Horizon 2: Forbidden West

Vanessa

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Mist

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After putting over 100 hours into this, going back and playing games at 170+ fps on my PC feels fucking weird.
 
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sakkath

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Just finished it myself, did every achievement except the racing one because I don't enjoy them. There's no achievement for playing the card/chess game, which I barely tried because I don't like it either.

Game is really excellent, the combat is absolutely top notch. Great story too, I didn't see the end coming and there were some pretty amazing twists and turns along the way.

The main mechanic critique I would have is the inability to fight underwater. Having to rush around hiding in kelp when I could kill the burrowers with one heavy attack to the eyeball is pretty lame.

I experienced one major bug in my whole playthrough. The last cauldron, the one where you have to pump water in and out of it. One spot where I had to move a crate and then jump off it, I got stuck falling forever between the crate and the wall. Since it's in a cauldron you can't fast travel out, so I just reloaded the last save which was about 1 minute earlier when I'd activated a pump. That save loaded me under the world in water, swam around a while trying to find a way out but I was stuck inside geometry trying to climb up, and would easily fall forever and hit the world boundry. Loaded a few times seeing if it would fix it, nope. Had brief fears that my game was ruined since I haven't created any manual save and was fully relying on autosaves, but luckily the game creates a new file every time it saves, so I just had to go back to an earlier save and lost 2-3 minutes of progress, whew!

So I'm guessing nemesis will be H:3, and H:FW DLC may be about the Quen and how the hell they had a Ted Faro clone
 
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Mist

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So I'm guessing nemesis will be H:3, and H:FW DLC may be about the Quen and how the hell they had a Ted Faro clone
It's my understanding that he was not a clone, hence why he couldn't open the Omega door (also the voice is totally wrong and definitely not Ted Faro) and that he was just a rich fanboy claiming to have Faro's essence. That said, I definitely think the Quen have a big part to play in either the DLC or the next game. I am also really surprised they killed off Faro in this game; I always assumed finding Thebes and dealing with Faro would be a major plot point for the third game. With Thebes found and the Far Zeniths all dead, that really only leaves Elysium as the only place in the lore where any remaining old ones of merit could be living. Also shocked that they killed off Varl, a fan favorite that seemed like they were setting up for a spinoff game or something, until, welp...
 
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RobXIII

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I appreciate the spoiler tags lol. I'm still angry at that one shithead here who spoilered Heavy Rain when it was brand new :p (can't believe it's been 12 years o_O)

"playing games at 170+ fps on my PC"

I replayed HZD on my PC for that same reason. I'm tempted to not wait for this to come to PC, does it run smooth enough on PS5 for you?
 

sakkath

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the Far Zeniths all dead
Are they though? There's a huge spaceship in orbit with god knows what on it. Also never know what else might be out there. The original Elizabet and whoever else might be in cryo somewhere since we don't know for sure what happened to her when she left Elysium right? Unless there was something in HZD I forgot.
 

Mist

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Are they though? There's a huge spaceship in orbit with god knows what on it. Also never know what else might be out there. The original Elizabet and whoever else might be in cryo somewhere since we don't know for sure what happened to her when she left Elysium right? Unless there was something in HZD I forgot.
It's literally the ending and final log entry in the first game:
Exploring the Zenith's ship will either be one of the DLCs or the intro to the third game I think, or maybe a late game quest in the third game to retrieve something from it.
 

sakkath

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There could be any number of other old ones out there who managed to build bunkers and also either survive through developing immortality like Far Zenith or Ted Faro (kind of), or setting up future generations some how. The world is a big place and we only really know the status of the western part of the US. Just the introduction of the weird Quen expanded the world view a decent amount, and they only came from... Hawaii I guess.. or somewhere in the West Pacific.
 

Qhue

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Getting everyone on the planet on-board with the situation will be the a good chunk of the third game if they don't cover some of that with DLC.

Do we know the status of the moon? It's entirely possible a lunar colony survived the Faro Plague but potentially in some sort of dark ages analog where they are just barely subsisting and treading water with no actual advancement in 1000 years.
 

sakkath

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Do we know the status of the moon? It's entirely possible a lunar colony survived the Faro Plague but potentially in some sort of dark ages analog where they are just barely subsisting and treading water with no actual advancement in 1000 years.
There was some talk of there being a mining colony on the moon pre plague so yeah that could be an option too.

