DeadfallI don't think you realize just how rich he is.In fact, I should put on a monocle.Registered Userregular
edited January 2018
Late to the party but I just finished the main campaign, currently working through Frozen Wilds.
That was quite a ride. I'm mostly an Xbox guy, so I went into HZD mostly blind. I did not expect it go the way it went. What a fantastic story. Spoilered thoughts below for the whole story:
So like I said I went into it mostly blind and I didn't really know what to expect. I went in for a sweet Tomb Raider Robot Dino game. The way it gradually drips the story for you is incredible. And then when you find the Gaia bunkers and it dumps like two hours of exposition at once, Aloy's reactions mostly mirrored my own. That's how you do an exposition dump.
So at first I thought it was an alien world. Then when you find out it takes place in Denver/Utah/Arizona my mind went to "Okay, robot weapons got out of control, but still pretty generic Terminator-ish story." And as I learned about the Gaia subroutines, I initially thought Sylens was Hades or one of the other AI's manifesting to try to unlock himself or something (because you don't physically see him until later). And then I thought Zero Dawn was some generic EMP device that would shut down the machines, but also reduce humanity to a pre-electricity age. Then I thought it was an ark ship that took a chosen few of the human race (the greatest scientists, engineers, artists, doctors, etc) into space and would return after the machines had run out of fuel, and the game centered around the remnants left behind who had survived but were reduced to tribal technology. And then one of the holo recordings said humanity would relearn through genetic encoding or something and said something about slowly and naturally "leveling" itself up to relearn history, so I thought it was doing some meta thing like Assassin's Creed and you were controlling Aloy as some kind of avatar to unlock your genetic history. Like I expected one of the holograms to turn to the camera and start talking to you, the player.
And then I found out what really happened and I almost had to take a break I was so mentally exhausted. This and BioShock were pretty much the only games where I really sought out and read all of the little data recordings, and boy I'm glad I did. Absolutely incredible the way they told the story.
If you like the world building, it's worth finding the unimportant data points around the world (I had to use a map for most of them, they're pretty tough to just stumble across).
While the main ones are focused on how the world ended, these are used for world building the Old World before the Faro Plague started, and it paints a pretty interesting picture, like they took their prediction of the future and ran with it. Massive automation leading to mass unemployment, corporations getting more powerful, drones being used for everything, people taking 'holidays' in VR by using their Focus, and the hippie types who insist that actually going to Venice is so much better, ha, stupid hippies...
Finally got this game after sleeping on it all year and I'm loving it. The progression from having a tense battle with a single sawtooth to taking on armies of robots like they're nothing feels amazing. I really do wish the game continued after the main questline is completed. I love the world of the game and I'll hate to leave it but I don't see a reason to stick around after getting that Platinum. I guess that means there's plenty of runway for the sequel!
Obviously there's differences in the circumstances around the battles, but I have a video of one of my early Thunderjaw fights that took nearly 10 minutes, and included me running out of Ridge Wood mid fight, and feeling like a damned genius when I ducked into my inventory and opened some crates to get more (now I always keep a bunch on hand, 'just in case'). Then a later battle where I was given time to prepare, and blew one up in something like a minute or two tops (granted, it was a story fight, so I had a huge edge). Flash forward a few months and now I go pick a fight with 2 of them and a herd of Lancers or Broadheads to show off the game to a couple of friends. Once you get a feel for the tools at your disposal and how the enemies react, it's amazing what you can do.
I completed the game on Normal, and decided to go NG+ on Hard, to build up currency for the Adept weapons/armor. Either they trimmed back those prices, or they scale substantially on higher difficulties, because I bought all I wanted with shards to spare basically with just what I brought with me from the first run. I'll say that Hard doesn't feel like a particularly drastic change, probably could've gone a bit higher, but from what I'm hearing, Ultra Hard will be a real test of ones mettle.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
If you like the world building, it's worth finding the unimportant data points around the world (I had to use a map for most of them, they're pretty tough to just stumble across).
While the main ones are focused on how the world ended, these are used for world building the Old World before the Faro Plague started, and it paints a pretty interesting picture, like they took their prediction of the future and ran with it. Massive automation leading to mass unemployment, corporations getting more powerful, drones being used for everything, people taking 'holidays' in VR by using their Focus, and the hippie types who insist that actually going to Venice is so much better, ha, stupid hippies...
one of those data points I remember still that was super depressing was people talking about moving to China as it was the only place they could get manual labor jobs. It's one of the best future dystopian stories that hits both unbelievable and realistic logic leaps
Obviously there's differences in the circumstances around the battles, but I have a video of one of my early Thunderjaw fights that took nearly 10 minutes, and included me running out of Ridge Wood mid fight, and feeling like a damned genius when I ducked into my inventory and opened some crates to get more (now I always keep a bunch on hand, 'just in case'). Then a later battle where I was given time to prepare, and blew one up in something like a minute or two tops (granted, it was a story fight, so I had a huge edge). Flash forward a few months and now I go pick a fight with 2 of them and a herd of Lancers or Broadheads to show off the game to a couple of friends. Once you get a feel for the tools at your disposal and how the enemies react, it's amazing what you can do.
