History Characters / HorizonZeroDawnProjectZeroDawn

* IWasQuiteALooker: [[spoiler:If Aloy is anything to go by, Elisabet was definitely a pretty woman in her youth]]. And she aged rather gracefully besides.

->"Time to let go."

->'''Travis:''' How is it that someone like you- a paragon, a damn near saint- could love this world so damn much, but no one in it? I mean, have you ever even had a friend? (...) [I] always admire ya from afar, Liz.

'''HADES:''' You are...unhappy. Good.

* PosthumousCharacter: Ted Faro deleted APOLLO and all of its databases on Earth in 2066. He was extremely thorough in destroying it, hunting down even the DNA-based backups. Had it not been for Elisabeth giving a copy of it to Far Zenith, APOLLO and the Old Ones' knowledge would've been permanently lost.

* NotQuiteDead: While Ted Faro deleted its database, APOLLO itself still exists, albeit in a useless state.
* RaisedByRobots: He was supposed to teach the revived humanity the knowledge of the Old Ones through the Lyceums inside the Cradles. APOLLO was the closest thing Beta had to a parent, who taught her everything she knew through Far Zenith's Lyceum.
* SuperIntelligence: APOLLO was designed to house the collective culture and knowledge that the Old Ones had accumulated. ''All'' of it. Not only that but it was also meant to create a curriculum that would reintroduce that knowledge to the humans ELEUTHIA created and cared for. With APOLLO's database gone, both ELEUTHIA and ARTEMIS were left adrift, unable to fulfill their proper function at their fullest.

* IWasQuiteALooker: [[spoiler:If Aloy is anything to go by, Elisabet was definitely a pretty woman in her youth]]. And she aged rather gracefully besides.

* TheAtoner: {{Subverted}}. He becomes a full supporter of Elisabet's plans due to his actions leading directly to the RobotWar that will destroy all life on Earth. However Farro mostly did it because Elisabet would have told the world it was all his fault if he didn't, and his final on-screen action is him attempting to erase all knowledge of his actions from the historical record. His character profile in ''Forbidden West'' states that his erasure of APOLLO was ultimately more to protect ''himself'' rather than the future humans, heavily implying that Farro wasn't consumed by guilt but instead ego, not guilt and just wanted people not to know he was the one responsible for causing the end in the first place

* TheAtoner: {{Zigzagged}}. He becomes a full supporter of Elisabet's plans due to his actions leading directly to the RobotWar that will destroy all life on Earth, and while ''some'' of it was motivated by genuine guilt, most of it was because Elisabet would have told the world it was all his fault if he didn't, and his final on-screen action is him attempting to erase all knowledge of his actions from the historical record. His character profile in ''Forbidden West'' states that his erasure of APOLLO was ultimately more to protect ''himself'' rather than the future humans, and he merely deluded himself into BelievingTheirOwnLies to cope with the guilt.

* SunkCostFallacy: What HADES was originally intended to avert. It was determined in simulations that GAIA wouldn't give up on a reconstruction attempt that was doomed to fail, so HADES was devised as a contingency. HADES' job was to suppress GAIA in such a case, taking control of the Zero Dawn system and de-terraform it all back to square one, salvaging as it goes, and return control to GAIA once complete. [[spoiler: In ''Forbidden West'', it’s revealed HADES had de-terraformed Earth three times in the past, in the years 2154, 2161, and 2168 specifically. The current biosphere is Gaia’s fifth attempt and most successful.]]

* MeaningfulName: POSEIDON is named after the [[LordOfTheOcean Greek God of the Seas]], the AI itself created for the express purpose of purifying the Earth's water.

** His [[GeneticAbomination ultimate fate]] makes him a similarly incompetent version of [[VideoGame/{{Fallout1}} The Master]] as well. An unholy mesh of flesh and machine immobile and sealed in an underground bunker who desired to bring about a new world order.

** His [[GeneticAbomination ultimate fate]] makes him a similarly incompetent version of [[VideoGame/{{Fallout1}} The Master]] as well. An unholy mesh of flesh and machine immobile and sealed in an underground bunker.

** His [[GeneticAbomination ultimate fate]] makes him a similarly incompetent version of [[VideoGame/{{Fallout1}} The Master]] as well.

* {{Expy}}: He comes across as a less competent version of [[ComicBook/{{Watchmen}} Adrian Veidt]], being one of the most powerful businessmen in the world in his time, apparently in love with the Egyptian theme, (Veidt's masked persona having been Ozymandias, the Greek name of Ramses the Great, while Faro's surname is phonetically identical to "pharaoh," along with all his robots having Egyptian names) and being responsible for a huge mass of death. The difference is that Veidt's plan came with a lot of control and "only" caused thousands to millions of deaths, whereas Faro's inability to think things through led to the total extinction of life on Earth. They even both have secret bases named after Egyptian cities, Veidt's Karnak and Faro's Thebes. The similarities are driven home with both of them having the same "I just did something horrible X minutes ago" line.