Another out-there, alternative option: the whole Nemesis thing could be a red herring since it's purpose is stated as being about eradicating the Far Zenith who imprisoned it and they're (possibly) all dead so maybe Aloy can just tell it "Hey I did your job for you so you can go home now!"[/spoiler[
 

Mist

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There could be any number of other old ones out there who managed to build bunkers and also either survive through developing immortality like Far Zenith or Ted Faro (kind of), or setting up future generations some how. The world is a big place and we only really know the status of the western part of the US. Just the introduction of the weird Quen expanded the world view a decent amount, and they only came from... Hawaii I guess.. or somewhere in the West Pacific.
The Quen are from China, hence the talk about the great delta flooding back home, though they probably also settled or at least setup a colony in Hawaii. The Quen were both very backwards and very advanced compared to even the Carja.
Getting everyone on the planet on-board with the situation will be the a good chunk of the third game if they don't cover some of that with DLC.

Do we know the status of the moon? It's entirely possible a lunar colony survived the Faro Plague but potentially in some sort of dark ages analog where they are just barely subsisting and treading water with no actual advancement in 1000 years.
It would not shock me if the moon plays a part in a DLC or the third game, as there's at least two references to the moon in the companion dialogue, at one point Erend says "So we're now fighting Old Ones from the stars now, what's next, wizards from the moon?" or something like that.
 

SimSimSalabim

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Wizards from the moon is some kind of reference to Destiny. I’ve never played it, but I read that somewhere.

One thing I didn’t like that nobody seems to comment on (so maybe it’s just me) was a Ted Faro retcon.

In HZD he was a trillionaire entrepreneur who made some apocalyptically poor decisions. He wasn’t necessarily evil. After he caused the end of the world he had a mental breakdown that ultimately led to him killing the alphas and destroying Apollo because the knowledge was the disease and he didn’t want future mankind to repeat mistakes.

In forbidden west it was changed to him just being a straight up evil megalomaniac with a god complex. The in game notes even say he destroyed Apollo so future humans wouldn’t know he was responsible, but that is never stated as his motivation in ZD.
 

Mist

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One thing I didn’t like that nobody seems to comment on (so maybe it’s just me) was a Ted Faro retcon.

In HZD he was a trillionaire entrepreneur who made some apocalyptically poor decisions. He wasn’t necessarily evil. After he caused the end of the world he had a mental breakdown that ultimately led to him killing the alphas and destroying Apollo because the knowledge was the disease and he didn’t want future mankind to repeat mistakes.

In forbidden west it was changed to him just being a straight up evil megalomaniac with a god complex. The in game notes even say he destroyed Apollo so future humans wouldn’t know he was responsible, but that is never stated as his motivation in ZD.
lol what

Clearly we should always take evil people's word for why they say they commit murder. Listen and believe psychopaths!

We now know that Ted Faro had no intention of dying. He intended to be around when "Liz's children" walked the earth again. Once he knew effective immortality was a possibility, he killed the Alphas and purged Apollo so that when he returned he could be heralded rather than reviled. It's not a retcon at all, since it's completely consistent with his actions, and also consistent with the reactions of the characters, Aloy and Sylens both assumed in the first game that he purged Apollo to hide his mistakes, they just didn't know about his immortality plan, though it is hinted a few times in the logs from the original game that people were working on stasis/immortality experiments. That's why I always assumed Faro would either be the villain or get some shot at redemption in the third game but clearly they ended that. They did a good job avoiding being predictable at least.
 

SimSimSalabim

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lol what

Clearly we should always take evil people's word for why they say they commit murder. Listen and believe psychopaths!

We now know that Ted Faro had no intention of dying. He intended to be around when "Liz's children" walked the earth again. Once he knew effective immortality was a possibility, he killed the Alphas and purged Apollo so that when he returned he could be heralded rather than reviled. It's not a retcon at all, since it's completely consistent with his actions, and also consistent with the reactions of the characters, Aloy and Sylens both assumed in the first game that he purged Apollo to hide his mistakes, they just didn't know about his immortality plan, though it is hinted a few times in the logs from the original game that people were working on stasis/immortality experiments. That's why I always assumed Faro would either be the villain or get some shot at redemption in the third game but clearly they ended that. They did a good job avoiding being predictable at least.
Well, there is a difference between taking a villainous character at face value and taking the story telling devices at face value. This is a world where seemingly every important old world person kept their inner most thoughts stored as digital journal monologues and left sitting around for anyone to find. It’s not oh I can’t believe Ted Faro lied to me, its that the storytellers didn’t hit me over the head with Faro being dishonest, so I assume they’re telling me what I should know. And these are not storytellers that are afraid of being too on the nose, they do it constantly.