I completed the game on Normal, and decided to go NG+ on Hard, to build up currency for the Adept weapons/armor. Either they trimmed back those prices, or they scale substantially on higher difficulties, because I bought all I wanted with shards to spare basically with just what I brought with me from the first run. I'll say that Hard doesn't feel like a particularly drastic change, probably could've gone a bit higher, but from what I'm hearing, Ultra Hard will be a real test of ones mettle.
And I'm sure most of us couldn't resist the urge to go to that bowl with two Thunderjaws in it and make them fight each other.
HZD was a master of giving you enough lore to keep you interested in finding out what happened in the past, while leaving enough open to let you fill in your own blanks.
Also, Corruption arrows are civilization (except where they don't work, of course).
"Now, instead of this being everyone against me, we're going to Dark Knight Joker this situation and have tryouts. GOOD HUNTING, THIS MEATBAG IS PEACING OUT WHILE YOU GET THAT SHIT SORTED OUT!"
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
My current favorite is a couple of well placed tearblast arrows on a shell walker.
Problem fucking solved.
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
I ended up finally playing Far Cry Primal after finishing HZD.
Holy shit the controls and combat in this game are so frustrating in comparison. I think people really underrate how good the control scheme and combat flow are in HZD, because all we hear about is the story and "you hunt mecha dinosaurs!" but a lot of what makes this game work is that you never feel like you are actively fighting against the controller to do what you want.
My brother just got a PS4, so I took advantage of it and got this game, it being one of two PS4 games I'd been really, really wanting to try.
It's... really hard to get used to these controls after playing Breath of the Wild. Aiming and moving is so much more fluid in BotW, here I feel like I'm aiming through molasses. The enemies look cool as all the fucks though. And I imagine as I unlock stuff I'll start feeling less like my primary option is to run away and find a safe ridge to hit weakpoints from.
At least for some of the early enemies, using a strong melee attack and following up with a critical strike can take care of quite a few things when they get in close.
Grabbing the slow time while aiming (toggled) skill is pretty much a must early on. However you're on the right track, you'll always do more by hitting weak points with the right weapon so preparation is key.
You can also set up traps along their patrol path, stealth kill without raising the alarm (though you can really only be invisible in red grass) and if you do cauldrons you can convert stronger robots to your side to duke it out for you.
My brother just got a PS4, so I took advantage of it and got this game, it being one of two PS4 games I'd been really, really wanting to try.
It's... really hard to get used to these controls after playing Breath of the Wild. Aiming and moving is so much more fluid in BotW, here I feel like I'm aiming through molasses. The enemies look cool as all the fucks though. And I imagine as I unlock stuff I'll start feeling less like my primary option is to run away and find a safe ridge to hit weakpoints from.
Sounds weird to me, since I found the BotW controls to be some of the worst I've encountered in a third-person action game. I hardly ever even used the bow because I found it to be faster to just go hit an enemy with a sword instead of having to try and scrounge up a decent amount of arrows or deal with all the menus and sub-menus to select things. Spent the whole game constantly irritated that I couldn't remap the controls to something that makes any kind of sense.
Grab the slow time while aiming and the one for jumping early on, and I personally shoot for getting the double- and triple-shot abilities as soon as possible. Gives a notable damage increase to even the basic bow for the opening shot of a fight, and there's a slower, more powerful bow you find soon where the triple-shot can make your opening shot deal massive damage.
Keep an eye out for new weapons at merchants. Each level of rarity provides new ammo types, which is where you'll get most of the increase in combat ability; once you've got a selection of elemental damage types to work with, enemies become a lot more manageable. Sharpshot bow (slower, more powerful) is the first one I grab when I get the chance, and the ropecaster can be a lifesaver (lets you tie down enemies for quite a while, so you can pin enemies down if you're fighting too many at once or need to line up a shot at a weak spot).
Stealth is going to be important earlier on because you can't deal enough damage to one-shot most enemies, but you can sneak attack most enemies in one hit. Combined with the ability to call enemies to you, it's no challenge to hide in the grass and pick off early enemies. Tripcaster lines are also stackable, so you can pile them up in one spot to deal a huge amount of damage at once against a patrolling enemy.
Oh god, the menus in this game are soo good. Intuitive, easy to use on the fly, and no ui lag. Wish I would have started a certain other open world game before playing this. After crafting in this game, I simply can't be bothered with any sort of crafting system that takes me out of the action.
You can just do so much customization and improv on the fly, its bloody fantastic.
Been playing HZD for the first time, just finished a quest that started with a "point of no return" warning.
The quest to go under the Shadow Carja city into the Zero Dawn facility and discover the truth of Zero Dawn. Finished with Sylens rescuing me from the Behemoth fight in the arena, and next I have to go back to Mother's Embrace or whatever the Nora city is called.
My brother just got a PS4, so I took advantage of it and got this game, it being one of two PS4 games I'd been really, really wanting to try.
It's... really hard to get used to these controls after playing Breath of the Wild. Aiming and moving is so much more fluid in BotW, here I feel like I'm aiming through molasses. The enemies look cool as all the fucks though. And I imagine as I unlock stuff I'll start feeling less like my primary option is to run away and find a safe ridge to hit weakpoints from.