* TheCracker: MINERVA had one purpose; Win the war against the Faro Swarm by generating the security keys necessary to interface with it, then have HEPHAESTUS build the structures necessary to transmit the commands, and finally use those structures to transmit the security keys and a shutdown command to the entire swarm. It succeeded. [[spoiler: This later becomes a case of [[CripplingOverspecialization Crippling Overspecialization]] after it becomes self-aware and independent from GAIA. Since it was programmed for only one specific task that was already completed centuries ago, MINERVA is left unable to do much of anything compared to the other subordinate functions, and instead remains [[AndIMustScream trapped in the TAU computer facility all alone]]. This is later fixed once MINERVA is reintegrated back into GAIA, who uses MINERVA's function to conceal her presence and physical location on the Zero Dawn network from Far Zenith.]]

* {{Metalhead}}: He's a fan of death metal and [[spoiler:calls HADES' function to wipe the slate if GAIA doesn't work right the first time "metal"]].

* LargeHam: [[spoiler:His LogicBomb against Far Zenith was very bombastic in its delivery, with Tate quoting the Old Testament as he 'smote' them with a server overload and a [[ThereasonYouSuckSpeech mocking speech]], capped off with a double-finger salute]].

* TheCorruption: He and the machines under his control have the ability to corrupt normal machines, bringing them under his control as well. [[spoiler:In addition, HADES is also technically affected by this as well, as the extinction signal Nemesis sent out self-actualised it and drove it to follow it's programming even on a perfectly-habitable biosphere, and in turn it accidentally spread the same corruption to the other sub-functions when it rebelled against GAIA, giving them sentience and driving them to follow their main programming in increasingly-erratic ways]].
* CreateYourOwnHero: [[spoiler:HADES does this twice. First by causing GAIA to have to self destruct, this prompts GAIA to clone her creator so that GAIA might be rebuilt. In this way HADES is responsible for Aloy's very existence. Second, by sending the Eclipse to attack the proving. Had HADES never done this, odds are Aloy would've lived her (short) life as a Nora Brave, never straying from the Sacred Lands, until HADES reactivated the Faro plague and she'd have died alongside everyone else. HADES' hurry to kill Aloy is what sets her on her path, and prompts the matriarch to make her a seeker. It's also what puts Aloy on Sylens' radar and prompts him to help her. {{Justified}} as HADES was only ever designed to ''end'' life, not deal with it, or form critical thinking skills against it. What little it does have is a learned experienced adapted from Sylens' advice, and even then it has limits. When it runs into a problem to it's main purpose like Aloy, it doesn't really have the means to process how to deal with her besides trying to kill her-- which it is, at the very least, [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill extremely direct about]].]]

* BenevolentAI: [[spoiler:GAIA and the A.I.'s who act as her sub-functions exist solely to re-terraform and maintain the Earth's biosphere and restore humanity. Even HADES which is designed to destroy is meant to ''help'' her by wiping the slate clean for her to start over]].

* FertilityGod: While GAIA as a whole was created for this [[spoiler:basically an A.I. tasked with recreating an entire biosphere after a global extinction event]], the specific functions that helped nurture life in the new world were DEMETER, which recreated plant life, and ELEUTHIA, which [[spoiler:created human beings and gave them a very limited early education]].

* NecessarilyEvil: [[spoiler:HADES' purpose was to do what [[FriendToAllLivingThings GAIA]] could not bring herself to do: wipe out the current ecosystem if it proved unsustainable so that she could try again from scratch. Indeed, HADES needed to step in three times during the 22nd century to abort nonviable biospheres]].

* HiddenDepths: Ironically, due to its designed integrating poetry in its programming, with APOLLO dead DEMETER remains as the only part of GAIA that maintains any record whatsoever of Old World literary output despite that not being its function.

* AbusiveParents: The distinction is a bit hazy for a mechnical being, but you can read it that way. [[spoiler: The various robots in the Cradle were [[RaisedByRobots created with the express purpose of rearing the various children that ELEUTHIA made]], acting as extensions of its will. As time grew on, the children began to resent their robot caregivers since they could only treat the humans as young children even as they reached puberty, then adulthood, APOLLO's deletion making it impossible to continue the next stage of Project: Zero Dawn and start to properly educate them. If the humans lashed out at the caregivers or each other or even started to explore their burgeoning sexualities, the caregivers were authorized to shock them, and clearly had no capacity to understand how painful this was to their wards emotionally. When the food stores ran out, ELEUTHIA was forced to evict all of the humans into the Earth to fend for themselves. The survivors would go on to foster the various tribes seen in the game]].

* AIIsACrapshoot: Was originally designed to destroy failed biospheres to [[spoiler:give GAIA an opportunity to start over from scratch. Unfortunately, something caused it to go rogue and attempt to hijack GAIA's functions]]. Therefore, it technically isn't going haywire, but acting exactly as it was programmed to when it shouldn't.

