Horizon Zero Dawn/Horizon Forbidden West

More intensive, but not by a ton; I put in ~10-12 hours and got all collectables and did most sidequests. If you did a speedrun of just the main quest line I'd estimate it at 6-8 hours.

edited 9th Nov '17 6:42:41 AM by Jaustin89*

Just finished Frozen Wilds last night. That was fun in the right ways for a DLC to be. Nothing that happened in it is actually essential; there are no huge plot developments that reshape the narrative, but there are some neat bits that help flesh out the world. The obvious, of course, being getting to hang out with the Banuk and learn what they're about.

It was cool finally getting to see and confront HEPHAESTUS, but at the same time, I appreciate that they go out of their way to let you know that he hasn't actually been defeated in any way and will probably still be causing trouble in the sequel. If you've read the data logs from the Cauldrons, you already knew most of what was made explicit here.

Similarly, while meeting CYAN was awesome and Aloy finally getting to have an actual conversation with a pre-Swarm AI was very satisfying, the only thing she really contributes to the lore of the world is being a sort of unintended GAIA prototype. Getting to meet her is great, but missing out on that experience wouldn't be too much of a loss.

This is exactly what DLC should be. It's a small, isolated supplemental adventure that adds to the lore of the world, but not in a way that would prohibit the rest of the game from being a complete experience if you'd never purchased it. It's additive worldbuilding rather than essential storytelling.

edited 14th Nov '17 7:36:20 AM by TobiasDrake

I have not finished this yet (fuck off Destiny, I was going to take a break, but then there had to be a faction rally last week, didn't there?), but I'm liking it. I'm playing on hard, and the new machines are way more powerful than anything from the vanilla game. Even the daemonic versions of old machines are much tougher (got killed in one combo by a shellwalker, great). The shieldweaver actually seems pretty useless here, even without the control tower pulses. I've been having a much better time using the Nora Protector, and the new gear.

Pet peeve: not even the old Banuk gear actually gives full coverage for cold weather. I'm sure that the new Carja Blazon Adept (and why doesn't it have a new name?) will be effective, but it just won't look right in the snowy environment.

Also, for fuck's sake Aloy, stop talking about bluegleam. I will go and spend it in my own time, I don't need you mentioning it every two minutes.

<.< I never actually used any of the new stuff. Didn't buy any of the Bluegleam upgrades, and the new weapons kinda went into the pile of Stuff That's Probably Cool But Completely Unnecessary Because I Can Already Handle Everything.

"New elemental weapons!" Uh, neat. I already have Triple Shot with elemental arrows so....

edited 14th Nov '17 4:15:46 PM by TobiasDrake

Yeah. End of game Aloy essentially has a blaster slingshot that can take out Thunderjaws and bows that would make an Abrahms tank twitchy.

Looking forward to this. Unlike Art, Destiny didn't tempt me back for FR, save for a single day to say I chipped in... but AC: O and Warframe are just eating my leisure time.

I tried the new lightning weapon and I don't really know what it's for, and I haven't tried the other one, though the description leads me to believe it's essentially a flamethrower.

Said it already, but there doesn't need to be this many weapons in the game.

If you're playing Warframe you almost certainly don't need to be also playing Destiny :D

Sometimes I want to pirouette and stab a chunky green dude. Sometimes I want punchy gunplay with satisfying feedback.

And sometimes I want NP Cs that don't look like the fell out of a David Lynch movie via Giger

But I need to try this. AC: O is great, but HZD had a wonderfully focused and concise approch that compelled me to binge it.

Pretty much. And while the new enemy machines are cool - all two of them, disappointingly^Spoiler There is a third, mind you, but it only appears in the postgame and is just a pallette swap of the second - they still have the exposed vulnerable spots that cause massive elemental damage if sniped properly.

