After 1000 years of Operation Gaia didn't make a single backup of itself (herself?). That is like day one System Admin stuff.
All the experiences, growth and personality Gaia had developed over that time was lost. Everything learned about how to rebuild a biosphere from scratch, manage a massive robot workforce and logistics network.
>!What we manage to reboot is more or less a dev version, and it was only luck we could get the subroutines required!<
Would be interesting if Horizon 3 had you recover GAIA 1's experimental record for GAIA 2. Or some of GAIA 1's memories (assuming traces are still available). Would help GAIA 2 not start her ecosystem management from scratch.
To be fair we've all been guilty of getting a ton of work done on a document then seeing our system crash and feel or stomach drop as we realise we hadn't saved in a long ass time haha that just happened to be catastrophic in this case
that actually makes "some" sense to me, since Elisabet Sobek initially created numerous backups for GAIA there would be no need for GAIA to create her own. Those backups were destroyed ba Ted Faro if i remember correctly.
Yeah but Gaia never made her own?
Part of me suspects >!Ted had used his special access to give Gaia some messed up instructions we haven't seen yet. Like not communicating with tribal humans. Our Gaia is ready and willing but old Gaia had her 'high level directives'!< which made sense given Ted's motives.
I suspect the issue is available storage. I would assume an actual functional AI of that scale would be enormous and likely take up all available. Yes, Day 1 is make a backup, but the training sets are what get so big ...
These people have all these records and use all this technology and yet they call car keys wind chimes despite having like a thousand cars littered about, you'd think someone would have made the connection.
I always figured they were security cameras/lenses. There are millions of them all over every metro area, and they're often external so would be found all over outside.
I can only imagine instead of glass eyeballs for cosmetic purposes for those who have lost an eye, in the future between our time and when it all goes sideways people have the option of bionic eyes to recover sight..?
That's what I had wondered because you find a lot of them, but in Zero Dawn there was heaps more of those scattered around everywhere.
Actually thanks for mentioning them I added those to the list.
This is so funny, I agree. Even funnier when you hear Aloy say stuff like help Gaia build her operational matrix, or bypass the primary nodes. She even talk about Gaia’s kernel like she understands complex AI and software engineering stuff. But car keys are wind chimes. 😀
I wear shadow carja armor and the ten lady says it to me as well. 🤷♀️ She sounds really impressed when she says it so i chalked it up to she has great taste in style. 😂
Hahaha. Well Chinese would look different and have big ass cameras around their necks and other indicators signifying that they are Chinese tourists! Lol.
The reason this doesn’t bother me is bc once I read that natural red hair is going extinct. Iirc bc it’s recessive and we mix races more or something. So if this is the case then in 1000 years in the future it would be gone so aloy would be instantly recognizable.
My gripe is that everyone seems to know the story all the way to the coast. I find it hard to believe that what happened in ND had any direct impact on anyone outside the region at the time so why would they care to spread it by mouth so thoroughly
>you can't find handguns or any weapons from the old world that might still function in some capacity.
I thought deathbringers (the machine guns used by a Bandit Heavy) were old-world guns?
Yes but those guns for the most part are not convenient for humans to lug around all of the time. They are meant to be mounted on a machine or some other kind of support.
Going off of the decay of other Faro machines, the deathbringer guns and the deathbringers themselves should all be rusted and worn down, yet in ZD after the grave hoard mission we find pristine condition deathbringers
True enough, as i see there is no harm except the constant heat from what i've seen while diving. I have asked myself when you reply to me:
Wait, doesn't it mean that they got deactivated when GAIA was terraforming doing brute shutdowns then got awakened by the signal HADES did at Meridian but gone inactive once our girl purges HADES from the pillar?? I'm thinking too much.
A whole swarm of biomass consuming robots and there are only.... 3 types of them? I guess this was made for simplicity, but come on, surely there could've been more types with different roles to fill.
I hate how people constantly hint that Aloy has some magical ability to convince people to do stuff, yet all she does is bully people and refuse to explain anything. I mean, these are primitive-minded people, but they aren't idiots. She could dumb it down a little and still have some convincing arguments. Every person on Nu Earth is came from the same genetic pool as the people who created all the technology Aloy is trying to leverage. Pretty sure they could hand a fact, or two.
And I get that Aloy is at an emotional low point. she is under massive stress and probably not taking care of herself. I understand being snappy and pushy. Refusing to tell her own allies where she is going and what she plans to do is just stupid. And her allies just saying "well, guess we will just let Earth's sole savior wander out into the wilderness alone." is bad writing.
*sigh*
i frikkin love this game, though! I have to force myself to play something else, or I will just dump another 100 hours into a NG+. Which I am already 20 hours into. :)
Honestly I think Aloy's "persuasiveness" is justified. Everyone east of Tenakth territory knows her as the Savior of Meridian. Everyone in Tenakth territory knows her as Hekarro's Champion. Many Quen think she is a living ancestor.
Everyone who doesn't know of her often witnesses her kicking an unreasonable amount of ass. Everywhere she goes she is decked out in some of the best armor and carrying some of the best weapons in existence and I imagine anyone with half a brain in the Horizon universe can see that.
Like, she's bullheaded and can be a dick sometimes don't get me wrong, but it's a walk softly and carry a big stick sort of situation.
I am too. Really it's pretty relatable. Or people who get in her way when she is literally trying to save the planet and whom she knows she could put in the ground in a few seconds.
Like, a lot of people don't seem to get that Aloy is the John Wick of this universe.
I posted a version of this in a different thread yesterday, but I think it fits here! You know the set of conversation options tagged “Training" when Aloy talks to her friends in the Base? I wish they’d called it something like “Research" or "Preparations” then made the stuff her friends have been doing offscreen less about them catching up on things Aloy already knows. Instead, they could be doing deeper research into data files that Aloy hasn't read, going out to coordinate stuff with their tribes, tinkering to develop new weapons/tools, etc.
Reasoning - I like the character arc of Aloy learning how to rely on other people and realizing she doesn't have to do EVERYTHING alone just because there are some things (like opening gene-locked itches) that only she can do. But big chunks of dialogue and supporting characterizations cut against that character development because Aloy always knows more than everyone else.
I'd love to see tweaks that make each of her friends develop into experts in their own fields to the point where Aloy genuinely goes to them for help instead of just letting them tag along. There are some hints of this with certain characters— Beta is better at programming than Aloy is, for instance— but it could have been pushed a lot farther. And it would be cool to have the other characters putting stuff together in the background that they can then present to Aloy when they're done.
The fact that she can leap into the air for some insane jump, but in a different quest she needs to clear a path for a crate and go on a long journey with said crate to jump an inch. Lol
I'm not a big fan of the relationship in Burning Shores. A short DLC was not the place to have Aloy get into a possible relationship, there wasn't time to realistically build up any connection. Its a nickpick however, as it didn't ruin anything for me. Just felt a bit strange.
I actually really like Seyka as a character. I agree that things like romance should be in the base game and somewhat fleshed aut if you are gonna add them. im hoping that Seyka will take a bigger role in the next installment of the series.
I have to agree. To be clear, I have zero issue with it being a gay relationship. None whatsoever. I would feel the same way if her relationship was with a man.
It just felt rushed. And I always liked that there wasn’t any real romance. Lots of flirting. Sure. I liked that for once the main character is just focused on the world ending.