But I guess it’s not so much retcon as it is ambiguity. Either way I found the HZD Ted Faro that I partially manufactured in my head to be way more interesting of a character than the one dimensional Ted Faro presented in HFW. While I found the Thebes ending to be slightly lame I’m glad they didn’t try to bring him in as a main antagonist, he is better off dead and in the past.

One thing I wish was that Gaia was active after the game is over instead of existing in an initializing state. I want to ask questions about the current state of the world without having to go to Google. It looks like we have 7 of 9 sub functions. Which are we missing? Do we have Apollo or not? I assumed it was on the orbiting space station, but Sylens talks like we went and got it. What is Nemesis comprised of? Why is it still coming here even though far zenith is wiped out? All stuff I can look up online or infer, but I’d like the game to tell me. Hopefully they do a DLC that brings some of this to the front.
 

sakkath

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It looks like we have 7 of 9 sub functions. Which are we missing? Do we have Apollo or not?
Hades (destroyed) and Hephaestus (released again as part of the ending sequence) are the two that are missing. They have Apollo, you can see it's logo in the 7 subfunctions attached to Gaia when Beta boots her up in the ending cutscene.
 
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SimSimSalabim

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Hades (destroyed) and Hephaestus (released again as part of the ending sequence) are the two that are missing. They have Apollo, you can see it's logo in the 7 subfunctions attached to Gaia when Beta boots her up in the ending cutscene.
Ah good on you. I had a brain lapse on hades being erased and being the second missing one. Apollo had me confused because i was assuming they left it on the far zenith station.
 

Ambiturner

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No.

The Elden Ring story that YOU have created in your mind based on the various bits and bobs that have been handed to you may be good, but that's the same sort of story someone creates based on the bio blurb on the back of a G.I. Joe figure...

This is just some JJ Abrams mystery-box bullshit where you just throw things out there and count on the creativity of the audience to "fill in the gaps" AKA do the work for you.

This isn't respecting the audience, it's making fun of the audience because you are relying on them viewing your half-thought-out edgelord non sequiturs as being the work of an auteur rather than a hack.

This isn't epic story telling. It's some taglines on Hot Topic T-shirt rack masquerading as narrative.

The only true value has been in making predictions about how pretentiously predictable "story beats" will be.

They fought and they fell in love but then he was tragically cursed and fell in love with someone else. She went nuts and is nursing a seed of reality like an infant...

Meanwhile we have Godfrey, Godfrey, Godrick and Rennala, Renalia, Ricotta etc idiocy.

you-talk-like-a-fag-and-your-shits-all-retarded.jpg
 
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Folanlron

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Wizards from the moon is some kind of reference to Destiny. I’ve never played it, but I read that somewhere.

One thing I didn’t like that nobody seems to comment on (so maybe it’s just me) was a Ted Faro retcon.

In HZD he was a trillionaire entrepreneur who made some apocalyptically poor decisions. He wasn’t necessarily evil. After he caused the end of the world he had a mental breakdown that ultimately led to him killing the alphas and destroying Apollo because the knowledge was the disease and he didn’t want future mankind to repeat mistakes.

In forbidden west it was changed to him just being a straight up evil megalomaniac with a god complex. The in game notes even say he destroyed Apollo so future humans wouldn’t know he was responsible, but that is never stated as his motivation in ZD.


It is heavily implied that he goes off the deep end, after deleting APOLLO, and killing the Alpha's..

It's why he starts killing people who dig thru his personal files inside THEBES, cause if they knew the truth they would have probably all threw him into the geothermal generator under the bunker. If they did it early enough they probably could have lived longer, sense it seems like he didn't setup the self-destruct stuff till much later after the bunker was sealed.

But he did get too see "Liz's Children" walk the earth, even though he was a mass of unknown cysts/tumors..

But the fossil version of APOLLO? Did he actually destroy that version ? I guess sense they have access too the beta build on the FZ ship(But it is a beta build of it..) it doesn't matter.

DLC will probably be about capturing Heph
Sense as even Gaia say's she needs that access in order too correct the bio-sphere
 
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Mist

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Yeah, unless Nemesis is going to take over all the Cauldrons at the start of the 3rd game, kinda need Heph out and about to make the game work.