Fittingly given the region, Ice is basically OP in Frozen Wilds. The Scorcher's vulnerable to it and freezes easily, while one well-aimed Triple Shot with the Sharpshooter Bow to a Frostback's shoulders will set off a Bellowback-style Frost eruption. From there, apply judicious amounts of whatever your favorite damage weapon is and they go down like harmless punks.

edited 15th Nov '17 9:33:08 AM by TobiasDrake

Just had my first encounter with a Fireclaw and... eh. The new machines are pretty cool in terms of their abilities and stuff, they're fun to fight in that respect, but they just have too much fucking HP. I put the enemy HP bar back on during the first Fireclaw battle just to check I was actually getting somewhere. Maybe I do need to be making better use of elements now, or maybe it's just because in that fight it was getting healed, though I took the towers out as quick as I could.

Also, I sorta called it about HEPHAESTUS' involvement and there being a new Cauldron. Didn't think that HEPHAESTUS would be such outright antagonist though. I have questions, but they can wait until I'm actually finished.

You know what I would have sorta liked in NG+? Shield-weaver Adept.

Oh, and thanks Guerrila for letting me hunt all those damned squirrels and goats and badgers for their skins so I can buy that outfit, only for you to give me it as a quest reward later. Thanks. Great.

edited 15th Nov '17 3:50:38 PM by artfulscruff

Turns out all I had left of the 'main' quest was a couple of conversations. Not that they answered the question I had, I think. Why was Cauldron Epsilon built over the Firebreak site? HEPHAESTUS, at least, seems to have been unaware of Firebreak and CYAN until, what did CYAN say, five years ago? I guess maybe the question was answered, actually; HEPHAESTUS was trying to assimilate CYAN. Interesting that CYAN remained hidden for so long though, and that she knew relatively little of events after the Faro Plague and nothing of Zero Dawn.

It was also cool to actually directly encounter an AI, the only other one has been HADES, unless I'm mistaken. It's also cool that CYAN is understanding enough not to blow the Banuk's minds with her true nature, although I think that the Banuk are knowledgeable enough about how machines work, if not their origins and purpose, to comprehend her true nature.

At least so far as I understand, the mysterious pulse that awakened HADES and unshackled the other programs is relatively recent. HEPHAESTUS probably wasn't trying to break into CYAN's system until the pulse made him go haywire.

As for HEPHAESTUS's motives, I really like that he's not just, like, driven mad by the pulse and generically trying to destroy the world or some shit. His motivation makes sense. Each of the "god" programs is distinct from the others, serving a specific function, with GAIA's purpose being to control and regulate them towards the overarching goal. HEPHAESTUS is meant to be a cog in a machine, not the whole machine unto himself.

Unshackling the programs means they're all probably going to be problematic like this. HEPHAESTUS's purpose is to make machines. His job isn't saving humanity or restoring life to the Earth or reconstituting the biosphere or what have you. It's to make machines. He's the program that makes machines, and making machines is all he cares about. And now that he's independent, he's just going to keep right on making machines.

And so, in a tragic fit of irony, HEPHAESTUS sees the humans hunting his machines as a threat to his purpose of filling the world with metal, and is building bigger and meaner war machines so that he can declare war on those goddamn organics who dare to threaten his perfect mechanical masterpieces.

I'm really excited to see how the other programs, isolated and running their purposes without the guiding hand of GAIA, have gone nuts.

Apollo likes books. I mean he REALLY likes books. He's converting everyone into books. because BOOOOOOOKS.

edited 16th Nov '17 9:30:53 AM by JerekLaz

I do hope we eventually find out that APOLLO survived somehow.

That gut-punch of a final Apocalyptic Log wherein Ted Faro wipes out APOLLO and straight-up murders the Alphas was horrifying. Seriously, horrific stuff. The final act in a dying world, the very last thing humanity would ever do before the curtain closed on the Old Ones, was an act of brutality and murder. It's f*cking heartbreaking to think that that, of all things, was how the last light of mankind flickered out. And no justice would ever be had.

To discover that APOLLO survived in some form would be a small consolation, but a welcome one. There's something finale-ish about it. Like, I don't expect to see it in Horizon: Zero Dawn 2 or whatever, but when the time comes to end the series proper, I figure that the concept of APOLLO, the lost AI, has a profound finality to it.

"And then Aloy found APOLLO and restored the light of knowledge to the world," feels like an ending. I wouldn't be surprised if that's where the last installment, whenever that happens, goes.