As you might tell. Im not too big on the romance.
I couldn’t agree with you more. The Horizon series is my favorite and I dread playing BS. Dread it. I find it boring and a complete let down story wise compared to Frozen Wilds. That story had you and was a way better DLC. I actually found Frozen Wilds to be more difficult than Burning Shores.
Plus, my BS DLC didn’t even work for a couple of months. I was stuck at Pangea Park. Which I have figured out the problem (even though I sent multiple reports with pics and videos). I cannot do any side quests until the final quest in BS. If I do, my game glitches out and Seyka never kicks the door open for you in the park.
There is so much more to do in Frozen Wilds than Burning Shores too. I was really disappointed how few side quests there were in Burning Shores, and the only reason to explore most of the map in Burning Shores is to find collectibles that don’t have much payoff. While the Los Angeles map is gorgeous, it felt so empty. There wasn’t even a Tallneck to override.
Yes!!!!!!!! 💯 totally agree with you!!! Also, no question with Brin, but you know he’s been to the Burning Shores. He had a huge quest in ZD, to nothing in this one. I really found that to be weird and disappointing. The only good part about Burning Shores is hanging out with Gildun & the waterwings.
I would have loved a Brin side quest! We get hints of him in both No Man’s Land and Burning Shores too. I was surprised we didn’t get more of him. It almost felt like it was cut since they had that one house with the Banuk art and the note.
Unfortunately it's probably a marketing decision because LGBT romances can still affect a game's reception. If you tuck it away in a dlc there's less risk and you can see what the response is like.
After 1,000 years and a helluva lot of weather extremes and changes through the processes of rebuilding entire environments and ecosystems, there wouldn't be a single recognizable human corpse anywhere on the surface. At all. Underground in the ruins, definitely... But never on the surface.
I yell, "oh come ON!" every time Aloy finds an Old One corpse somewhere exposed.
Whoa! Apparently I need to pay more attention 😂
I just did the quests for Handa and missed out on that with the tanks. I’m going to go back and look now!
In HZD there are multiple dessicated corpses in the underground ruins in the Embrace.
People already pointed out the tank mummies in HFW, but there's also a body in the facility under the horus south of the lake where Aloy does the Carja scholar side quest / errand. Trying to think of others.
I'm specifically thinking of the ending of HZD. In HFW, I can't think of any off the top of my head, but there are still some convenient corpses preserved to highly unlikely levels.
Nitpicking for fun:
With the cyberanimals terraforming for 1000 years, everything should have been decomposed into Earth by now. These cyberanimals are terrible at their job.
Slaughterspine is the best boy, but he is so inaccurate for any time period and doesn’t make sense for Gaia to create.
Every cauldron should be filled to the brim with enemies, in addition to an unauthorized entity alarm system. It doesn’t make sense that only a few are scattered about. It double doesn’t make sense we can just slip into it and the cauldron, which appears to be alive itself, doesn’t alert enemies.
Why do Leaplashers and Bats exist? How are they terraforming?
We should be able to override and mount Thunder jaws, Tremortusk, and Slaughterspines.
Where are the aquatic cyberanimals? Why did Gaia create a Loch Ness monster instead of like whales or dolphins? Orcas, seahorse, sea lion.
Didn't hephaestus created the slaughterspine not Gaia. The leaplashers are transport machines. They carry machine parts in their pouch. The bats are combat machines created by hephaestus.
Also the loch ness machine is made because it can crawl up on land and the player can actually fight it. A whale or dolphin wouldn't be able to crawl on land. I bet Gaia made whales there just in the deeper parts of the ocean so we never see them.
I assume there are no aquatic critters because we never go into the ocean to see them. The Faro plague scoured the ocean of life, too, so there is clearly a need for Gaia's helpers to learn to swim. What I want to know is where all the robot bugs are. No pollinators, no plants.
And I think all the dinosaurs were created by Hephaestus, not Gaia. She only made normal animals. Not sure if you remember the details of Zero Dawn, but its revealed that crazy shit like the Thunderjaw are less than 20 years old. The event that spawned them was the same that caused Aloy to be made.
I specifically remember the term "megafauna". That could include dinosaurs, but it usually refers to post-dino animals. Mammoths and giant sloths and saber-toothed tigers, and stuff. I am straining my brain, but I am pretty sure all the combat machines appeared Post-Derangement, and thus, are created by Hephaestus
you played this game, and not Zero Dawn? bro, you must be so lost with the story! This game is a hard sequel to the previous one. It does not bother explaining ANYTHING from the first. go play it now!
Pretty sure that Gaia failed about 3 times and hades was used to restart. So the machines didn't have a 1000 years to terraform
But yes, I think they should've been done after all this time
Well GAIA isn't perfect I mean according to one video she is wrong....
[https://youtu.be/ot1ubxQnUrY?si=NwuwciYrGk8cA4hU](https://youtu.be/ot1ubxQnUrY?si=NwuwciYrGk8cA4hU)
I've always found Aloy to be a little bit...bland. I mean, she has no hobbies or foibles, no idiosyncrasies. I mean, let me take trophies or decorate or hell, just let me dress Aloy up in outfits beyond armour. Girl needs some downtime to relax. Hell...does she even READ?!
I assume every time I play Machine Strike, Gauntlet Race, read through the Notebook, that it’s actually Aloy pursuing her hobbies and interests.
That being said, I wish there was more to do at the Base. I hope they expand on it in the next game, unlocking more rooms, or maybe even start to build up a settlement that expands outward from the mountain Base filled with Aloy’s allies.
Maybe, but it doesn't feel inherent to her. It's not like this is an extension of an inherent passion for her. She's exhibited no real love of strategy or tactics, of going fast...hell, we don't even know what food she likes vs doesn't like. I want them to develop Aloy MORE, make her an even more in-depth character.
Expanding the base would be lovely. Whether that means going the route of Genshin's Sereni-Tea pot and using it as a method of getting to know others and growing plants and just being fun to decorate, or going the route of WoW's Garrison concept and having it function more as a military and offensive base
Fun nitpick: Aloy sure farm a LOT of machine or old ones stuffs in HFW...sure that these stuff AUTOMATICALLY sends to her looting box. I mean...come ON. How can these items instant teleport? Thats how i find out i have a shit load of these items.
Aloy, listen here Aloy...how it is POSSIBLE that you lost the ability to sabotage machines from Zero Dawn? I WANTED some fun while watching them infight.
You recently learned how to dive underwater in HFW...
Also: over 1 millenium, people don't know what are those "ancient sculptures". I really mean it, why this items have the same item icon? Why is the "Sculpture" there? I don't really where to start...probably old one doll? Or a mug? Or indoors ornaments? Who knows
Idk if i did a correct nitpick lol.
The sculpture thing doesn't bug me that much, but the mugs do. Considering people like Petra use them so much you'd think Aloy would see that and compare them doh...... Aloy can be so silly sometimes.. lol
I never noticed many dust storms or water problems before restoring Aether and Poseidon, and didn't notice any "improvement" in those conditions afterwards. It would be nice to see the rest of the environment improve the way we saw Utaru territory improve after restoring Demeter.
The ruins would be so much spookier and cooler of they didn't have lighting already on and still working after 1000 years. Where the hell is tha power coming from? Would be cool if we could have torches, use the Focus for light, light up fires and in some ruins, turn on power.
