History WMG / HorizonZeroDawn

[[/folder]]

[[WMG: One of the sequels will involve a holy war between the humans that view AI as gods, and humans who don’t.]]

Its already touched on as a key theme in both the main game and its expansion: current humanity has significant difficulties separating ‘tech’ from ‘mysticism.’ This will evolve into a schism between the religious and the technophiles. While the AI might no longer plan to purge humanity as a task, they are clearly developing their own motives. Every faction is going to want power for one reason or another. The titan robot, even with only partial functionality is probably more than enough to curb stomp the competition.

** That fits with how robots are powered in this series. Though obviously less destructive than the Faro robots biofuel conversion.

[[WMG: Faro either created "The Glitch" on purpose or got corrupted by it himself.]]

Alternate interpretation (Also, a plea for the game writers NOT to follow this plot line, because its dumb):

Disclaimer: This is a shot at being cynical GenreSavvy with the ‘hollywood genius.’

* Faro is a ‘hollywood genius’
* He already stopped mankind from killing itself before. Here he hit his DespairEventHorizon and decided to ‘hit the reset button’ on humanity.
* He hires Sobeck straight out of college because ‘hollywood genius’ recognizes the ONLY other ‘hollywood genius that could possibly out-think him’
* Since there are only two ‘hollywood geniuses’ in this universe, everyone does exactly what they say because the plot demands it.
* Faro ordered the non-geniuses to create unstoppable robots, because there’s no way non-geniuses would ever question the hollywood genius.
* Side-note: hollywood genius is never dumb, ever; so he always planned for the robots to go rogue
* This would also explain the military falling in line with Sobeck’s insane proposal.

** Despite causing the apocalypse, he’s still given an active role in planning humanity’s future (because he’s still the genius). Therefore he has genius level rights (admin access) undo anything that risks the reset.
** He hacked the systems with his genius, and there was nothing any of the non-geniuses could do to stop him. This would also explain why he’s not in the room with them when it happens.

At some point, he entered Cryostasis and was sleeping for thousands of years, undiscovered by the Swarm. However, he will awaken trapped inside his bunker and will send out a distress signal, only to be rescued by none other than Elisabet/Aloy, to his utter horror.

Their interactions are very tense, especially from Elisabet, even considering that his company went from saving the world with green robots to destroying it with the Chariot line. It seems possible that the two were involved in some way (briefly or otherwise), and it ended badly. The fact that Ted decided to go into automated warfare was likely the tipping point for her, and their relationship has been hostile ever since. Still, residual feelings (mostly from Ted) could partially explain why she was the only one who could keep him reined in during the Zero Dawn project, and why his sanity slipped so badly once she was no longer around to do so.

They worship the sun and are the most advanced tribe. The sub-module that was supposed to educate humanity is named for the god of the sun. It's not too hard to make the connection. Perhaps APOLLO's remaining fragments didn't have its database but was still able to guide people ''to'' knowledge; it can't speak directly to the Carja due to the same limitation GAIA had (and because it wasn't designed to speak, and wasn't even sentient until 19 years ago), but was able to nudge them towards what lost knowledge remained in the world.

Perhaps the crew mutinied, sent a false report that Odyssey was destroyed en route, and decided to live in space rather than cryo-sleep. Their children were educated by APOLLO-alpha, and without the fail-safes installed into the completed APOLLO, they never learned to temper the power of their knowledge and became bloodthirsty techno-conquerers. The rogue signal that awakened GAIA's subordinate functions was designed to weaken what they assumed would be a repopulated Earth, by targeting its most powerful reconstruction asset. They then plan to reseed and repopulate Earth themselves.

[[WMG:Vast Silver caused the Glitch and is still around]]

* Confirmed, the new expansion is called ''the Frozen Wilds'' and looks to be taking place in Ban-Ur.

** In this troper's playthrough, he did note that Ted was working with [[NothingIsScarier something]] nonhuman during the cutscene where he kills the Alphas. Telling them to stop hacking the system. In my humble opinion, there is a more than zero chance that the he and the Swarm were working together.