But for now, we have the other AI, Sylens who reeks of Big Bad, and a mysterious pulse that I'm gonna say probably has nothing to do with Sylens. I'm actually kinda hoping for Ted Faro to be behind the pulse, having found some way to survive all of these centuries. But that's mainly because of wish fulfillment; after that final Apocalyptic Log, nothing would make me happier than Aloy getting to stab him right in his f*cking face.

edited 16th Nov '17 2:03:19 PM by TobiasDrake

The pulse that awakened HADES and freed the other A.I.s (is there a proper collective term for them?) happened nineteen or so years ago, and it's stated that CYAN only came under attack from HEPHAESTUS five or so years ago, I'm pretty sure.

I also like the angle that none of the Zero Dawn A.I.s are actually malevolent, strictly speaking. As you say, they each have a function to perform, and freed from GAIA's oversight, they continue to perform those functions but without regulation. Certainly HADES and HEPHAESTUS appear to behave malevolently, but only by default, at best it's more like Blue-and-Orange Morality. I'm not even certain that the Zero Dawn A.I.s have morality, I doubt that HADES and HEPHAESTUS see their actions as evil.

I would also like it if APOLLO survived. I'd have to check, but I think there's a pretty good chance he did. I don't recall if APOLLO himself was deleted or merely the archive he controlled.

As for other A.I.s, it's easy to guess from the main game and strongly suggested in The Frozen Wilds that an AI is behind the appearance of the metal flowers. GAIA would have been my guess for this if she wasn't dead, so the most likely candidate to my mind would be DEMETER, the AI responsible for reintroducing plant life to Earth.

( It doesn't discount anyone's points, but I think it's worth noting that HEPHAESTUS is only responsible for building the machines, the machines themselves are designed to fulfil various purposes that would be overseen by the other A.I.s).

I am deeply fascinated to find out where the signal came from though, because so far, unless I'm mistaken, nothing in the game's lore gives the slightest clue. Then again, the wiki has an entry for an AI called VAST SILVER that was active in 2044, built for 'climate intervention' but went rogue and was supposedly captured. Someone claiming to be VAST SILVER turned up on a message board twenty years later. Seems to be very little information about this AI though, so I can't imagine what's in it for him for interfere with Zero Dawn.

edited 16th Nov '17 4:42:21 PM by artfulscruff

DEMETER would be my guess as well, given the way flowers tend to grow around the Metal Flowers. After learning about the purpose of the Zero Dawn initiative, my first thought was of those Metal Flowers and I was all like, "Oh. F*ck. Maybe I shouldn't have been messing with those."

Those Control Towers in the Frozen Wilds bugged me at first, because they looked like the Metal Flowers only bigger and meaner. I thought maybe there'd be a connection. But it seems as though that was coincidental.

I think it's easy to forget or overlook, but the same triangular formation of flowers you find around metal flowers is also seen around Elisabet's body at the end of the game. Possibly not significant, but interesting nonetheless.

I always thought that was GAIA using the DEMETER subroutine... and the metal flowers are then a follow on from that. And now Demeter is loose, what will it do?

I mean we have one that builds the machines, one that has to co-opt the machines (HADES), so what will the others do, without any infrastructure or manufacturing capability?

Man, I am just ITCHING for a sequel for this now.

That's a good point, GAIA could have directed DEMETER or one of the other A.I.s to create the flowers. In fact, I'm choosing to believe that now, because my assumption was that the metal flowers only appeared after the Derangement, but there is no evidence for that at all, and given that the flower pattern also appears around Elisabet's body, which predates the Derangement. Additionally, DEMETER presumably has no mandate to create something like the metal flowers or to get HEPHAESTUS to do so, GAIA would likely have involved both of them in creating the 'groves'. It's also worth noting that the game indicates the subordinate A.I.s are not self-aware before receiving the transmission, and therefore presumably wouldn't think of creating something as, well, pointless as the metal flowers.