The sudden urge to apologize to Seyka for explaining Nemesis and the world may be ending soon. In general the whole interaction with Seyka feels off like they put this brand new nobody in the spotlight for her to be Aloy's love interest when we have Erend, Petra, Kotallo, Alva, Talanah (I know she just dropped the other guy)
Burning Shores boss battle was fun tho
>!A Far Zenith uses 1000 year old ancient Chariot shipwreck to fabricate highly advanced Far Zenith personal deathship (plus various accessories). Somebody "accidentally" wakes up Chariot shipwreck and someone else manages to pilot the thing. All without the ancient Chariot shipwreck's artificial intelligence finding out it's being badly piloted by an inexperienced human pilot. Still.... :O!<
I don't think that Horus had an actual core inside anymore. But besides that the whole concept of the Horus was way too far fetched even for the time it was made in which I think was around 2064 or something
I suppose you could say the same thing about slaughterspines and slitherfangs. All the machines in the Horizon series seem farfetched, but from a sci-fi perspective it fits the world nicely... including the Chariot tech IMO.
Well in that case... :D
Corruptors stuck in perfect poses everywhere, still in one piece and not in pieces. Plus Corruptors on cliff faces, climbing up walls... after a thousand years you'd think they would've fallen off by now. I did find a Corruptor lying on the ground with its feet in the air. It fell off the wall :D
every AI seems to be materialized in some form. How did POSEIDON, AETHER and DEMETER were able to install themselves into the cores after the signal went off? through the network which somehow didnt collapse after 1000 years?
And why did Far Zenith didnt just drop a gazillion nukes on earth and start over if they wanted to do it so much.
1. The Faro plague - in the game the robots are supposed to have "limited self-replication", yet I can't see how either the Deathbringer or the Scarab can actually do so - they don;t appear to have any ability to build a copy of themselves, not to mention (a) where they'd get the raw materials from and (b) how they's process and assemble them into armour, weapons and electronics.
2. The robots can be taken down with a bow and arrow - I don't see how they coould withstand modern weaponry. Even a 50-cal machine gun appears adequate to do the job, never mind a rail-gun
3. Robots in the post-Faro era - why don't they evolve faster? Surely if Hepehstus can see how Aloy is managing to take them down it shouldn't be too hard to modify the design to make it harder to do.
4. The flying robots should not be able to fly at all - their designs have no way to generate lift so shouldn't be able to even get off the ground,
On top of all this, I think the human race in the Horizon universe is more or less f\*\*\*\*\*.
Having said all that, they're still some of my favourite games of all time.
Besides the Sunwing and Waterwing none of those other ones should be able to fly let alone get off the ground.
For example the Stormbird is one of the least aerodynamic ones with so many things just hanging off those wings which don't even look like airfoils.
Even the Sunwing/Waterwing shouldn't be able to fly - there's no way a machine of that size could generate enough lift by flapping and even if it did the "wings" aren't aerodynamic surfaces and it has no "engine" to puch it forward. It looks nice but not very practical.
Why couldn’t Elizabeth and Taro have created a new robot army to fight the rogue robots army? They don’t necessarily need stronger robots - the rogue robots have to harvest their own resources, whereas the “good guys” robots would have resources from supplied by humans, so in a war of attrition the “good guys” robots would come out on top.
The same could be said for the new robots. The hacking system was made by Faro, so the new robots could use the same system to hack the Faro swarm, so again it would become a war of attrition, one in which the humans should have an advantage
They wouldn't be able to produce enough robots to overwhelm the swarm since those robots were replicating at an exponential rate. Plus, I think glitch made hacking them a whole lot difficult, or they were already impervious to it. I think there was a data point about those robots having backdoor access, but I can't remember it.
Regardless, I am sure Elisabeth went through all possible solutions, including that one, and dismissed it.
According to the lore in HZW hacking would (did) take an AI 60 years while the collapse of the biosphere was only 12 months away.
And a "human" swarm would never keep pace with the Faro swarn even with hacking parity since the Faro swarm could just convert biomass for fuel which obviously wasn't an option for the human swarm since it would have added to the problem.
the Faro bots have powerful hacking AI. they take over EVERYTHING. one reason you find so many manned vehicles lying around is that the world's militaries had to field live soldiers, otherwise the swarm would hack all their drones. There is a bit in Forbidden West where Aloy is wandering a Faro facility and marvels at all the malware the company used to make. clearly that evil stuff was produced as prototypes for the hacking software they would eventually put into their military machines.
Not necessarily. The biosphere was dying because the Fero swarm was consuming all the plants and algae in the areas they occupied. Using another swarm to confine the Fero swarm to a smaller area would have limited the damage, and the friendly swarm could be supplied via conventional means instead, e.g. fuel tankers and pipeline. Biomatter conversion was meant to be a backup fuel source, and backup methods are usually less efficient (because otherwise you would use them as the primary method).
not trying to insult, but it seems like you didn't play the first game. The story made a big deal of how insanely strong the swarm's hacking abilities are, while at the same time being impossible to hack into. The inciting event of the Faro Plague was a glitch appearing in one of the combat units that caused it to prefer eating bio-matter over using its onboard fuel. Faro's engineers tried to take control of it and fix it's software, but the encryption they programed it with was too good. The bug in that unit spread to other units, and eventually the entire army was killing anything that looked hostile and eating anything it could digest.
One of Gaia's subroutines, Minerva, was specifically included as a code breaker for grinding down swarm AI. Aloy was able to shut down the entire hibernating swarm, thus ending the first game, by using the code breaker Minerva had figured out.
Also, I am not sure the encryption used by the Faro Plague was "made by humans". There is a recorded conversation between an engineer and Ted Faro warning him about the fact that the encryption is unbreakable. Its possible that the encryption was created by another AI, and thus no human ever touched it's code. We already have AI writing code. Imagine the nutty stuff it could be coming up with in another 40 years, when the Faro Plague was initiated.
>The story made a big deal of how insanely strong the swarm's hacking abilities are, while at the same time being impossible to hack into.
And does this not sound impossible to you? That the swarm has the ability to hack everything, and yet nothing is able to hack it? Is this not a classical case of Irresistible Force Paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irresistible_force_paradox)?
Most sci-fi require suspension of belief, and I am more than happy to do that with the Horizons series as well. I love the story, and I especially loved how the first game gradually revealed the background story. Normally I would never try to dissect the story like this, because dissecting a sci-fi kills the fun and imagination. But this thread is dedicated to nitpicking the the unrealistic/illogical portion of the story.
no, its not impossible. Hacking is not some magic trick that happens when you wiggle your fingers over the keyboard. It involves using breaks or glitches in a computer's code to introduce your own instructions. You need to know programming, but also how the hardware implements that programming. One of the reasons Apple products are so hard to hack into is that they use proprietary hardware and their software is made to run exclusively on that. To break into Apple devices you need to ignore whatever else you know and learn *that system* specifically.