* First DDOS attacks: this would use dumb computer systems to flood the Faro Robot communication ranges with static, to the point where the robots would constantly have to locate uninterrupted frequency ranges. The titans could be taken out, and the ‘lessons learned’ couldnt be shared with the collective because there’s no reliable open frequency.

* Confirmed, the new expansion is called ''the Frozen Wilds'' and looks to be taking place in Ban-Ur.

[[WMG: The Sequel]]
[[WMG: Several characters thought dead will be found alive]]
* HADES. Obviously, going by the after credits sequence.
* Rost was reported buried by Matriarch Leersa. However, despite him obviously being severely wounded, we don't ''see'' his body, and asking the Matriarchs to report him dead to Aloy would fit with his insistence on leaving her after she succeeds in the Proving.
* Ted Faro. We receive no reports of his death after he murders the Alphas, and he's said to be riding out the Apocalypse in his own private bunker. Either he's going to appear as a cloned DistaffCounterpart to Aloy, or he'll be another AI based off the original Faro's memories.
** If we're going by the ending sequence, SOMETHING activated HADES and knew how to do it. A cloned or replicated or cryogenically frozen Faro could very well be insane enough to maybe do something like that, considering his eventually luddite views. Other than HADES, obviously, if anyone on this list is coming back, my money's on Faro.
* Dr. Sobeck. This one is more of a stretch, given that Aloy apparently finds her body at the end of the game, but her face seems awfully well-preserved inside her environment suit, suggesting it's more of a computer projection than an actual image. And even Sylens admits that if anyone could figure out a way to make herself immortal, it would be Sobeck.

[[WMG: The Glitch and the Faro Plague were orchestrated by Far Zenith]]
The Glitch was no accident; of that we can be certain. A disturbing prospect, yes, but also one that raises several important questions. Who could have been responsible? Why would they do such a thing? And why were the two instances of the Glitch striking separated by nearly a thousand years?

Let us assume that there are no aliens involved, and the Glitch was in fact engineered by humans. Leaving aside the question of motive, this means one of three things: 1) the hack was not intended to cause global sterilization, but got out of control and did so anyways, and the creators were [[HoistByHisOwnPetard Hoisted By Their Own Petard]]; 2)the hackers intended to pull a TakingYouWithMe from the start; or 3) the hackers had an escape route. Given the fact that the Glitch made a sudden reappearance via a "transmission of unknown origins", its masters are still around and we can discard possibilities 1 and 2. So who could have hacked the swarm ''and'' escaped global sterilization for all that time? The answer to that question is the Far Zenith organization.

Putting together some of the stray bits of information from the [[ApocalypticLog Apocalyptic Logs]] in ''Horizon'' provides a highly compelling trail of clues. Far Zenith was responsible for reviving the ''Odyssey'' interstellar colony project after its initial failure. They were a largely-anonymous "futurist consortium" claiming to include 77 of the world's wealthiest individuals. (Now, if that doesn't scream "shadowy, sinister cabal" I don't know what does.) The ''Odyssey'' took years to set up, and finally set off during the Faro Plague, only to suffer catastrophic failure - or at least, that's according to telemetry.

A reconstruction of events goes as follows. In the late 2040's, the already titanic Faro Automated Solutions begins work as a military contractor and is soon dominating the market. At a certain point, it creates the Chariot Line, which any GenreSavvy person can see is a doomsday device waiting to be triggered. FZ, likely with the help of inside information/assistance, create the override mechanism that would become the Glitch. Meanwhile, the nations of the world are developing the original ''Odyssey''. FZ manages to fatally sabotage the mission in 2057, leaving the ship a "heap of space junk (...) in graveyard orbit" and its developers all too glad to be rid of it. The consortium can then publicly step up and offer to take over, thereby gaining control over an interstellar colony project. When ''Odyssey'' has progressed far enough, the Glitch is triggered, unleashing the Faro swarm upon the world. A new urgency is added to ''Odyssey'''s success, and cooperation with the Zero Dawn project even nets FZ a prototype version of APOLLO. As things get worse down on Earth, ''Odyssey'', with the conspirators safely aboard, leaves for Sirius (or parts unknown). As it exits the solar system, it transmits a false telemetry signal, faking its destruction.