You'll really, really want the perks for slowing time down while aiming. The slower movement speed and amount of zoom in you have with the bows can leave you really vulnerable to being flanked and you don't have a lot of melee options.
The skill to lure enemies over with a whistle is great and saves on throwing rocks and retrieving them though frankly I found the lure and stealth kill approach that really, really boring after not too long and just sneaked by most stealth killable enemies not required for an objective. Still, abusing the lure is helpful early on when you can't do a lot of damage with a bow yet.
Been playing HZD for the first time, just finished a quest that started with a "point of no return" warning.
The quest to go under the Shadow Carja city into the Zero Dawn facility and discover the truth of Zero Dawn. Finished with Sylens rescuing me from the Behemoth fight in the arena, and next I have to go back to Mother's Embrace or whatever the Nora city is called.
How far along am I?
Pretty far. That "point of no return" warning only covers the availability of sidequests at the very first area of the game, if I'm remembering right. The rest of the world will still be available for you.
Though brace your brain for the narrative to pummel it, in a good way.
Been playing HZD for the first time, just finished a quest that started with a "point of no return" warning.
The quest to go under the Shadow Carja city into the Zero Dawn facility and discover the truth of Zero Dawn. Finished with Sylens rescuing me from the Behemoth fight in the arena, and next I have to go back to Mother's Embrace or whatever the Nora city is called.
How far along am I?
That's not quite a point of no return, more of a warning that stuff in the world map will change and you'll be in there a while so don't expect a chance to easily restock supplies. You've got like 3 or so story missions left.
Been playing HZD for the first time, just finished a quest that started with a "point of no return" warning.
The quest to go under the Shadow Carja city into the Zero Dawn facility and discover the truth of Zero Dawn. Finished with Sylens rescuing me from the Behemoth fight in the arena, and next I have to go back to Mother's Embrace or whatever the Nora city is called.
How far along am I?
80%ish? There's still some main story missions after that, but not too many.
EDIT: I might be a little off... I did so many side quest missions early on, the main story beats were all piled up at the end. The quest you're describing feels like it was toward the end for me, but it may have been just me.
It didn't do much for me. Gameplay was fine, uninteresting. The story didn't do much for me, both past and present.
And I read 90% of the data entries. I feel like i guessed 3/4 of the plot, so nothing was mindblowing or anything like that. The characters were mostly wasted. Aloy was ok, but she barely had anyone to bounce off of. Sylens and Aloy had zero chemistry. Sylens should have been a book or a PDA or something for how much he mattered. At least Erend had a personality. And everyone in the past was already in the past, so I never felt anything for them. They were data entries like in BioShock or 100 other games.
The game is well put together, pretty, and easy to play,
but I feel like I've played it all before in other games that did it better.
It didn't do much for me. Gameplay was fine, uninteresting. The story didn't do much for me, both past and present.
And I read 90% of the data entries. I feel like i guessed 3/4 of the plot, so nothing was mindblowing or anything like that. The characters were mostly wasted. Aloy was ok, but she barely had anyone to bounce off of. Sylens and Aloy had zero chemistry. Sylens should have been a book or a PDA or something for how much he mattered. At least Erend had a personality. And everyone in the past was already in the past, so I never felt anything for them. They were data entries like in BioShock or 100 other games.
The game is well put together, pretty, and easy to play,
but I feel like I've played it all before in other games that did it better.
It's definitely not a home run with everyone. A lot of players view it as just another good game in a year of good games, you just have some extremely passionate players still talking about the game in some corners of the internet. For me it was more of a nu-Tomb Raider with robot dinosaurs with clunkier feeling combat due to being so bow centric. I enjoyed it for the most part once I just focused on the story and stopped wasting time on the open world and fighting anything not a Thunderjaw, but as more great games came out this past year it progressively got knocked lower and lower on my personal top games of the year list.
So I own all the armor, all the weapons, on the last mission of the main game, and working on the Frozen Wilds. Is there any reason to lug around all the hearts and lenses of the robots or can I sell most of them? I don't feel like Watcher hearts, scrapper hearts, etc, are useful at all anymore, but am too much of a packrat to sell them because maybe they'll be useful? Any ideas?
@shadowane I too have a resource satchel full of parts I am loathe to get rid of, but then I also have like 19.5k shards so I don’t feel like I need to sell them? I’d surely pay 15 or 20k shards for another set of satchel size upgrades.
So I own all the armor, all the weapons, on the last mission of the main game, and working on the Frozen Wilds. Is there any reason to lug around all the hearts and lenses of the robots or can I sell most of them? I don't feel like Watcher hearts, scrapper hearts, etc, are useful at all anymore, but am too much of a packrat to sell them because maybe they'll be useful? Any ideas?
If you enjoyed the experience enough to potentially try a New Game+, there is another tier of weapons and armour that you can buy, which can require some of those harder to find lenses and hearts.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
I finished this a few days ago, and then got the plat trophy thing yesterday.
Good god this game was amazing. I'm going to start the DLC soon.
