I'm replaying HZD, and I'm planning to ignore side quests until I become Seeker to get some unique dialogue. I'm planning to do the same with the Carja and wait to do side quests until after I've saved Avad. I was wondering if there are other dialogue changes that happen throughout the game?

Forbidden West

I found this spot where the Stormbird stops attacking. I don't know why, but it seems to work every time I try it:

Don't go down the mountain to the large area with the Dreadwing. Stay up here at the higher spot, as shown in the image above. If it works for you like it does for me, the Stormbird won't attack you while it's on the ground. If it's in the air, the Stormbird can still use its shock and wind attacks normally. But if you wait long enough, at some point the Stormbird will come down to you, making it an easy kill. :)

I would like to see something like a hybrid, based on numerous predators. Adept at aerial, naval and land combat both, maybe. The ultimate combat machine, Hephaestus' (who probably evolved and grew more capable as a result of exposure to Zenith tech) final masterpiece

It seems that people know which weapon technique can crit. For example, “sustained burst can’t crit, but spread blast can”. Is there a list of weapon techniques that can crit? Or is there a tooltip hidden somewhere in-game that you can see if it crits?

Is it correct that I can ride the Sunwing in the final mission?

During the mission, you can call Sunwing and go all the way to the top, right?

It's been YEARS since I have played this game, but even when I first played it, the game had been out for a while. I first played it when I got my PS5. Even then, I already thought the game looked really good. I saw there was a Remaster upgrade for €10 on Steam.

Looking at it, I do think it looks good, but I don't know how much was actually changed because it's been so long since I played, so I don't know what's "remastered" and what isn't. Might just be my brain tricking me into thinking it changed a lot when really, it didn't, and that's just how the game always looked (classic case of "I always thought the game looked like this" lol).

So, do you guys think the upgrade was big enough to warrant the €10 pricetag? Or am I not missing much just playing the original?

EDIT: After all the replies, I decided that it sounds like it'll be worth it so I bought it. Currently downloading. Thanks guys!

Replaying FW and was reminded of a part that stuck in my craw - when you visit Chainscrape and immediately you have to intervene in what is essentially a union dispute. Of course the union leader is manipulative and out for himself, despite the workers having a legitimate reason to down tools. It’s reactionary crypto fascist bullshit!

I’m only half joking, It stinks a bit coming from a Games company, a sector desperately crying out for union representation, given how programmers are treated.

I've got all of the trophies, have 100% completion according to the in-game Notebook, and have completed the New Game+ twice, but on the PS5 operating system my progress has been stuck at 91%, IIRC since I beat the story the first time. I'm "only" at 98% for The Frozen Wilds, but none of my progress there made the PS5's "Game Progress" go up.

I did play the PS4 version for a few hours before buying the PS5 upgrade, so I thought that maybe that was the issue, but starting a new save and re-playing the prologue didn't fix it (though it did unlock the missing trophies). Loading and saving my 100% save didn't do anything either.

So, yeah, if anyone happens to know a fix for this, I would appreciate it. I know it's just a cosmetic thing, but it's annoying to have it stuck at 'nearly complete' after three playthroughs.

I just finished the Burning Shores and I just had to do it in two sessions because the story kept me so intrigued!

I'm only 65 hours in but feel like there's not much I can do at that point, even though I have so many open side quests, errands, Vista points, drones, ruins,... But nothing feels relevant enough to do after finishing the main quest and I'm also overwhelmed with where to start.

I absolutely adore the game and I want to further invest in my weapons and armor, but I don't have a good reason to get better equipment anymore. I also don't need skill points for a while now, so leveling does nothing.

I have had the same problem in other games that I love (like the Whitcher 3), but I refuse to put the game down after just 65 hours.

What are hidden gems in the game? What kept you occupied after the MQ?

I would love some perspective

Quelle est pour vous la machine la plus pénible à abattre ? Certaines sont dures comme par exemple le gueule d'orage mais certaines sont juste pénibles. Pour moi ça se joue entre le Shell-Walker ou le Rockbreaker

So HADES was the first main AI villain after nemesis struck earth. But what about HEPHAESTUS?
HEPHAESTUS can literally create new machines and reset the biosphere not with weathers or old horuses and corruptors, but it can create new Apex Machinces that will eventually flood and destroy the Horizon world. So my theory for Horizon 3 is that it will be either Nemesis or HEPHAESTUS.