In reality, the conspirators are simply biding their time in cryosleep until conditions on post-sterilization Earth normalize. ''Odyssey'', full of the seeds and zygotes intended for a colony, can be used to re-seed Earth as Far Zenith sees fit. With the APOLLO education system at hand, they can even raise and indoctrinate fresh new generations of humanity, all according to whatever ideals they might have.

Unfortunately for them, however, Earth is ''not'' the blank slate they were expecting upon return. With the planet already terraformed and the Faro Swarm shut down, Far Zenith has no choice but to turn to hacking once again. They manage to track GAIA's signal to her source, and HADES is unshackled to undo the annoying complication she caused. That is, were it not for Elisabet Sobeck throwing yet ''another'' wrench into their plans...

Heinously evil beyond CartoonishSupervillainy? Yes. And yet, too many pieces of the puzzle fit. Particularly so if one considers that a 'zenith' is the highest point an object reaches ''before it comes back down again''.
-->'''[[http://horizonzerodawn.wikia.com/wiki/Dalgaard_on_FZ Osvald Dalgaard, representative of Far Zenith]]''': "We are devoted not only to extending humanity's legacy beyond this solar system, but also to making the world...sexier, I suppose. More interesting (...) Here's where I get to blow your mind. Very exciting. We are not interesting in escaping a dying world. For us this is not an act of panic or, ah...adrenal survival reflex. The Odyssey, under the stewardship of Far Zenith, will be a triumph, not a retreat. This is why we will succeed. [[YouAreAlreadyDead Why we already have succeeded, really]]."
* Two words: [[https://youtu.be/_ixZZP11DVU?t=2 Dear God.]]

[[WMG: HADES will return... as an ally]]
When Aloy reached HADES and inserted the override, the software explicitly said that the Extinction Protocol had been purged. HADES, now free from an obligation to end all life, becomes a key figure in finding the origin of the Glitch and stopping it once and for all.

[[WMG: The Antagonist will be HEPHAESTUS.]]
It is already stated in-game that he has been altering the robotic eco-system through hacking the cauldrons to create more dangerous machines such as the Stalkers and the Thunderjaw among others to kill human beings, considering them as a "threat" to the machines he was made to build and care for. It is hinted in-game that he is the cause of the "Derangement" seen in the machine eco-system which was triggered at the time HADES became possessed by "The Glitch" and broke free from its shackles.

In contrast to HADES, HEPHAESTUS will not be aiming for global extinction, but sole human extinction instead, creating a living world where its robotic eco-system can exist without the threat of humanity breaking and plundering it. A WellIntentionedExtremist, in a sense, which Aloy has to stop before mankind faces a personal end at the hands of this artificial blacksmith.

[[WMG: The other AIs will have unique robotic bodies of their own as bosses and Aloy will be forced to subdue them in battle.]]
Considering that an AI learns from its mistakes and the Cauldrons are capable of creating anything required through light printing technology, the other AIs will learn from HADES' mistakes and build themselves robotic bodies capable of holding the Horus computer cores capable of containing them alongside with providing their own mobility, offensive and defensive capabilities as well. These forms will have MorphicResonance with their namesakes and become ColossusClimb-style battles as Aloy is forced to take on in order to reclaim the rouge AIs in her quest of repairing GAIA (as the subsystems themselves, with their granted statuses as own AIs, would refuse in giving up their own identities for that cause.).