Also I may have missed it but
There was some mention about a launch and a space ark thing? What was that about? Was there more reading on it?
Yea, that was a thing.
The ship was called the Odyssey. It was started by a bunch of countries who abandoned the idea and then it was purchased by some group who finished it and equipped it with an alpha version of Apollo and a massive amount of seeds and genetic material. It was launched to colonize another planet and to save humanity along with Zero Dawn. Elisabet reported it destroyed to the other alphas.
A popular theory is that Elisabet lied about it to hide that it had escaped the solar system from the Faro Plague. Not really sure why it would matter since the Faro Plague wouldn't be able to follow but it would be kind of cool if it did survive and a human race that didn't lose Apollo and it's knowledge came back to earth.
PSN: Reaper_Stragint, Steam: DoublePitstoChesty
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
I finished this a few days ago, and then got the plat trophy thing yesterday.
Good god this game was amazing. I'm going to start the DLC soon.
Also I may have missed it but
There was some mention about a launch and a space ark thing? What was that about? Was there more reading on it?
Yea, that was a thing.
The ship was called the Odyssey. It was started by a bunch of countries who abandoned the idea and then it was purchased by some group who finished it and equipped it with an alpha version of Apollo and a massive amount of seeds and genetic material. It was launched to colonize another planet and to save humanity along with Zero Dawn. Elisabet reported it destroyed to the other alphas.
A popular theory is that Elisabet lied about it to hide that it had escaped the solar system from the Faro Plague. Not really sure why it would matter since the Faro Plague wouldn't be able to follow but it would be kind of cool if it did survive and a human race that didn't lose Apollo and it's knowledge came back to earth.
I think there's some wriggle room there, because even if she didn't lie (and she wouldn't have done that to hide it from the Plague, but maybe as an extra motivation for the PZD teams, as if they needed it), I think they don't say it was destroyed, but the engines were. It's anyone's guess what that could mean for the ship, but it's possible it's still in orbit somewhere, or maybe crashed back down to earth at some point.
It's a slim hope, but if they wanted to write it that way, there could still be an intact copy of Apollo. Somewhere.
I finished this a few days ago, and then got the plat trophy thing yesterday.
Good god this game was amazing. I'm going to start the DLC soon.
Also I may have missed it but
There was some mention about a launch and a space ark thing? What was that about? Was there more reading on it?
Yea, that was a thing.
The ship was called the Odyssey. It was started by a bunch of countries who abandoned the idea and then it was purchased by some group who finished it and equipped it with an alpha version of Apollo and a massive amount of seeds and genetic material. It was launched to colonize another planet and to save humanity along with Zero Dawn. Elisabet reported it destroyed to the other alphas.
A popular theory is that Elisabet lied about it to hide that it had escaped the solar system from the Faro Plague. Not really sure why it would matter since the Faro Plague wouldn't be able to follow but it would be kind of cool if it did survive and a human race that didn't lose Apollo and it's knowledge came back to earth.
I think there's some wriggle room there, because even if she didn't lie (and she wouldn't have done that to hide it from the Plague, but maybe as an extra motivation for the PZD teams, as if they needed it), I think they don't say it was destroyed, but the engines were. It's anyone's guess what that could mean for the ship, but it's possible it's still in orbit somewhere, or maybe crashed back down to earth at some point.
It's a slim hope, but if they wanted to write it that way, there could still be an intact copy of Apollo. Somewhere.
There are also a few hints that:
The people funding the Odyssey had motivations that were not entirely benevolent. Theories range from being the Doomsday cult to being headed by a rogue AI, and that they were the ones to set off the glitch that woke Hades.
Shadowhope on
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
I finished this a few days ago, and then got the plat trophy thing yesterday.
Good god this game was amazing. I'm going to start the DLC soon.
Also I may have missed it but
There was some mention about a launch and a space ark thing? What was that about? Was there more reading on it?
Yea, that was a thing.
The ship was called the Odyssey. It was started by a bunch of countries who abandoned the idea and then it was purchased by some group who finished it and equipped it with an alpha version of Apollo and a massive amount of seeds and genetic material. It was launched to colonize another planet and to save humanity along with Zero Dawn. Elisabet reported it destroyed to the other alphas.
A popular theory is that Elisabet lied about it to hide that it had escaped the solar system from the Faro Plague. Not really sure why it would matter since the Faro Plague wouldn't be able to follow but it would be kind of cool if it did survive and a human race that didn't lose Apollo and it's knowledge came back to earth.
I think there's some wriggle room there, because even if she didn't lie (and she wouldn't have done that to hide it from the Plague, but maybe as an extra motivation for the PZD teams, as if they needed it), I think they don't say it was destroyed, but the engines were. It's anyone's guess what that could mean for the ship, but it's possible it's still in orbit somewhere, or maybe crashed back down to earth at some point.
It's a slim hope, but if they wanted to write it that way, there could still be an intact copy of Apollo. Somewhere.
There are also a few hints that:
The people funding the Odyssey had motivations that were not entirely benevolent. Theories range from being the Doomsday cult to being headed by a rogue AI, and that they were the ones to set off the glitch that woke Hades.
