious advancement. Melee sucks, general combat movement is bad, overriding is the same simplistic thing, ai seems worse for some reason, enemies have trascking attaks and are always facing you making it very annoying to hit them behind. For some reason they even made it unecessarily grindy with the weapon upgrading aspect. Like ♥♥♥ off, not just that stuff is not dropping 100%, you have to jump some specific hoops for specific items like take it down before killing or no drop. Then you have the normal vs apex variants which adds another annoyance. When you want to play with overriding you get too many apex around and you can;t take them, but when you want to upgrade some gear apex are shy to appear. Then the requirements specialyl for legendary are kind of silly. FFS, the time i spend upgrading a single weapon is too much, in that time i shoudl had made full several armors and weapons. So upgrading needs too many idividual items that you can't get naturally by playing. They purposely made it so you have to farm for stuff for a long time, just like in a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ mmorpg. HZD was similar but i don't remember being so annoying and grindy. Was similary simple yet more fun overall.

Also it feels off at times regarding how they seem to weasel in stuff about so many being gay and women are strong and men kind of idiots. HZD wasn't like this.