* AETHER: A giant tree. No offensive capabilities and is the one that must be climbed in order to reach its core. Its defenses lies in its ability to withdraw the climbing holds for the ones climbing it once reaching a certain height, assuring their deaths upon falling off it. Making fighting it a matter of intuition and skill.
* ARTEMIS: A giant stag with ranged weaponry as offensive capabilities, roaming the lands with the highest mobility of the subsystems.
* DEMETER: A giant snail. Massive defensive capabilities, armed with an harpoon and otherwise uses its sheer size to crush threats around it. Once inside its shell, it can't be damaged unless its mobile parts come out to move it, capable of producing "snail eggs" (aka sticky bombs) which makes approaching it highly dangerous if using a reckless assault.
* ELEUTHIA: Ant or Termite Queen, spawning massive number of robotic lesser machines to protect her and attack enemies, residing within a mountain as its anthill.
* HEPHAESTUS: Giant Crab, (pincers as the tongs, hammer and the earth itself serve as its anvil as it slams the blunt side of its claws against it.) Close-combat capabilities and will instantly try to close the distance between itself and the hostiles in order to deliver down its "hammer and tongs" upon them. Possession of massive amounts of armor due to being close-combat orientated and to fit its symbolic theme.
* MINERVA: A giant owl, bigger than the stormbirds and with aerial combat capabilities alongside with advanced combat tactics to employ in self-defense and battle.
* POSEIDON: Giant Dolphin. Aquatic combat, residing within a massive body of water and fights with geysers of scalding water in order to hit targets without having to get close to them.

Providing a wide diversity of challenges for Aloy to overcome in her future quest of repairing GAIA and with the unexpected help from Sylens and HADES( purged of its extinction protocol and undergone a HeelFaceTurn due to having lost its original purpose, requiring GAIA in order to restore them once more to its original state,) who/which acts as MissionControl and providing her with the locations of the other subsystems when
properly located during the quest of eradicating the [[MechanicalAbomination "Glitch"]] starting the whole mess to begin with.
* And if Apollo is brought back from Far Zenith's Odyssey project... Well, he will be:
** APOLLO: A shapeshifting machine that starts off as a massive Meteor, transistioning into a Pikaia like machine, then a Metal Dunkleosteus, a Tiiktaalik, a giant, gun-toting Gorgonopsid, a metal skeleton of a human that uses a sword and gun in accord, before transitioning into a Cockroach in it's final phase. Complicated to code? Yes... But it'll be worth the effort.
** Or it might just take the form of the origin of all its accumulated knowledge as a reflection and homage of its creators, aka, a giant human being, [[{{Franchise/Terminator}} terminator]]-style, looking down at humanity from above.


[[WMG: Far Zenith's Odyssey ship was hijacked by HEPHAESTUS...]]
Now, going off of the theory that Far Zenith succeeded in leaving the solar system and colonising the galaxy beyond... What if HEPHAESTUS did the same and built it's own ship in the most isolated place on Earth: Antarctica, entirely in secret.

[[WMG: The Post Derangement Machines are also OlderThanTheyLook, at least in design]]
After the passing of Zero Day and MINERVA had acquired the codes, GAIA still had to manufacture the broadcast towers. Naturally all the activity would awaken the dormant FARO machines, who while not much smarter than insects on their own, could still intuit that the construction efforts were bad news for them. GAIA would then send out armed variants of her terraforming and construction machines to defend the efforts. Thus began the [[GreatOffscreenWar "Dawn]] [[TheGreatestStoryNeverTold War."]] The FARO Machines found themselves faced with an enemy they could not stop, With MINERVA's Codes [[NoSell they couldn't be hacked, as machines they had no Biomass to feed on,]] and [[BeatThemAtTheirOwnGame through Recyclers like Scrappers and Glinthawks]] [[ATasteOfTheirOwnMedicine were now themselves prey to an]] [[WhosLaughingNow enemy that can self replicate and has no exploitable weakness in sight.]] All they could do was Exhaust themselves in a futile effort to stop the towers from being built, out of resources they could exploit and faced with an intelligent and creative enemy that can actually strategize around whatever preloaded tactics they have, able to continuously imagine and fabricate brand new designs to fight them based on the [[GaiasVengeance very life forms]] [[LaserGuidedKarma they wiped out.]]