How could they be the ones responsible for Hades malfunction? Isn't the whole event well after the earth has been scorched and the whole project was sealed off?
I do wonder if the guy who purged Apollo also set it up for Hades to purge all human life?
Also as the tech stuff of this unfolded all my thoughts consistently went to "why didn't they send some of it to Mars for super back up"
I mean, I know the main focus was earth survival, but their main facility was a rocket lab/launch station right? Would've been cool to see a side project that Elesabet sent off.
PSN: jfrofl
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited February 2018
For Hades
To the best of my knowledge, nothing in the game suggests that HADES is at all related to the original glitch that wiped out the planet. HADES was a normal part of GAIA, but was intentionally infected by an outside force with a virus that caused HADES to assert its biosphere-destroying functions incorrectly, which was something that, under normal operation, it could override GAIA to do if conditions were bad enough. The moment of that infection is when GAIA had to destroy her primary self and initiated Aloy's birth process, in order to give herself a chance to be reconstructed and to also prevent HADES from immediately being able to take over and wipe everything out.
The original swarm had no indications of self-awareness or intent, it was simply fulfilling a set of directives to multiply. If it had possessed any self-awareness, it would've stopped itself from eating everything on the planet since that would mean it would've ended up destroying itself. HADES is at least marginally sentient, but it doesn't care about there not being anything left alive because it's purpose is expressly to clear the way for another attempt at rebuilding everything.
So it's all but certain that there is a high-tech individual or group out there which intentionally sabotaged HADES. Given that the Odyssey had most of the same tech available on Earth at the time of its departure, it's a fair bet that something of the ship survived, possibly up to and including people. And there's one instance in the game of a crashed satellite influencing the local robots, which would further suggest some spaceborne entity or group.
The group that invaded the Nora lands and killed Rost's family probably had something to do with it.
They went into old ruins where the Nora wouldn't follow them, then did something unknown. And the Derangement would have started shortly afterwards, wouldn't it?
And Rost chased them into the sequel hook Forbidden West, which is probably where Ted Faro set up his pyramid bunker/cryogenics facility/cloning lab. (I'm guessing, but there's a decent chance this is all his fault. He fucked the world over twice already, and there's always the rule of three to consider)
The group that invaded the Nora lands and killed Rost's family probably had something to do with it.
They went into old ruins where the Nora wouldn't follow them, then did something unknown. And the Derangement would have started shortly afterwards, wouldn't it?
And Rost chased them into the sequel hook Forbidden West, which is probably where Ted Faro set up his pyramid bunker/cryogenics facility/cloning lab. (I'm guessing, but there's a decent chance this is all his fault. He fucked the world over twice already, and there's always the rule of three to consider)
More endgame stuff:
The Shadow Carja didn't exist when HADES was born. Sylens found it and taught it everything about the world as it was and then Sylens founded the Shadow Carja.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
The group that invaded the Nora lands and killed Rost's family probably had something to do with it.
They went into old ruins where the Nora wouldn't follow them, then did something unknown. And the Derangement would have started shortly afterwards, wouldn't it?
And Rost chased them into the sequel hook Forbidden West, which is probably where Ted Faro set up his pyramid bunker/cryogenics facility/cloning lab. (I'm guessing, but there's a decent chance this is all his fault. He fucked the world over twice already, and there's always the rule of three to consider)
More endgame stuff:
The Shadow Carja didn't exist when HADES was born. Sylens found it and taught it everything about the world as it was and then Sylens founded the Shadow Carja.
Shadow Carja
weren't founded by Sylens, he simply joined up with them for the resources they could offer. The Shadow Carja break from the Carja was all Carja politics, and they didn't have access to anything beyond what the Carja could do until he started working with them.
The Shadow Carja were going to exist with or without Sylens, but it was his discoveries which allowed them to grow so powerful before he realized he fucked up in sharing with them. Up until the point they became a threat to everybody, he didn't really care which side he supported, as his viewpoint is that it's all repeating history anyway so it doesn't matter who actually runs things.
I can't remember, but was there any actual mention of Hades' functions being altered? I thought the signal just untethered it from Gaia, effectively making it run without any parameters. ie. kill everything forever.
Like the DLC's Hephaestus, it's basically just reacting to the circumstances around it without any oversight or coordination with the other AIs. Hephaestus is supposed to make machines; humans mess with the machines, so Hephaestus makes machines that can remove the threat, because Gaia isn't able to tell it not to kill people. Hades is supposed to wipe stuff; so it just tries to do that as best it can, but it has no guidelines that says "hey, there are living humans, so I should maybe not do that."
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
I can't remember, but was there any actual mention of Hades' functions being altered? I thought the signal just untethered it from Gaia, effectively making it run without any parameters. ie. kill everything forever.
Like the DLC's Hephaestus, it's basically just reacting to the circumstances around it without any oversight or coordination with the other AIs. Hephaestus is supposed to make machines; humans mess with the machines, so Hephaestus makes machines that can remove the threat, because Gaia isn't able to tell it not to kill people. Hades is supposed to wipe stuff; so it just tries to do that as best it can, but it has no guidelines that says "hey, there are living humans, so I should maybe not do that."