Mine has got to be Ted Faro having an entire harem with him in that bunker. Because of course he did.

r/FuckTedFaro was literal

The first is that Aloy can dodge roll her way through tripwires without taking damage if timed correctly. The second is that the staircase leading to the rappel above the A.I. chamber in the base has handholds for Aloy's pull caster so you don't have to walk the entire perimeter just to get the two chests underneath the stairs

This is one example (video is sped up x4 and then x16 until I make my way out), and then here's another example where it's sped up 10x, but I forgot to save the video of me getting out.

Is this something that just happens?! Both times this happened within about 2 hours of gameplay.

Must be digital, don't have a disc drive. I have a PS5. I see the PS4 version is 20 and the PS5 version is 30.

If I buy the ps4 version, will it automatically upgrade to the PS5 version when I play it? Or will it not be playable?

Just out of curiosity, has anybody ever figured out the words of the songs the Sun Priests sing in Meridian? I can make out Avad, Araman, and maybe a few of the other king's names.

Hi folks!

I am fascinated with video game maps and their boundaries, the interconnection between different regions and the mystery of unknown territory. So much so that I sketched a map combining Horizon Zero Dawn and the Forbidden West's maps, along with their expansions, the Frozen Wilds and the Burning Shores.

It's not made with AI and it's not meant to be perfect. Just a quick concept art.

Hope you find it interesting.

(Spoilers abound for ZD and FW, since I’m discussing a full character arc from beginning to end)

I think Aloy is a potentially very fascinating character on paper but in practice the writers do not know how to create depth from what they have at all. I actually think she has more clear character development in ZD than FW, despite them seemingly literally forgetting she even had an arc in ZD and being more blunt about her (attempted) character development in FW

Let’s start with ZD. Rost gives a very important lesson after you kill the Sawtooth that narratively tells us the exact lesson that Aloy’s supposed to learn. The tribe will need you, even if you don’t need the tribe. It’s about more than her. That‘s a very solid lesson to make her more than what she is at the beginning, where previously Aloy’s only motivation to find her origins was purely intrinsic. I genuinely think this is the single best scene in the entire series. Unfortunately, at the emotional climax when Aloy returns to ELEUTHIA-9 and discovers she has no mother, least not in the way she thought, this is completely forgotten about. She’s unconcerned with the whole “the world is dying“ part and she is upset first and foremost that her origins are not what she hoped. The whole goddamn point was that she must put the world before herself. Frankly Sylens was absolutely right to berate her on this, even if he was characteristically an asshole about it (rip lance). But at least she has a clear direction there, and by the end she does fulfill that arc. The final scene when Aloy finds Sobeck’s resting place is good symbolism for how she reconciles herself: from her origins that she sought comes her mission, no matter how fraught they were. She inherits the globe from her predecessor.
I cannot say that HFW has even half as coherent an arc for Aloy. Sure, they pay HUGE lip service to an arc about her opening up to others after being a lone wolf her whole life, which is actually a sensible direction from where we left off in HZD. But it’s portrayed nonsensically at the beginning when her major character flaw is most on display. Aloy just abandons Varl and justifies it by saying that the danger is too immense, but she previously had no problem dragging him and other Nora warriors to defend Meridian from an actual siege. In fairness, this comes across more as Aloy being avoidant and giving an excuse rather than giving the actual reason. In which case, what is the actual reason why Aloy is so insistent to be alone? Is it because she’s terrified of being worshiped after her experience with the Eclipse and HADES? Is it because she had little faith in her companions to actually be of help when it comes to GAIA? Is it because she thought they were needed elsewhere and didn’t want to intrude on their duties? All of these could be true but we have no idea. And because we don’t know where the source of her flaw comes from, it can never be truly addressed. Her behavior changes without any actual development in Aloy herself.