Anyway once the towers were built and the FARO Machines shut down, GAIA retired the combat designs from construction, letting the ones still around act as a vanguard of sorts until time would eventually claim them, but even them some of these combat machines would live long enough to see the demise of GAIA, as demonstrated by [[LastOfTheirKind Two Thunder Jaws]] seen shortly after Aloy's birth, a few years before their first sighting by the lodge. Once the Derangement started HEPHAESTUS would begin recirculating the combat machines into production for the same perceived reason they were in the start, to safeguard the planet's terraforming efforts against [[HumansAretheRealMonsters what it sees as a threat to the biosphere,]] with Saving Grace and hazard of the machines being hackable now without access to MINERVA's Codes.

[[WMG: The GAIA Machines animal like designs, at least in some cases were meant to serve for Imprinting]]
Just as the ELUTHIYA Born Humans needed Robotic Surrogates to raise and socialize them, many Animals, effectively the first of their kind, would need similar rearing, with Machines to reintroduce their behaviors into where a void would have been. In effect ARTEMIS and HEPHAESTUS worked in tandem Under GAIA on the Pioneer ecosystem, ensuring behavioral stability via repurposing existing terraforming machines. Alas without APOLLO Educated humans and with the Programs now acting alone, many of these potential surrogates may never have animals to help raise.

[[WMG: The Glitch was caused by Faro tampering with the rogue AI known as Vast Silver in some way]]
My bet is that he was contacted by VS, and then challenged it to break the code of his machines, and surprise-surprise, VS managed to do so. Also, VS is behind the derrangemento too.

[[WMG: We'll see furries in the sequel]]
The original AI responsible for the development for animals larger than humans was shackled, and since humans were unable to progress past the middle ages it has been sitting around making boars and fish and geese. But when [[spoiler:the alien signal hacked HADES]], it also unshackled all the other AI. It's been some time, and that AI might be thinking for the first time that it can do ''better'' than a species that eats its rivals' sons...

[[WMG: Ted Faro's decision was (maybe) the right one for the wrong reasons, and Aloy will one day have to make the same decision]]
This is admittedly more a [[WatsonianVersusDoylist Doyalist explanation than a Watsonian one]], but building upon the observation that APOLLO is likely not completely destroyed, it seems probable that at sequel will see Aloy having to find the dormant APOLLO AI and the knowledge it contains. This knowledge would, presumably, also contain the technical designs required to rebuild and start again the Faro Plague. If we then assume APOLLO's purpose is to disseminate ''all'' its information and is driven to survive and do so (likely how it survived Faro's deletion attempt) then it stands to reason Aloy would have to choose between attacking and destroying APOLLO or potentially ushering in a second round of the Faro plague. If nothing else, this just oozes drama and consequence, which is why I think the prospect will be too tantalizing for writers in future sequels to resist.

[[WMG:Aloy will eventually encounter descendants of another Cradle... and they will be hostile.]]
The Cradle under All-Mother Mountain - Eleuthia-9 was one of many. Most likely, all the tribes in the region - Nora, Carja, Banuk, Utaru, and Oseram - descend from this Cradle. But there are probably others in North America. At a rough guess, there might be four, with the others in the Eastern US, Canada, and Mexico. Of those, the Mexico Cradle is likely the closest - and could cause problems. One of the four languages used in designing APOLLO was Spanish, so it's not unlikely that the Mexico Cradle's multiservitors would speak Spanish. If so, the descendants of the Mexico Cradle will have no common language with the Colorado Cradle people. What are the odds their first meeting will go badly?