The virus altered HADES enough that it at least thinks it's time to operate in failsafe kill-everything-and-start-over mode. That was the one function directly infected before GAIA destroyed her main facility and severed all the links between the different components of the terraforming effort, partially because it was also the only component which could actually override GAIA (as she would be unable to destroy even a failing system and would instead keep trying to fix it). So rather than risk full infection of all components by HADES in an override mode, GAIA breaks everything loose and gets Aloy's birth going.
HADES wasn't built to always be on, just for it to come on if the terraforming effort was going badly. Considering that a large section of North America has been brought back to life and repopulated with humans and everything is progressing in a stable way, HADES definitely should not be up and running to try and destroy everything if it's running properly. At the very least, its judgement has been altered such that it has gone from targeting a bad project only over to killing everything everywhere.
Plus, it attempts to implement it's efforts via the swarm. Given that humanity couldn't control the swarm before it destroyed the planet and it would take decades to decrypt the controls codes (which were never used until Aloy came along), there would be no reason HADES would be built to be compatible with the single deadliest thing ever put on the planet (though it's possible GAIA had the ability developed later and judged it safe to connect to HADES). So it's a fairly safe bet that being able to control swarm machinery was a part of the infection, and not part of HADES base functions.
I can't remember, but was there any actual mention of Hades' functions being altered? I thought the signal just untethered it from Gaia, effectively making it run without any parameters. ie. kill everything forever.
Like the DLC's Hephaestus, it's basically just reacting to the circumstances around it without any oversight or coordination with the other AIs. Hephaestus is supposed to make machines; humans mess with the machines, so Hephaestus makes machines that can remove the threat, because Gaia isn't able to tell it not to kill people. Hades is supposed to wipe stuff; so it just tries to do that as best it can, but it has no guidelines that says "hey, there are living humans, so I should maybe not do that."
The virus altered HADES enough that it at least thinks it's time to operate in failsafe kill-everything-and-start-over mode. That was the one function directly infected before GAIA destroyed her main facility and severed all the links between the different components of the terraforming effort, partially because it was also the only component which could actually override GAIA (as she would be unable to destroy even a failing system and would instead keep trying to fix it). So rather than risk full infection of all components by HADES in an override mode, GAIA breaks everything loose and gets Aloy's birth going.
HADES wasn't built to always be on, just for it to come on if the terraforming effort was going badly. Considering that a large section of North America has been brought back to life and repopulated with humans and everything is progressing in a stable way, HADES definitely should not be up and running to try and destroy everything if it's running properly. At the very least, its judgement has been altered such that it has gone from targeting a bad project only over to killing everything everywhere.
Plus, it attempts to implement it's efforts via the swarm. Given that humanity couldn't control the swarm before it destroyed the planet and it would take decades to decrypt the controls codes (which were never used until Aloy came along), there would be no reason HADES would be built to be compatible with the single deadliest thing ever put on the planet (though it's possible GAIA had the ability developed later and judged it safe to connect to HADES). So it's a fairly safe bet that being able to control swarm machinery was a part of the infection, and not part of HADES base functions.
That all still sounds like it hasn't actually been altered, just set entirely free to pursue its prime directive. Like the AIs were all set to operate under Gaia's supervision, with the caveat that Hades was supposed to be able to step in and go "no, this is wrong, so we're starting over." It's just that, without any connection to Gaia, it always considers the state of things to be wrong, because it has no idea what 'right' looks like.
As far as the machines go, I'm pretty sure that's something it'd have from the start, or at least as soon as Gaia was able to figure out how to access them again. I'm not sure how else it's supposed to reset things, and given the restrictions the Zero Dawn project was working under, it does make sense that they'd just re-purpose their existing doomsday scenario rather than make a new one. Pretty cold, but the whole project was brutally logical.
The control codes for the swarm were decrypted long ago. Gaia and the rest of Zero Dawn had to be in stasis for few hundred years while encryption being broken. HADES may very well have them or access to them as part of its normal function. I was also under the impression HADES was not corrupted by a virus or malfunctioning, per se, it was just operating without oversight thanks to the "signal" which broke the AI's off from Gaia. Sylens thought he was able to contain HADES and bargain with it for knowledge but it found itself under new masters which were more willing(or ignorant) to let it do what it wanted (detroy the world).
The control codes for the swarm were decrypted long ago. Gaia and the rest of Zero Dawn had to be in stasis for few hundred years while encryption being broken. HADES may very well have them or access to them as part of its normal function. I was also under the impression HADES was not corrupted by a virus or malfunctioning, per se, it was just operating without oversight thanks to the "signal" which broke the AI's off from Gaia. Sylens thought he was able to contain HADES and bargain with it for knowledge but it found itself under new masters which were more willing(or ignorant) to let it do what it wanted (detroy the world).
Sylens never knew HADES wanted to destroy the world; he got duped. He was making a bargain for information, but he didn't know what HADES endgame was until you find out in the story.