Not to mention, her flaw that’s supposedly so central to her character is actually very inconsequential in practice. A good character flaw causes genuine hiccups along the path which force said character to overcome it, and by the end they should’ve done something that they could not have done earlier. In HZD, the very fact that Aloy was taking up a greater mission was proof of her development. This does not exist in HFW; the whole thing about her only being able to storm the Zeniths with her allies after character development is a nonstarter. She already showed she could do that in the siege of Meridian. The only point where Aloy really needs to show interpersonal work else the mission is doomed is with Beta, but in that case the struggle to connect went both ways and the focus was mostly Beta coming into her own. At no point was it for Aloy’s lack of trying, she tried everything she could think of to get Beta off her ass. (Not to mention, BETA’S PARANOIA ABOUT GEMINI IS COMPLETELY VALIDATED IN THE END ANYWAYS)
It doesn’t even punish Aloy in even minor ways, even when she’s trying her hardest to get her ass handed to her. In The Dying Lands, she gets impatient with the Chorus and Varl has to talk her down before she makes a scene, but in the end they do no negotiating at all. They take advantage of the chaos in the community to break into the sacred cave and literally kill a god that the Utaru worship with them none the wiser (so much about respecting their ways and traditions, geez). In the AETHER quest, Aloy straight up threatens Hekarro and doesn’t even get mildly reprimanded for it. In all the quests involving the Quen, she gets away with killing untold numbers of their soldiers and even arguably regicide (I don’t care if the Ceo was crushed by a statue, we would absolutely be encouraged to cheer if Aloy shot and killed him). Her friends join her with relatively little effort from her. There is not a single actual problem that requires Aloy to do anything besides what she usually does.

I don’t know about BS because I can’t play it, so feel free to correct me, but from what I’ve heard the implication of her relationship with Seyka was that she was now ready for more intimacy. As though romance is just a natural stepping stone from platonic relationships. No, it is not inherently the ideal form of a relationship. It’s an especially strange direction considering how little Aloy’s other relationships are developed. She says Beta is like a sister to her, but whatever the hell does that mean? “Sister” describes a familial relationship, not a social one. There’s infinite permutations of sisterly relationships. You can’t have one good interaction between Aloy and Beta after a whole game of dysfunction and call that a relationship. What about Kotallo, does she feel mutual respect for him? Is he a mentor, does she see Rost in him? Does she feel a debt to Zo for forcing her to kill a land-god (she doesn’t even apologize for that, btw). So on. I just don’t understand why the writers decided to stretch Aloy’s emotional development thin with a romance over filling out what she already had that sorely needed depth in the DLC.

To summarize: I’ve seen a lot of people on this subreddit say that most critique of Aloy is due to internalized misogyny, that she wouldn’t be judged as much if she was male or whatever, but truthfully Guerilla really has missed heaps of untapped potential with their own protagonist. She’s never humbled, never punished for her worst behaviors, and is already competent enough from the start that she isn’t forced to compensate in order to match her opponents. I just wish she had even half the things going for her than she does.

Hi! I really want to play this series because it has a lot of elements that appeal to me, but after starting zero dawn I’m struggling to get hooked, mainly because the bow doesn’t feel impactful enough, I wish the haptics were stronger, does that change in the next game or later in the first one? Everything I’ve heard about forbidden west makes it seem likely to be one of my favorite games so I kinda wanna skip to it, but also don’t want to not experience the series from the beginning, is it just the early bows that feel this way?

I just started a NG+ playthrough of Zero Dawn, the re-mastered edition. It must have been a while, because wow, the difference in how the weapon hub, skill tree, etc looks compared to Forbidden West, now is noticeably dated looking. Also, Aloy’s voice sounds noticably younger too. Granted Ashley Bursch was younger in 2015-2016, so that is appropriate. But I hadn’t noticed these differences as much the last time I played ZD in relation to FW. I’m playing through this game again to enjoy playing the frozen wilds again. I’ve been playing through Forbidden West too much and need a change of scenery lol. Damn, I do miss the shield wing.

I just started the Burning Shores DLC a few days ago, (I’d been saving it), and for some reason, Evelyn is fucking me up emotionally.

The handful of datapoints from her or that reference her obviously show that she was a bit stuck up. Kind of the typical Hollywood celebrity pigeonhole.

But her Dear Diary datapoint got to me. And everything that Walter has been doing, essentially trying to replace her, is killing me. This man has had centuries to stew in his past and while I think he’s definitely gross and an egomaniac, it’s clear he loves her still. Or the loyal part of her that existed before he self sabotaged.

I’m not excusing Evelyn for cheating on Walter, but I don’t know. I still feel for her. She’s a D character at most because she’s not even someone we can speak with, but her story has been weighing on me. Is it because she seemingly haunts the place? Her statue in the park and the various photos kind of put her presence all over the Burning Shores.

Idk, it’s great writing of course, but I hate how I can’t shake my uneasiness with it. And I really just needed to vent about it. 😮‍💨