[[WMG: Future Machine ideas]]
It's already been confirmed that ''The Frozen Wilds'' will have new kinds of machines, and of course a sequel will have even more.
* [[BearsAreBadNews Bears]], specifically polar bears around Ban-Ur
* Wolves, as there aren't any canine machines seen over the course of the first game. They would also fit with the arctic theme.
* Walruses and[=/=]or leopard seals. Again, arctic theme.
* Elephants. While they could fit with the arctic theme (mammoths), they don't necessarily need be tied to it and could be a successor to the Behemoths in general.

[[WMG: There are clones of the other Alphas]]
Far as we can tell, the "Lightkeeper Protocol" was an aborted plan to
clone the alphas and then have them raise those clones in order to continuously monitor and test GAIA. Though it was abandoned, it went as far as gathering DNA from the all the Alphas (DNA that was used to create Aloy). The now-independent subsystems of GAIA may take a page from her book and create their own saviours in order to reactivate some of their dormant systems (for example, ARTEMIS might clone Charles Ronson in order to start reintroducing larger fauna into the world).

[[WMG: ELEUTHIA will turn out to be as plot-important as the other projects Aloy visited.]]
When Aloy reaches the [[http://horizonzerodawn.wikia.com/wiki/Zero_Dawn_Project_Facility Zero Dawn Project Facility,]] each of the project heads she can hear a presentation from makes a big deal of the Subordinate Function they are creating - and ''none'' of them turn out as they planned.\\
Margo Shĕn is cherubic about HEPHAESTUS, the source of all the non-Faro robots Aloy encounters. She emphasizes that they are GAIA's tools. However, when GAIA goes off-line, they run amok.\\
Travis Tate gets weird and gothic about HADES, stating that if GAIA fails to create a stable biosphere on the first try, projections have shown that she will waste millennia trying to preserve it anyway. Thus, HADES' job is to sterilize such biospheres so GAIA will start over. However, he doesn't say a damned thing about what keeps HADES from destroying stable biospheres -- which is what leads HADES to become a major antagonist.\\
Samina Ebadji waxes poetic about APOLLO, which was intended to pass the knowledge of the Old Ones on to reborn humanity - only for Faro to blow the whole thing to hell and gone, leaving the rebuilt world to be populated by ''kindergartners.''\\
And Patrick Brochard-Klein acts like a priest condemning heresy when he states;
-->ELEUTHIA is not a genetic engineering project. Our goal is to preserve the human genome, not alter it. A snapshot of human genetic diversity, literally frozen in time — the genetic quintessence of our species, unmodified. Under my watch, our activities and initiatives will comply with the 2034 Clone Provisions and the 2048 Raliegh Accords. Now, that may seem a quaint, even trivial concern to you, in light of present circumstances — but, as one of the authors of the Accords, it is far from trivial to me.
...The implication seems to be that there ''are'' HumanSubspecies in the re-created world, despite PBK's best efforts to keep the human genome unaltered.

[[WMG: Earth is currently experiencing an Ice Age.]]
CYAN in The Frozen Wilds notes that the Yellowstone Caldera has experienced a profound drop in year-round temperature since the Old World. With snow as an apparent year-round feature throughout the region, it seems likely that the planet is experiencing another ice age and much of Canada and the northern US is under heavy glaciation.

[[WMG: A Trilogy breakdown]]
Thinking it through, an effective trilogy for the game could be:
Game 2: Seeking out a way to access the encodings of Apollo. This would be part of the larger objective of restoring GAIA which leads us to
Game 3: Learning who HADES' masters are, which is likely going to have some relation to Ted Faro's bunker Thebes. The mystery of both could go either way but having Thebes be latter allows them to still be a threat during both adventures.

[[WMG: Ted Faro and Elisabet Sobeck's relationship]]
This might be overreaching, but there are subtle implications here and there that Ted and Elisabet's relationship was more than just one between coworkers and friends. The way they act towards each other, parts of the dialogue, and bits scattered in text and audio logs give off the impression that there may have been some sort of romantic relationship between them that later went sour, especially on Elisabet's end.