-->'''HADES:''' [[spoiler:Signal transmitted by Masters.]]
-->'''Aloy:''' [[spoiler:And who are they?]]
-->'''HADES:''' [[spoiler:Masters woke me to destroy Earthly life.]]

* CrazyPrepared: He created the Logic Bomb that starts off the events of the game explicitly because he figured that ''someone'' would eventually try to make off with Zero Dawn's data [[spoiler: which is quickly proven right and he even has an ad-hoc means of ''torture'' at his disposal for dealing with moles.]]

[[Characters/HorizonZeroDawn Main Character Index]] | [[Characters/HorizonZeroDawnAloy Aloy]] | [[Characters/HorizonZeroDawnTribes Tribes]] ([[Characters/HorizonZeroDawnTheNora The Nora]]) | [[Characters/HorizonZeroDawnMachines Machines]] | [[Characters/HorizonZeroDawnOldWorld The Old World]] ('''Project Zero Dawn''')

* MechanicalEvolution: {{Justified}} this was its intended purpose, its programing team were psychologists and teachers on the whole woth only a few, admitedly genius, engineers this was to give it the tools to desing the mechanical tools GAIA needed from the ground up. So It is the creative AI and has access to the tools to upgrade both its creations ''and'' itself which makes it incredibly deadly.
* TheManBehindTheMan: Unlike GAIA and HADES, Aloy never directly interacts with the HEPHAESTUS AI, but fights its machines with regularity.

* PunchClockVillain: Not even really a villain per se -- unlike HADES it doesn't really want to [[spoiler:wipe out life - even the humans it targets ]] - it just wants to protect its machines and the biosphere. Still, it has no qualms about making deadly machines to kill humans if that means accomplishing its task.

* AIIsACrapshoot: [[AvertedTrope Averted]]. As APOLLO had been destroyed centuries before Nemesis sent their signal, he was never affected by it. The copy of APOLLO held by Far Zenith survived Sirius' destruction unaltered.

* MeaningfulName: APOLLO is named after the [[Myth/ClassicalMythology Classical]] God of the Sun, light, oracles, knowledge, healing, diseases, music, poetry, songs, dance, archery, herds and flocks, and protection of young. Basically, Apollo was the embodiment of all of the various things that humanity on a socio-political level held dear. With APOLLO gone thanks to Ted Faro's meddling, humanity was forced to regress into various tribal societies plagued with war, superstition and ignorance of the truth behind their origins and the world.
* NotQuiteDead: Until the reborn GAIA discovered that the Odyssey had survived its accident and reached Sirius, it was believed that APOLLO and all of his data were permanently lost. Sobeck had given an alpha build of APOLLO to Far Zenith in exchange for the ectochamber tech EULETHIA needed to revive humanity. The Zenith brought him back to Earth with them in their search for GAIA, allowing his reintegration to her systems.
* PosthumousCharacter: Faro destroyed APOLLO and all of his backups in 2066, both to erase his crimes and to replace him with himself as part of his ultimately failed plans to survive into modern times and rule humanity as an immortal god-king. He was so thorough there's nothing left of the subroutine by Aloy's time. While it's played straight with APOLLO's original Earth version, the alpha version Sobeck gave to Far Zenith survived.

* SuperIntelligence: APOLLO was designed to house the collective culture and knowledge that the Old Ones had accumulated. ''All'' of it. Not only that but it was also meant to create a curriculum that would reintroduce that knowledge to the humans ELEUTHIA created and cared for. With APOLLO gone, both ELEUTHIA and ARTEMIS were left adrift, unable to fulfill their proper function at their fullest.
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: The actual store of data about the Old World is encoded as fossilized DNA. Did Faro manage to destroy that too, or merely delete the reader software integrated into GAIA? APOLLO was also amongst the subfunction icons present when GAIA made her pre-recorded plea saved in the Cradle, leaving questions for players. ''Forbidden West'' answers some of these questions, with Gaia confirming that Ted Faro did in fact purge all data and copies of APOLLO. At least on Earth that is. Far Zenith managed to procure a copy of APOLLO to bring with them on the Odyssey while escaping the Faro Plague. Aloy later retrieves this copy and uses it to rebuild Gaia, although this doesn't explain why Gaia showed APOLLO as among the A.I.s splitting off when she self-destructed. Presumably she was being metaphorical in the visuals use to emphasise her transmission to Aloy.

[[Characters/HorizonZeroDawn Main Character Index]] | [[Characters/HorizonZeroDawnAloy Aloy]] | [[Characters/HorizonZeroDawnTribes Tribes]] | [[Characters/HorizonZeroDawnMachines Machines]] | [[Characters/HorizonZeroDawnOldWorld The Old World]] ('''Project Zero Dawn''')

People and AIs involved in project Zero Dawn -- an elaborate system of AIs that make up a terraforming system -- the Old World in ''VideoGame/HorizonZeroDawn'' and its sequel, ''VideoGame/HorizonForbiddenWest''. '''Beware of major spoilers!'''