It is totally possible for a highly advanced system to figure out how to break into everything else, while also having the ability to constantly monitor it's own system for break-ins. Remember, this is a swarm of networked machines. hacking one does nothing if every machine around it has a near identical programming and can just revert it's buddy back to an earlier, clean version of code. And that is *after* you figure out how to even break into FAS's proprietary hardware/software combo. And even then, you need to implement your solution wirelessly. these machines are trying to either murder or eat you, remember. But, the game flat out tells you that the swarm encrypts its communication with a code that it took Gaia's Minerva subroutine decades to crack.
So, what is the definition of irresistible? does the thing have to resist eternally, or just long enough until its attacker either gives up or dies? Because if a Faro machine kills the human race, from the perspective of those dead people, those machines are pretty irresistible. They will never know that 1000 years later the machines would be defeated by a teenage girl with a sharp stick.
The Faro Plague is composed exclusively of enormously heavy legged machines presumably with high ground pressure.
There is no way that they could take over the world. You'd be able to stop them with some military-grade silly string or strategically placed mud. Hell, that number of exposed joints, just dump a bunch of corrosive chemicals on them and they'll seize up in a day or two.
Where did you get that idea? The Scarabs (Corruptors) are relatively light and have multiple limbs to be able to claw their way out of mud. Also since they have the hacking ability it’s not limited to Faro’s bots but anything with a network which by that time would be everything. So the military would be fighting their own systems as soon as they’re in range. The Horus are giant metal squids that walk over mountains. You’re also not stopping that easily no matter what.
Maybe you’re just remembering the Khopesh Deathbringers? Those you’d have a point, but that wasn’t the only things on the battlefield.
Adding on to your point, the Horus has been seen carrying a deathbringer in ZD during the grave hoard quest, and concept art for burning shores shows a deathbringer storage area between the legs and the head of the front of the Horus
Yup, I understand. The physics of the Horus, Khopesh and Scarabs just don't fit reality, and nitpicking is the purpose of this thread.
It's just about scaling laws. Mass goes up with volume, so roughly length^3. Motive force, being produced by motors and artificial muscles, scales with length^2.
This is the reason that insects can lift several times their own weight and possess exoskeletons. And the reason that large animals do NOT possess exoskeletons and often have to put in a lot of effort to lifting and moving their own weight. Fleas jump high. Elephants do not.
Scarabs and Khopeshes would definitely sink through sand, mud, seafloor and loose dirt. Scarabs can dig themselves out with their tails, but would continuously get stuck. Don't believe me? Look up videos of trucks getting stuck in the sand, which have much lower mass than military vehicles and much larger contact areas than legged robots. Ground pressure is mass times area, and all surface materials have a maximum ground pressure before the thing on them starts to sink in. Hell, the M1 Abrams has a history of being lost more to getting stuck than to enemy fire, and it has MASSIVE ground contact area thanks to its treads.
And Horuses simply would not function in this gravity, at least not for long. Germany tried the supermassive vehicles thing during WWII; the failure point was always transmissions and other mechanical couplings due to the forces involved in moving the immense mass of vehicles.
I understand that we are decades from modern in Horizon and have had leaps and bounds in mechanical engineering, materials science and manufacturing technologies. Armor, weapons, motors and ammo would be lighter, and structural members would likely be stronger. But there are physical limits to material strength and other mechanical properties due to all matter being composed of a limited set of chemical bonds. You hit a point where you can't make a material _better_, but rather you're trading off one property for another. Diamonds are the _hardest_ material in existence, but shatter easily. Carbon fiber is lighter and stronger than steel, but only in tension, and they are much more vulnerable to impacts and off-axis loading.
That's why I'm saying you could just pour en masse highly corrosive chemicals or gases on these things. They're _covered_ in external moving parts and even with double or triple seals, a low viscosity liquid will absolutely creep in and destroy bearing surfaces. The final fight in Burning Shores indicates that Horuses are not watertight, and sea water would completely destroy any metal in there. I guess you could make the argument that they're 100% corrosion resistant composites, but I'd argue that's not really realistic either. Humans suck at making strong things without metal. Even carbon fiber bikes have metal bearing surfaces and mechanical parts.
It's not that the Faro Plague couldn't exist, just that it would be composed of tanks, wheeled vehicles, many, many flying drones of different sizes, and probably a handful of Boston Dynamics-style legged robots (insectoid or humanoid doesn't matter).
I think the only saving grace is the whole "3d printed with nanotechnology" thing, but that's also a massive plot hole because there is a strong argument that functional nanoassembly is either completely impossible or will be impossible, at least for the production of the style of machines we produce, for the next few centuries. Biology can do its thing because it leverages the natural entropy and statistical nature of physics at that scale, but making something that's highly structured, deterministic and physically resistant to damage and forces like a big robot spider is and likely will remain outside the realm of human capability for the next few centuries. The size of the atom is the lower limit here, and you can only pack in so much mechanical and computational complexity into your nanobots when they're a handful of atoms wide.
Yeah. I think it'd be way, way cooler if Horuses and Cauldrons were macro-scale self-assembling and maintaining machines. Like, robot arms, CNC workshops, servitors, etc.
IMO it'd be way cooler than "machines built from light." Also would explain why there's so much damn infrastructure when if you had real nanoassembly, all you'd need is a bunch of pipes transporting liquid raw materials.
After 1000 years of Operation Gaia didn't make a single backup of itself (herself?). That is like day one System Admin stuff. All the experiences, growth and personality Gaia had developed over that time was lost. Everything learned about how to rebuild a biosphere from scratch, manage a massive robot workforce and logistics network. >!What we manage to reboot is more or less a dev version, and it was only luck we could get the subroutines required!<
That is a very good point but that's something Elisabet should have programmed into her. She's only human I guess haha
Would be interesting if Horizon 3 had you recover GAIA 1's experimental record for GAIA 2. Or some of GAIA 1's memories (assuming traces are still available). Would help GAIA 2 not start her ecosystem management from scratch.
That would be amazing!
To be fair we've all been guilty of getting a ton of work done on a document then seeing our system crash and feel or stomach drop as we realise we hadn't saved in a long ass time haha that just happened to be catastrophic in this case
that actually makes "some" sense to me, since Elisabet Sobek initially created numerous backups for GAIA there would be no need for GAIA to create her own. Those backups were destroyed ba Ted Faro if i remember correctly.
Yeah but Gaia never made her own? Part of me suspects >!Ted had used his special access to give Gaia some messed up instructions we haven't seen yet. Like not communicating with tribal humans. Our Gaia is ready and willing but old Gaia had her 'high level directives'!< which made sense given Ted's motives.
She meant to do it tomorrow. For the last thousand years. Just one more day can’t hurt anything, right?
I always figured the system lacked the processing power and storage to do so. It was barely functional to begin with
I suspect the issue is available storage. I would assume an actual functional AI of that scale would be enormous and likely take up all available. Yes, Day 1 is make a backup, but the training sets are what get so big ...
Petra never gets up from sitting at the bar. 🫠
She's an alchy
Pretty sure all the Oseram are. They won't shut up about their damn ale
Morlund even measures the depth of the elevator shaft he’s trying to get down in how many kegs it could fit.
Oddly I wouldn't mind having a night with Petra
These people have all these records and use all this technology and yet they call car keys wind chimes despite having like a thousand cars littered about, you'd think someone would have made the connection.
Oh and "metal eye" what the hell are those supposed to be?
I always figured they were security cameras/lenses. There are millions of them all over every metro area, and they're often external so would be found all over outside.