[[WMG:Sylens will be given a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech in a sequel.]]
But it will come from who is potentially the only entity whose opinion he would care about: [[spoiler:APOLLO, the embodiment of the Old Ones' knowledge. Sylens is a ruthless hoarder of knowledge, but Samina, the Alpha of APOLLO, was a sweet, gentle woman who believed knowledge was best shared to better humanity. Since APOLLO was to educate the future leagues of humans, it's possible its A.I. was designed to act like a fair and personable teacher with Samina's values. Someone who wouldn't be impressed with what Sylens has done for and with knowledge.]]

[[WMG: Ted Faro got even more nihilistic afterwards.]]
Really, this is a different signal theory though it could work with a few other signal theories.

Ted Faro's nihilism was that he concluded that knowledge was what destroyed the world. What if, sitting on his lonesome in Thebes, he concluded that it was, actually, humanity. That is, what if he wanted Hades to activate after Gaia had released her stock of human embryos, destroying humanity in the process. He may have concluded that Gaia would not have released her full stock of seeds but her options on humanity would be spent, ending any hope of humanity being part of the final solution.

[[WMG: Vast Silver was made by Elizabet early in her career at Faro, and it was the foundation of both the glitch and is HADES master]]
So this one requires more meta thinking. The core story is the building up of Elizabet story in the eyes of Aloy as a maternal figure. By the end, she's almost a MarySue in how pure good she is. Often, this is how many kids view their parents at a young age, often worshiping them. But that story is done, right? Well, often as kids grow up, they learn of the greater grey area of their parents, losing the ruby tinted glasses and coming to terms that their parents aren't perfect. So what might be the core of that? Maybe Elizabet made the only other rogue machine. Supporting this is that Vast Silver was the most advanced AI of its time and it was a climate AI - Elizabet's bread and butter. And let's consider that Elizabet knew immediately how to build an AI that exceeded the original record suggesting she had experience even though nobody had build AI's anywhere near that advanced since Vast Silver due to regulations. And based upon estimated dates, Elizabet would've been 24 and Chief Scientist of Faro by that point.

Now for us to be concerned about it, Vast Silver would need to crop up again in the modern era so it being HADES master makes sense - the one who sent the signal. But where would it have come from? The original core of the swarm. The real "Metal Devil". Why would it be there? Because Vast Silver was the core of the AI running the Swarms. It's the true source of the glitch - Faro used the Vast Silver framework to build the pieces for the Faro machines, an AI that is known to have gone rogue, and Elizabet, the original creator of Vast Silver, recognized her code in the machines hence why she could threaten Ted with that information.

The only issue with this theory is motive. Vast Silver's original rebellion was probably built on human impacts upon climate. As a Faro robot, this doesn't make sense as it went ahead and destroyed the climate. Maybe its conversion into a war machine gave it an objective to kill so it went and tried to kill everything?

[[WMG: APOLLO will be the BigGood of the sequel]]
There are lots of theories regarding APOLLO still existing. Let's assume a sequel game will be about rebuilding the Zero Dawn project. The center piece in this New Dawn will be either APOLLO or CYAN. CYAN is so far the only "alive" benevolent AI in the series, so she'd be the obvious first choice, but there are a few reasons as to why APOLLO would support Aloy, maybe even serve as a benefactor who helps Aloy and CYAN in recreating GAIA from behind the scenes:

Unlike the other AI, APOLLO would most likely be designed for human interaction, since it was intended to teach the new generation of humans. Yes, it might have been *just* a repository of knowledge, a large library, yet even if that is the case, it would still contain guidelines and protocols for how to interact with humans. Since the mysterious signal apparently gave the sub functions sentience in addition to independence (HADES may act like a machine, but it's clearly capable of understanding and improvisation), APOLLO would have a basis for becoming more benevolent.

Secondly, as pointed out on the Fridge page, APOLLO has context. Whereas HADES, HEPHAESTUS and the others just had a single task they would complete regardless of what humans would think of it, APOLLO is in possession of the entire history of humanity, our collective cultural identity. If APOLLO became sapient as well, he would probably start his newfound existence by examining his memories, thus learning to understand humanity.