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That was quite a ride. I'm mostly an Xbox guy, so I went into HZD mostly blind. I did not expect it go the way it went. What a fantastic story. Spoilered thoughts below for the whole story:
So at first I thought it was an alien world. Then when you find out it takes place in Denver/Utah/Arizona my mind went to "Okay, robot weapons got out of control, but still pretty generic Terminator-ish story." And as I learned about the Gaia subroutines, I initially thought Sylens was Hades or one of the other AI's manifesting to try to unlock himself or something (because you don't physically see him until later). And then I thought Zero Dawn was some generic EMP device that would shut down the machines, but also reduce humanity to a pre-electricity age. Then I thought it was an ark ship that took a chosen few of the human race (the greatest scientists, engineers, artists, doctors, etc) into space and would return after the machines had run out of fuel, and the game centered around the remnants left behind who had survived but were reduced to tribal technology. And then one of the holo recordings said humanity would relearn through genetic encoding or something and said something about slowly and naturally "leveling" itself up to relearn history, so I thought it was doing some meta thing like Assassin's Creed and you were controlling Aloy as some kind of avatar to unlock your genetic history. Like I expected one of the holograms to turn to the camera and start talking to you, the player.
And then I found out what really happened and I almost had to take a break I was so mentally exhausted. This and BioShock were pretty much the only games where I really sought out and read all of the little data recordings, and boy I'm glad I did. Absolutely incredible the way they told the story.
xbl - HowYouGetAnts
steam - WeAreAllGeth
I completed the game on Normal, and decided to go NG+ on Hard, to build up currency for the Adept weapons/armor. Either they trimmed back those prices, or they scale substantially on higher difficulties, because I bought all I wanted with shards to spare basically with just what I brought with me from the first run. I'll say that Hard doesn't feel like a particularly drastic change, probably could've gone a bit higher, but from what I'm hearing, Ultra Hard will be a real test of ones mettle.
And I'm sure most of us couldn't resist the urge to go to that bowl with two Thunderjaws in it and make them fight each other.
You can't give someone a pirate ship in one game, and then take it back in the next game. It's rude.
"Now, instead of this being everyone against me, we're going to Dark Knight Joker this situation and have tryouts. GOOD HUNTING, THIS MEATBAG IS PEACING OUT WHILE YOU GET THAT SHIT SORTED OUT!"
Problem fucking solved.
Holy shit the controls and combat in this game are so frustrating in comparison. I think people really underrate how good the control scheme and combat flow are in HZD, because all we hear about is the story and "you hunt mecha dinosaurs!" but a lot of what makes this game work is that you never feel like you are actively fighting against the controller to do what you want.
It's... really hard to get used to these controls after playing Breath of the Wild. Aiming and moving is so much more fluid in BotW, here I feel like I'm aiming through molasses. The enemies look cool as all the fucks though. And I imagine as I unlock stuff I'll start feeling less like my primary option is to run away and find a safe ridge to hit weakpoints from.
Grabbing the slow time while aiming (toggled) skill is pretty much a must early on. However you're on the right track, you'll always do more by hitting weak points with the right weapon so preparation is key.
You can also set up traps along their patrol path, stealth kill without raising the alarm (though you can really only be invisible in red grass) and if you do cauldrons you can convert stronger robots to your side to duke it out for you.
Sounds weird to me, since I found the BotW controls to be some of the worst I've encountered in a third-person action game. I hardly ever even used the bow because I found it to be faster to just go hit an enemy with a sword instead of having to try and scrounge up a decent amount of arrows or deal with all the menus and sub-menus to select things. Spent the whole game constantly irritated that I couldn't remap the controls to something that makes any kind of sense.
Grab the slow time while aiming and the one for jumping early on, and I personally shoot for getting the double- and triple-shot abilities as soon as possible. Gives a notable damage increase to even the basic bow for the opening shot of a fight, and there's a slower, more powerful bow you find soon where the triple-shot can make your opening shot deal massive damage.
Keep an eye out for new weapons at merchants. Each level of rarity provides new ammo types, which is where you'll get most of the increase in combat ability; once you've got a selection of elemental damage types to work with, enemies become a lot more manageable. Sharpshot bow (slower, more powerful) is the first one I grab when I get the chance, and the ropecaster can be a lifesaver (lets you tie down enemies for quite a while, so you can pin enemies down if you're fighting too many at once or need to line up a shot at a weak spot).
Stealth is going to be important earlier on because you can't deal enough damage to one-shot most enemies, but you can sneak attack most enemies in one hit. Combined with the ability to call enemies to you, it's no challenge to hide in the grass and pick off early enemies. Tripcaster lines are also stackable, so you can pile them up in one spot to deal a huge amount of damage at once against a patrolling enemy.
You can just do so much customization and improv on the fly, its bloody fantastic.
How far along am I?
You'll really, really want the perks for slowing time down while aiming. The slower movement speed and amount of zoom in you have with the bows can leave you really vulnerable to being flanked and you don't have a lot of melee options.
The skill to lure enemies over with a whistle is great and saves on throwing rocks and retrieving them though frankly I found the lure and stealth kill approach that really, really boring after not too long and just sneaked by most stealth killable enemies not required for an objective. Still, abusing the lure is helpful early on when you can't do a lot of damage with a bow yet.
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3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Pretty far. That "point of no return" warning only covers the availability of sidequests at the very first area of the game, if I'm remembering right. The rest of the world will still be available for you.