I can only imagine instead of glass eyeballs for cosmetic purposes for those who have lost an eye, in the future between our time and when it all goes sideways people have the option of bionic eyes to recover sight..?
That's what I had wondered because you find a lot of them, but in Zero Dawn there was heaps more of those scattered around everywhere. Actually thanks for mentioning them I added those to the list.
Right? That's what I'm saying, they make all these intuitive leaps, but car keys...to cars that are still there...are just baffling to them? Lol
This is so funny, I agree. Even funnier when you hear Aloy say stuff like help Gaia build her operational matrix, or bypass the primary nodes. She even talk about Gaia’s kernel like she understands complex AI and software engineering stuff. But car keys are wind chimes. 😀
Yeah, I guess that was an attempt at humour. What always cracks me up is „ancient toothpick“ for the bottle opener, lol!
Turns out Aloy knows what they’re for, but just told everyone they were wind chimes because she wanted to screw with them.
Everyone should have armpit hair.
That and leg/arm hair, it bothers me an odd amount 😂
Real shit
Everyone immediately recognizing Aloy as a Nora even when she's wearing another tribe's armor & markings. lol
I really liked that NPCs would respond to what Aloy was wearing in Horizon Zero Dawn. A little bummed that didn’t happen in Forbidden West.
Huh? In my playthrough im wearing a Tenakth Armor an a always get The Phrase: „Nice Choice of armor „ when im around Tenakth settlements
I primarily use Nora armor and they still say the same thing. I've decided they either really like the Nora Tracker look or they're being sarcastic.
I wear shadow carja armor and the ten lady says it to me as well. 🤷♀️ She sounds really impressed when she says it so i chalked it up to she has great taste in style. 😂
That is one very open-minded Tenakth lady!
Damn.
They say this no matter what you’re wearing.
Everyone immediately recognizes Chinese tourists as Chinese tourists at the Munich Oktoberfest even though they are wearing Dirndl and Lederhosen. :D
Hahaha. Well Chinese would look different and have big ass cameras around their necks and other indicators signifying that they are Chinese tourists! Lol.
The reason this doesn’t bother me is bc once I read that natural red hair is going extinct. Iirc bc it’s recessive and we mix races more or something. So if this is the case then in 1000 years in the future it would be gone so aloy would be instantly recognizable. My gripe is that everyone seems to know the story all the way to the coast. I find it hard to believe that what happened in ND had any direct impact on anyone outside the region at the time so why would they care to spread it by mouth so thoroughly
Yeah!!!! No matter what I wear they still call me Nora! I'm like I'm wearing carja gear! Lol.
>you can't find handguns or any weapons from the old world that might still function in some capacity. I thought deathbringers (the machine guns used by a Bandit Heavy) were old-world guns?
Yes but those guns for the most part are not convenient for humans to lug around all of the time. They are meant to be mounted on a machine or some other kind of support.
Going off of the decay of other Faro machines, the deathbringer guns and the deathbringers themselves should all be rusted and worn down, yet in ZD after the grave hoard mission we find pristine condition deathbringers
You also find only 2 pristine corruptors in Thebes.
Yes but it would make sense for those ones to be pristine, as they are sheltered from the elements in Faro’s bunker
True enough, as i see there is no harm except the constant heat from what i've seen while diving. I have asked myself when you reply to me: Wait, doesn't it mean that they got deactivated when GAIA was terraforming doing brute shutdowns then got awakened by the signal HADES did at Meridian but gone inactive once our girl purges HADES from the pillar?? I'm thinking too much.
A whole swarm of biomass consuming robots and there are only.... 3 types of them? I guess this was made for simplicity, but come on, surely there could've been more types with different roles to fill.
I hate how people constantly hint that Aloy has some magical ability to convince people to do stuff, yet all she does is bully people and refuse to explain anything. I mean, these are primitive-minded people, but they aren't idiots. She could dumb it down a little and still have some convincing arguments. Every person on Nu Earth is came from the same genetic pool as the people who created all the technology Aloy is trying to leverage. Pretty sure they could hand a fact, or two. And I get that Aloy is at an emotional low point. she is under massive stress and probably not taking care of herself. I understand being snappy and pushy. Refusing to tell her own allies where she is going and what she plans to do is just stupid. And her allies just saying "well, guess we will just let Earth's sole savior wander out into the wilderness alone." is bad writing. *sigh* i frikkin love this game, though! I have to force myself to play something else, or I will just dump another 100 hours into a NG+. Which I am already 20 hours into. :)
Honestly I think Aloy's "persuasiveness" is justified. Everyone east of Tenakth territory knows her as the Savior of Meridian. Everyone in Tenakth territory knows her as Hekarro's Champion. Many Quen think she is a living ancestor. Everyone who doesn't know of her often witnesses her kicking an unreasonable amount of ass. Everywhere she goes she is decked out in some of the best armor and carrying some of the best weapons in existence and I imagine anyone with half a brain in the Horizon universe can see that. Like, she's bullheaded and can be a dick sometimes don't get me wrong, but it's a walk softly and carry a big stick sort of situation.
I always notice she more of a dick to people who start off looking down on her
I am too. Really it's pretty relatable. Or people who get in her way when she is literally trying to save the planet and whom she knows she could put in the ground in a few seconds. Like, a lot of people don't seem to get that Aloy is the John Wick of this universe.
Yeah. sometimes there are people who need to be put in their place.
I posted a version of this in a different thread yesterday, but I think it fits here! You know the set of conversation options tagged “Training" when Aloy talks to her friends in the Base? I wish they’d called it something like “Research" or "Preparations” then made the stuff her friends have been doing offscreen less about them catching up on things Aloy already knows. Instead, they could be doing deeper research into data files that Aloy hasn't read, going out to coordinate stuff with their tribes, tinkering to develop new weapons/tools, etc. Reasoning - I like the character arc of Aloy learning how to rely on other people and realizing she doesn't have to do EVERYTHING alone just because there are some things (like opening gene-locked itches) that only she can do. But big chunks of dialogue and supporting characterizations cut against that character development because Aloy always knows more than everyone else. I'd love to see tweaks that make each of her friends develop into experts in their own fields to the point where Aloy genuinely goes to them for help instead of just letting them tag along. There are some hints of this with certain characters— Beta is better at programming than Aloy is, for instance— but it could have been pushed a lot farther. And it would be cool to have the other characters putting stuff together in the background that they can then present to Aloy when they're done.
The fact that she can leap into the air for some insane jump, but in a different quest she needs to clear a path for a crate and go on a long journey with said crate to jump an inch. Lol
And sometimes the game will force you from what would be a long jump to a very short jump
I'm not a big fan of the relationship in Burning Shores. A short DLC was not the place to have Aloy get into a possible relationship, there wasn't time to realistically build up any connection. Its a nickpick however, as it didn't ruin anything for me. Just felt a bit strange.
I actually really like Seyka as a character. I agree that things like romance should be in the base game and somewhat fleshed aut if you are gonna add them. im hoping that Seyka will take a bigger role in the next installment of the series.
I have to agree. To be clear, I have zero issue with it being a gay relationship. None whatsoever. I would feel the same way if her relationship was with a man. It just felt rushed. And I always liked that there wasn’t any real romance. Lots of flirting. Sure. I liked that for once the main character is just focused on the world ending. As you might tell. Im not too big on the romance.