[[WMG: The sequel will include androids and other forms of humanoid machines.]]

[[WMG: HADES is the way it is because it was 'raised' by Sylens]]
Throughout the core game and the expansion, we get to see two other developing AI's - GAIA and CYAN. Both are shown learning from their creators and the others they interact with, and these interactions are in turn shown to influence how the AI develops emotionally and the kind of personality it develops. Now, who was the first and primary person HADES interacted with and learned from? Sylens. We get to see their first interaction in the datapoint [[https://horizonzerodawn.fandom.com/wiki/First_Meeting First Meeting]]. Sylens IMMEDIATELY establishes a relationship based on trading information, refusing to answer HADES' second question until it answers one of his, and expressing approval when the AI recognizes this tit-for-tat dynamic. It's later implied by the datapoint [[https://horizonzerodawn.fandom.com/wiki/Buried_Shadow_(Datapoint) Buried Shadow]] that he has taught, or at least advised, the AI on how to pass itself off as a mythological figure from the Carja faith in order to manipulate the Shadow Carja into becoming it's pawns. When HADES uses Sylens, deceives him, and orders his death once it had no more use for him, it's only doing what Sylens himself has taught it to do. Had it come into contact with or had a chance to interact with someone more nurturing, it's possible it could have developed a very different personality, but the only interactions it's had since it's birth are with either people that believe it's a god, or a man who taught it lying, manipulation, and only giving in exchange for getting something you want.

[[WMG: The sequel will include androids and other forms of humanoid machines.]]

[[WMG: Ted Faro got even more nihilistic aftewards.]]

Secondly, as pointed out on the Fridge page, APOLLO has context. Whereas HADES, HEPHAESTUS and the others just had a single task they would complete regardless of what humans would think of it, APOLLO is in possession of the entire history of humanity, our collective cultural identity. If APOLLO became sapient as well, he would probably start his newfound existence by examining his memories, thus learning to understand humanity.

The only issue with this theory is motive. Vast Silver's original rebellion was probably built on human impacts upon climate. As a Faro robot, this doesn't make sense as it went ahead and destroyed the climate. Maybe its conversion into a war machine gave it an objective to kill so it went and tried to kill everything?

Ted Faro's nihilism was that he concluded that knowledge was what destroyed the world. What if, sitting on his lonesome in Thebes, he concluded that it was, actually, humanity. That is, what if he wanted Hades to activate after Gaia had released her stock of human embryos, destroying humanity in the process. He may have concluded that Gaia would not have released her full stock of seeds but her options on humanity would be spent, ending any hope of humanity being part of the final solution.

But it will come from who is potentially the only entity whose opinion he would care about: [[spoiler:APOLLO, the embodiment of the Old Ones' knowledge. Sylens is a ruthless hoarder of knowledge, but Samina, the Alpha of APOLLO, was a sweet, gentle woman who believed knowledge was best shared to better humanity. Since APOLLO was to educate the future leagues of humans, it's possible its A.I. was designed to act like a fair and personable teacher with Samina's values. Someone who wouldn't be impressed with what Sylens has done for and with knowledge.]]

* I'm not sure it is ArtisticLicenseMilitary, or the "Glitch" is much worse than some system bug. For the SlidingScaleofRobotIntelligence , original Faro robots are no more than Robo-Monkeys. To start an unstoppable robot rebellion, they have to at least get a Nobel-Bot level AI to handle what they are never designed to do, like override every last safety protocl (it will be a big scandal if your robot consumed some war correspondents, right?), handle strategic problem, or survive scorched-earth bombing of anti-matter warheads. Heck, it really seems like ArtisticLicenseMilitary when operation Enduring Victory don't include full scale NuclearOption or scorched-earth strategy.

* He already stopped mankind from killing itself before. Here he hit his DispairEventHorizon and decided to ‘hit the reset button’ on humanity.