As for what they're up to without GAIA overseeing things, I think it's easy to speculate. Both HADES and HEPHAESTUS have simply carried on with their assigned tasks, presumably the others have carried on doing so as well, it's just that their task doesn't necessarily bring them into conflict with humanity. It's possible that they're not even active any more, for example, ELEUTHIA's task was to reintroduce humans to the world. and, well, the original point I was going to make was that there's now a self-sustaining human population and there's no more need for artificial gestation, but then I remembered it was specifically shown that ELEUTHIA turned loose the humans she raised because they no longer had the resources within the Cradle facility (or at least the one we see beneath Allmother Mountain) to look after the people there. Either way, her job is either no longer necessary or cannot be performed (with the exception of Aloy's birth, performed out of necessity). Possibly it's a similar case with the A.I.s responsible for plant life and animal life and so on.

Yo. I just got this game for Christmas while my PS 4 was stuck at college and I'm just now sitting down to play it. Does anyone have any suggestions for someone new starting out?

I mean, it doesn't look like a super complicated system, but I would love if there are any suggestions like 'X ability is useless and ignore it' or 'Go to this location early on and you'll get a cool armor set that will carry you to midgame' or things like that. Idk. I'm ready to dive in.

explosive trip wires are bae

Hey, got a question.

I got the definitive edition and I was told that I can redeem the related outfits/weapons by trading the purple tokens in my inventory. Went to the first merchant and traded them in for the respective boxes and all I got was... random resources. No weapons or outfits or anything. And I can't quite seem to find any information online as to what's going on. Did I do something wrong?

So there's specific trade boxes - what you got was the random resource boxes. There'll be a specific merchant and in one of the menus to the side they have the items to redeem. There's usually a guide of how to get the items. I think it's a specific merchant.

x4 Play the game on Hard difficulty and turn off all enemy info in the HUD options (HP bars, stealth and visibility indicators, damage numbers, etc). As for actual gear choices, I don't think there's anything that particularly stands out as being better than everything else. With outfits specifically, they each seem to be good at what they do, but it's one of my few criticisms of the game that it seems to want you to specialise your loadout for whatever you're going to encounter, but encounters are often with multiple enemy types with different strengths and weaknesses, and changing loadouts on the fly is not smooth. I would say try to find a balanced, flexible loadout, but even that's not easy, especially not early on when customisation options are limited.

I haven't finished yet, but I adore this game. I'm ashamed that I took 8 months to start playing it seriously.

Question: how does the Ropecaster work?

I haven't played this in awhile, and I'm researching Aloy's combat abilities and I was trying to figure out how, or if, in a desperate situation Aloy could use the Ropecaster as a tether. I'm trying to find a trope for that but all I could think of was Taking You with Me.

To be exact I thought of this - Aloy gets forced into retreat, but as she's doing so leaps off a cliff, spins around, and uses the ropecaster to ensnare her opponent by the leg - then drags them off the cliff with her, using them as a sort of counter-weight. I'm certain similar things done in other works, but it usually works with someone unwillingly stepping onto a nearby rope that's weighed down by something or someone. I thought Aloy might be able to do something similar.

Problem being the ropecaster doesn't work like that - it seems to be a giant harpoon gun.

So then I thought "ok" but then I looked at the gameplay of it. Aloy fires these giant harpoons into the machines but she never places any anchor point. It might just be for the sake of convenience, but the moment she fires the Ropecaster the thing/bolt/anchor just seems to rocket off of the machine and pin them to the ground. There doesn't seem to be any pre-placement involved.

So I'm assuming this is crazy sci-fi tech that can fire a harpoon then immediately fire another harpoon/anchor into the ground to restrain a giant, rampaging dinosaur robot. I'm also assuming that this is a video game and that having too pre-plan or place anchors down before harpooning the robot might be too complicated, visually and mechanically.

But I wanted to be sure that there wasn't a cleaner, in-game explanation for how the device works. I've been googling playthroughs but I can't seem to find the scene where she actually gets the Ropecaster.

EDIT: And correcting myself I finally found a video where I can see what's going on - it does fire twice, but the other video I watched it looked like she was just rapid-firing at the robot and restraining it.

Edited by Soble on Oct 6th 2019 at 6:16:02 AM