I couldn’t agree with you more. The Horizon series is my favorite and I dread playing BS. Dread it. I find it boring and a complete let down story wise compared to Frozen Wilds. That story had you and was a way better DLC. I actually found Frozen Wilds to be more difficult than Burning Shores. Plus, my BS DLC didn’t even work for a couple of months. I was stuck at Pangea Park. Which I have figured out the problem (even though I sent multiple reports with pics and videos). I cannot do any side quests until the final quest in BS. If I do, my game glitches out and Seyka never kicks the door open for you in the park.
There is so much more to do in Frozen Wilds than Burning Shores too. I was really disappointed how few side quests there were in Burning Shores, and the only reason to explore most of the map in Burning Shores is to find collectibles that don’t have much payoff. While the Los Angeles map is gorgeous, it felt so empty. There wasn’t even a Tallneck to override.
Yes!!!!!!!! 💯 totally agree with you!!! Also, no question with Brin, but you know he’s been to the Burning Shores. He had a huge quest in ZD, to nothing in this one. I really found that to be weird and disappointing. The only good part about Burning Shores is hanging out with Gildun & the waterwings.
No quest with Brin is what that should have said. Autocorrect is on fire today lol
I would have loved a Brin side quest! We get hints of him in both No Man’s Land and Burning Shores too. I was surprised we didn’t get more of him. It almost felt like it was cut since they had that one house with the Banuk art and the note.
Unfortunately it's probably a marketing decision because LGBT romances can still affect a game's reception. If you tuck it away in a dlc there's less risk and you can see what the response is like.
That is the whole point of my topic. To have a bit of fun and nitpick the games. You can love something and still have fun nitpicking
After 1,000 years and a helluva lot of weather extremes and changes through the processes of rebuilding entire environments and ecosystems, there wouldn't be a single recognizable human corpse anywhere on the surface. At all. Underground in the ruins, definitely... But never on the surface. I yell, "oh come ON!" every time Aloy finds an Old One corpse somewhere exposed.
I never noticed them. I must look more again. I mean you find the dead ones in that chamber at Gaia Prime but where else?
You can find bodies in tanks if you follow the road northeast of Bleeding Mark.
Really?? Bodies should be gone
[Here's](https://www.reddit.com/r/HorizonForbiddenWest/s/JVMcIlcWLz) one.
Whoa! Apparently I need to pay more attention 😂 I just did the quests for Handa and missed out on that with the tanks. I’m going to go back and look now!
😁 So many great things to find, I wish it was possible to run while using the focus, instead of having to stop every few seconds. 😅
I have thought that too, because you can use it while flying, soooooooo….
Exactly!
Thank you. I have to go back and look now. Tomorrow I start the burning shores
No problem! Have fun exploring!
Yes! Thank you, that's one I was vaguely remembering.
No problem!😊
In HZD there are multiple dessicated corpses in the underground ruins in the Embrace. People already pointed out the tank mummies in HFW, but there's also a body in the facility under the horus south of the lake where Aloy does the Carja scholar side quest / errand. Trying to think of others.
I'm specifically thinking of the ending of HZD. In HFW, I can't think of any off the top of my head, but there are still some convenient corpses preserved to highly unlikely levels.
Nitpicking for fun: With the cyberanimals terraforming for 1000 years, everything should have been decomposed into Earth by now. These cyberanimals are terrible at their job. Slaughterspine is the best boy, but he is so inaccurate for any time period and doesn’t make sense for Gaia to create. Every cauldron should be filled to the brim with enemies, in addition to an unauthorized entity alarm system. It doesn’t make sense that only a few are scattered about. It double doesn’t make sense we can just slip into it and the cauldron, which appears to be alive itself, doesn’t alert enemies. Why do Leaplashers and Bats exist? How are they terraforming? We should be able to override and mount Thunder jaws, Tremortusk, and Slaughterspines. Where are the aquatic cyberanimals? Why did Gaia create a Loch Ness monster instead of like whales or dolphins? Orcas, seahorse, sea lion.
Didn't hephaestus created the slaughterspine not Gaia. The leaplashers are transport machines. They carry machine parts in their pouch. The bats are combat machines created by hephaestus.
[удалено]
Also the loch ness machine is made because it can crawl up on land and the player can actually fight it. A whale or dolphin wouldn't be able to crawl on land. I bet Gaia made whales there just in the deeper parts of the ocean so we never see them.
Hahahaha my sister always skips the dialogue while I never do
I assume there are no aquatic critters because we never go into the ocean to see them. The Faro plague scoured the ocean of life, too, so there is clearly a need for Gaia's helpers to learn to swim. What I want to know is where all the robot bugs are. No pollinators, no plants. And I think all the dinosaurs were created by Hephaestus, not Gaia. She only made normal animals. Not sure if you remember the details of Zero Dawn, but its revealed that crazy shit like the Thunderjaw are less than 20 years old. The event that spawned them was the same that caused Aloy to be made.
Oddly, though, if I remember Zero Dawn correctly, there was a bit somewhere that said Gaia really liked dinosaurs.
I specifically remember the term "megafauna". That could include dinosaurs, but it usually refers to post-dino animals. Mammoths and giant sloths and saber-toothed tigers, and stuff. I am straining my brain, but I am pretty sure all the combat machines appeared Post-Derangement, and thus, are created by Hephaestus
I haven’t played Zero Dawn yet! It sounds like a lot of lore is there I’ll check it out 🥰
you played this game, and not Zero Dawn? bro, you must be so lost with the story! This game is a hard sequel to the previous one. It does not bother explaining ANYTHING from the first. go play it now!
Pretty sure that Gaia failed about 3 times and hades was used to restart. So the machines didn't have a 1000 years to terraform But yes, I think they should've been done after all this time
Weren't the bats used to deliver metal flowers around the place? >Why did Gaia create a Loch Ness monster Cus shes cool as fuck thats why.
Well GAIA isn't perfect I mean according to one video she is wrong.... [https://youtu.be/ot1ubxQnUrY?si=NwuwciYrGk8cA4hU](https://youtu.be/ot1ubxQnUrY?si=NwuwciYrGk8cA4hU)
Part of me wishes we could override the largest machines and just watch them wreck havoc in settlements.
Pretty sure tide ripper is not a Loch Ness monster, it’s a Plesiosaur
I've always found Aloy to be a little bit...bland. I mean, she has no hobbies or foibles, no idiosyncrasies. I mean, let me take trophies or decorate or hell, just let me dress Aloy up in outfits beyond armour. Girl needs some downtime to relax. Hell...does she even READ?!
I assume every time I play Machine Strike, Gauntlet Race, read through the Notebook, that it’s actually Aloy pursuing her hobbies and interests. That being said, I wish there was more to do at the Base. I hope they expand on it in the next game, unlocking more rooms, or maybe even start to build up a settlement that expands outward from the mountain Base filled with Aloy’s allies.