Though brace your brain for the narrative to pummel it, in a good way.
That's not quite a point of no return, more of a warning that stuff in the world map will change and you'll be in there a while so don't expect a chance to easily restock supplies. You've got like 3 or so story missions left.
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3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
80%ish? There's still some main story missions after that, but not too many.
EDIT: I might be a little off... I did so many side quest missions early on, the main story beats were all piled up at the end. The quest you're describing feels like it was toward the end for me, but it may have been just me.
And I read 90% of the data entries. I feel like i guessed 3/4 of the plot, so nothing was mindblowing or anything like that. The characters were mostly wasted. Aloy was ok, but she barely had anyone to bounce off of. Sylens and Aloy had zero chemistry. Sylens should have been a book or a PDA or something for how much he mattered. At least Erend had a personality. And everyone in the past was already in the past, so I never felt anything for them. They were data entries like in BioShock or 100 other games.
The game is well put together, pretty, and easy to play,
but I feel like I've played it all before in other games that did it better.
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3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
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If you enjoyed the experience enough to potentially try a New Game+, there is another tier of weapons and armour that you can buy, which can require some of those harder to find lenses and hearts.
Good god this game was amazing. I'm going to start the DLC soon.
Also I may have missed it but
Yea, that was a thing.
A popular theory is that Elisabet lied about it to hide that it had escaped the solar system from the Faro Plague. Not really sure why it would matter since the Faro Plague wouldn't be able to follow but it would be kind of cool if it did survive and a human race that didn't lose Apollo and it's knowledge came back to earth.
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
It's a slim hope, but if they wanted to write it that way, there could still be an intact copy of Apollo. Somewhere.
There are also a few hints that:
Basically I just want to see a Thunderjaw take on robot C'thulhu.
I do wonder if the guy who purged Apollo also set it up for Hades to purge all human life?
Also as the tech stuff of this unfolded all my thoughts consistently went to "why didn't they send some of it to Mars for super back up"
I mean, I know the main focus was earth survival, but their main facility was a rocket lab/launch station right? Would've been cool to see a side project that Elesabet sent off.
The original swarm had no indications of self-awareness or intent, it was simply fulfilling a set of directives to multiply. If it had possessed any self-awareness, it would've stopped itself from eating everything on the planet since that would mean it would've ended up destroying itself. HADES is at least marginally sentient, but it doesn't care about there not being anything left alive because it's purpose is expressly to clear the way for another attempt at rebuilding everything.
So it's all but certain that there is a high-tech individual or group out there which intentionally sabotaged HADES. Given that the Odyssey had most of the same tech available on Earth at the time of its departure, it's a fair bet that something of the ship survived, possibly up to and including people. And there's one instance in the game of a crashed satellite influencing the local robots, which would further suggest some spaceborne entity or group.
They went into old ruins where the Nora wouldn't follow them, then did something unknown. And the Derangement would have started shortly afterwards, wouldn't it?
And Rost chased them into the sequel hook Forbidden West, which is probably where Ted Faro set up his pyramid bunker/cryogenics facility/cloning lab. (I'm guessing, but there's a decent chance this is all his fault. He fucked the world over twice already, and there's always the rule of three to consider)
Shadow Carja
The Shadow Carja were going to exist with or without Sylens, but it was his discoveries which allowed them to grow so powerful before he realized he fucked up in sharing with them. Up until the point they became a threat to everybody, he didn't really care which side he supported, as his viewpoint is that it's all repeating history anyway so it doesn't matter who actually runs things.
Like the DLC's Hephaestus, it's basically just reacting to the circumstances around it without any oversight or coordination with the other AIs. Hephaestus is supposed to make machines; humans mess with the machines, so Hephaestus makes machines that can remove the threat, because Gaia isn't able to tell it not to kill people. Hades is supposed to wipe stuff; so it just tries to do that as best it can, but it has no guidelines that says "hey, there are living humans, so I should maybe not do that."
HADES wasn't built to always be on, just for it to come on if the terraforming effort was going badly. Considering that a large section of North America has been brought back to life and repopulated with humans and everything is progressing in a stable way, HADES definitely should not be up and running to try and destroy everything if it's running properly. At the very least, its judgement has been altered such that it has gone from targeting a bad project only over to killing everything everywhere.
Plus, it attempts to implement it's efforts via the swarm. Given that humanity couldn't control the swarm before it destroyed the planet and it would take decades to decrypt the controls codes (which were never used until Aloy came along), there would be no reason HADES would be built to be compatible with the single deadliest thing ever put on the planet (though it's possible GAIA had the ability developed later and judged it safe to connect to HADES). So it's a fairly safe bet that being able to control swarm machinery was a part of the infection, and not part of HADES base functions.
As far as the machines go, I'm pretty sure that's something it'd have from the start, or at least as soon as Gaia was able to figure out how to access them again. I'm not sure how else it's supposed to reset things, and given the restrictions the Zero Dawn project was working under, it does make sense that they'd just re-purpose their existing doomsday scenario rather than make a new one. Pretty cold, but the whole project was brutally logical.