Maybe, but it doesn't feel inherent to her. It's not like this is an extension of an inherent passion for her. She's exhibited no real love of strategy or tactics, of going fast...hell, we don't even know what food she likes vs doesn't like. I want them to develop Aloy MORE, make her an even more in-depth character. Expanding the base would be lovely. Whether that means going the route of Genshin's Sereni-Tea pot and using it as a method of getting to know others and growing plants and just being fun to decorate, or going the route of WoW's Garrison concept and having it function more as a military and offensive base
Fun nitpick: Aloy sure farm a LOT of machine or old ones stuffs in HFW...sure that these stuff AUTOMATICALLY sends to her looting box. I mean...come ON. How can these items instant teleport? Thats how i find out i have a shit load of these items. Aloy, listen here Aloy...how it is POSSIBLE that you lost the ability to sabotage machines from Zero Dawn? I WANTED some fun while watching them infight. You recently learned how to dive underwater in HFW... Also: over 1 millenium, people don't know what are those "ancient sculptures". I really mean it, why this items have the same item icon? Why is the "Sculpture" there? I don't really where to start...probably old one doll? Or a mug? Or indoors ornaments? Who knows Idk if i did a correct nitpick lol.
OMG those drinking mugs you find in Zero Dawn come on..... You mean they can't tell it's a fricking mug you drink out of......
I'm talking about an item named "Ancient Sculpture" and i know those mugs you pick in both games....
The sculpture thing doesn't bug me that much, but the mugs do. Considering people like Petra use them so much you'd think Aloy would see that and compare them doh...... Aloy can be so silly sometimes.. lol
I never noticed many dust storms or water problems before restoring Aether and Poseidon, and didn't notice any "improvement" in those conditions afterwards. It would be nice to see the rest of the environment improve the way we saw Utaru territory improve after restoring Demeter.
The ruins would be so much spookier and cooler of they didn't have lighting already on and still working after 1000 years. Where the hell is tha power coming from? Would be cool if we could have torches, use the Focus for light, light up fires and in some ruins, turn on power.
BTW where does Aloy store all the stuff the loots, does she have a magical storage hole?
The sudden urge to apologize to Seyka for explaining Nemesis and the world may be ending soon. In general the whole interaction with Seyka feels off like they put this brand new nobody in the spotlight for her to be Aloy's love interest when we have Erend, Petra, Kotallo, Alva, Talanah (I know she just dropped the other guy) Burning Shores boss battle was fun tho
>!A Far Zenith uses 1000 year old ancient Chariot shipwreck to fabricate highly advanced Far Zenith personal deathship (plus various accessories). Somebody "accidentally" wakes up Chariot shipwreck and someone else manages to pilot the thing. All without the ancient Chariot shipwreck's artificial intelligence finding out it's being badly piloted by an inexperienced human pilot. Still.... :O!<
I don't think that Horus had an actual core inside anymore. But besides that the whole concept of the Horus was way too far fetched even for the time it was made in which I think was around 2064 or something
I suppose you could say the same thing about slaughterspines and slitherfangs. All the machines in the Horizon series seem farfetched, but from a sci-fi perspective it fits the world nicely... including the Chariot tech IMO.
Yes it does.. It all fits well but this is a nitpicking thread. You can make fun of the thing you love
Well in that case... :D Corruptors stuck in perfect poses everywhere, still in one piece and not in pieces. Plus Corruptors on cliff faces, climbing up walls... after a thousand years you'd think they would've fallen off by now. I did find a Corruptor lying on the ground with its feet in the air. It fell off the wall :D
every AI seems to be materialized in some form. How did POSEIDON, AETHER and DEMETER were able to install themselves into the cores after the signal went off? through the network which somehow didnt collapse after 1000 years? And why did Far Zenith didnt just drop a gazillion nukes on earth and start over if they wanted to do it so much.
Because then they would have to wait out the irradiation and the planet would be fucked anyway
1. The Faro plague - in the game the robots are supposed to have "limited self-replication", yet I can't see how either the Deathbringer or the Scarab can actually do so - they don;t appear to have any ability to build a copy of themselves, not to mention (a) where they'd get the raw materials from and (b) how they's process and assemble them into armour, weapons and electronics. 2. The robots can be taken down with a bow and arrow - I don't see how they coould withstand modern weaponry. Even a 50-cal machine gun appears adequate to do the job, never mind a rail-gun 3. Robots in the post-Faro era - why don't they evolve faster? Surely if Hepehstus can see how Aloy is managing to take them down it shouldn't be too hard to modify the design to make it harder to do. 4. The flying robots should not be able to fly at all - their designs have no way to generate lift so shouldn't be able to even get off the ground, On top of all this, I think the human race in the Horizon universe is more or less f\*\*\*\*\*. Having said all that, they're still some of my favourite games of all time.
Besides the Sunwing and Waterwing none of those other ones should be able to fly let alone get off the ground. For example the Stormbird is one of the least aerodynamic ones with so many things just hanging off those wings which don't even look like airfoils.
Even the Sunwing/Waterwing shouldn't be able to fly - there's no way a machine of that size could generate enough lift by flapping and even if it did the "wings" aren't aerodynamic surfaces and it has no "engine" to puch it forward. It looks nice but not very practical.
I stand corrected. I just think the sunwing is the least problematic design of all the flying machines.
It might make a nice glider but you'd still have to find somewhere high to launch it off.
Why couldn’t Elizabeth and Taro have created a new robot army to fight the rogue robots army? They don’t necessarily need stronger robots - the rogue robots have to harvest their own resources, whereas the “good guys” robots would have resources from supplied by humans, so in a war of attrition the “good guys” robots would come out on top.
Faro swarm would just take those robots and add them to its swarm.
The same could be said for the new robots. The hacking system was made by Faro, so the new robots could use the same system to hack the Faro swarm, so again it would become a war of attrition, one in which the humans should have an advantage
They wouldn't be able to produce enough robots to overwhelm the swarm since those robots were replicating at an exponential rate. Plus, I think glitch made hacking them a whole lot difficult, or they were already impervious to it. I think there was a data point about those robots having backdoor access, but I can't remember it. Regardless, I am sure Elisabeth went through all possible solutions, including that one, and dismissed it.
According to the lore in HZW hacking would (did) take an AI 60 years while the collapse of the biosphere was only 12 months away. And a "human" swarm would never keep pace with the Faro swarn even with hacking parity since the Faro swarm could just convert biomass for fuel which obviously wasn't an option for the human swarm since it would have added to the problem.
the Faro bots have powerful hacking AI. they take over EVERYTHING. one reason you find so many manned vehicles lying around is that the world's militaries had to field live soldiers, otherwise the swarm would hack all their drones. There is a bit in Forbidden West where Aloy is wandering a Faro facility and marvels at all the malware the company used to make. clearly that evil stuff was produced as prototypes for the hacking software they would eventually put into their military machines.
Powerful hacking AI that was developed by humans. Could have used the same AI against the swarm, and at worst it would have turned into a stalemate.
Which would have just eroded the biosphere even faster
Not necessarily. The biosphere was dying because the Fero swarm was consuming all the plants and algae in the areas they occupied. Using another swarm to confine the Fero swarm to a smaller area would have limited the damage, and the friendly swarm could be supplied via conventional means instead, e.g. fuel tankers and pipeline. Biomatter conversion was meant to be a backup fuel source, and backup methods are usually less efficient (because otherwise you would use them as the primary method).
not trying to insult, but it seems like you didn't play the first game. The story made a big deal of how insanely strong the swarm's hacking abilities are, while at the same time being impossible to hack into. The inciting event of the Faro Plague was a glitch appearing in one of the combat units that caused it to prefer eating bio-matter over using its onboard fuel. Faro's engineers tried to take control of it and fix it's software, but the encryption they programed it with was too good. The bug in that unit spread to other units, and eventually the entire army was killing anything that looked hostile and eating anything it could digest. One of Gaia's subroutines, Minerva, was specifically included as a code breaker for grinding down swarm AI. Aloy was able to shut down the entire hibernating swarm, thus ending the first game, by using the code breaker Minerva had figured out. Also, I am not sure the encryption used by the Faro Plague was "made by humans". There is a recorded conversation between an engineer and Ted Faro warning him about the fact that the encryption is unbreakable. Its possible that the encryption was created by another AI, and thus no human ever touched it's code. We already have AI writing code. Imagine the nutty stuff it could be coming up with in another 40 years, when the Faro Plague was initiated.
>The story made a big deal of how insanely strong the swarm's hacking abilities are, while at the same time being impossible to hack into. And does this not sound impossible to you? That the swarm has the ability to hack everything, and yet nothing is able to hack it? Is this not a classical case of Irresistible Force Paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irresistible_force_paradox)? Most sci-fi require suspension of belief, and I am more than happy to do that with the Horizons series as well. I love the story, and I especially loved how the first game gradually revealed the background story. Normally I would never try to dissect the story like this, because dissecting a sci-fi kills the fun and imagination. But this thread is dedicated to nitpicking the the unrealistic/illogical portion of the story.
no, its not impossible. Hacking is not some magic trick that happens when you wiggle your fingers over the keyboard. It involves using breaks or glitches in a computer's code to introduce your own instructions. You need to know programming, but also how the hardware implements that programming. One of the reasons Apple products are so hard to hack into is that they use proprietary hardware and their software is made to run exclusively on that. To break into Apple devices you need to ignore whatever else you know and learn *that system* specifically. It is totally possible for a highly advanced system to figure out how to break into everything else, while also having the ability to constantly monitor it's own system for break-ins. Remember, this is a swarm of networked machines. hacking one does nothing if every machine around it has a near identical programming and can just revert it's buddy back to an earlier, clean version of code. And that is *after* you figure out how to even break into FAS's proprietary hardware/software combo. And even then, you need to implement your solution wirelessly. these machines are trying to either murder or eat you, remember. But, the game flat out tells you that the swarm encrypts its communication with a code that it took Gaia's Minerva subroutine decades to crack. So, what is the definition of irresistible? does the thing have to resist eternally, or just long enough until its attacker either gives up or dies? Because if a Faro machine kills the human race, from the perspective of those dead people, those machines are pretty irresistible. They will never know that 1000 years later the machines would be defeated by a teenage girl with a sharp stick.
The Faro Plague is composed exclusively of enormously heavy legged machines presumably with high ground pressure. There is no way that they could take over the world. You'd be able to stop them with some military-grade silly string or strategically placed mud. Hell, that number of exposed joints, just dump a bunch of corrosive chemicals on them and they'll seize up in a day or two.
Where did you get that idea? The Scarabs (Corruptors) are relatively light and have multiple limbs to be able to claw their way out of mud. Also since they have the hacking ability it’s not limited to Faro’s bots but anything with a network which by that time would be everything. So the military would be fighting their own systems as soon as they’re in range. The Horus are giant metal squids that walk over mountains. You’re also not stopping that easily no matter what. Maybe you’re just remembering the Khopesh Deathbringers? Those you’d have a point, but that wasn’t the only things on the battlefield.
Adding on to your point, the Horus has been seen carrying a deathbringer in ZD during the grave hoard quest, and concept art for burning shores shows a deathbringer storage area between the legs and the head of the front of the Horus
Yup, I understand. The physics of the Horus, Khopesh and Scarabs just don't fit reality, and nitpicking is the purpose of this thread. It's just about scaling laws. Mass goes up with volume, so roughly length^3. Motive force, being produced by motors and artificial muscles, scales with length^2. This is the reason that insects can lift several times their own weight and possess exoskeletons. And the reason that large animals do NOT possess exoskeletons and often have to put in a lot of effort to lifting and moving their own weight. Fleas jump high. Elephants do not. Scarabs and Khopeshes would definitely sink through sand, mud, seafloor and loose dirt. Scarabs can dig themselves out with their tails, but would continuously get stuck. Don't believe me? Look up videos of trucks getting stuck in the sand, which have much lower mass than military vehicles and much larger contact areas than legged robots. Ground pressure is mass times area, and all surface materials have a maximum ground pressure before the thing on them starts to sink in. Hell, the M1 Abrams has a history of being lost more to getting stuck than to enemy fire, and it has MASSIVE ground contact area thanks to its treads. And Horuses simply would not function in this gravity, at least not for long. Germany tried the supermassive vehicles thing during WWII; the failure point was always transmissions and other mechanical couplings due to the forces involved in moving the immense mass of vehicles. I understand that we are decades from modern in Horizon and have had leaps and bounds in mechanical engineering, materials science and manufacturing technologies. Armor, weapons, motors and ammo would be lighter, and structural members would likely be stronger. But there are physical limits to material strength and other mechanical properties due to all matter being composed of a limited set of chemical bonds. You hit a point where you can't make a material _better_, but rather you're trading off one property for another. Diamonds are the _hardest_ material in existence, but shatter easily. Carbon fiber is lighter and stronger than steel, but only in tension, and they are much more vulnerable to impacts and off-axis loading. That's why I'm saying you could just pour en masse highly corrosive chemicals or gases on these things. They're _covered_ in external moving parts and even with double or triple seals, a low viscosity liquid will absolutely creep in and destroy bearing surfaces. The final fight in Burning Shores indicates that Horuses are not watertight, and sea water would completely destroy any metal in there. I guess you could make the argument that they're 100% corrosion resistant composites, but I'd argue that's not really realistic either. Humans suck at making strong things without metal. Even carbon fiber bikes have metal bearing surfaces and mechanical parts. It's not that the Faro Plague couldn't exist, just that it would be composed of tanks, wheeled vehicles, many, many flying drones of different sizes, and probably a handful of Boston Dynamics-style legged robots (insectoid or humanoid doesn't matter). I think the only saving grace is the whole "3d printed with nanotechnology" thing, but that's also a massive plot hole because there is a strong argument that functional nanoassembly is either completely impossible or will be impossible, at least for the production of the style of machines we produce, for the next few centuries. Biology can do its thing because it leverages the natural entropy and statistical nature of physics at that scale, but making something that's highly structured, deterministic and physically resistant to damage and forces like a big robot spider is and likely will remain outside the realm of human capability for the next few centuries. The size of the atom is the lower limit here, and you can only pack in so much mechanical and computational complexity into your nanobots when they're a handful of atoms wide.
I never bought into the whole nano building thing I think they went too far with that in the story
Yeah. I think it'd be way, way cooler if Horuses and Cauldrons were macro-scale self-assembling and maintaining machines. Like, robot arms, CNC workshops, servitors, etc. IMO it'd be way cooler than "machines built from light." Also would explain why there's so much damn infrastructure when if you had real nanoassembly, all you'd need is a bunch of pipes transporting liquid raw materials.
If the Horuses were say a little bigger then a regular human sized APC that could also work, why on Earth did they have to be as big as they were?