Horizon Saga

Horizon Zero Dawn — Complete Edition

=== Setting ===
The story is set in a post-apocalyptic Western United States in the 31st century. Humans live in scattered, primitive tribes with varying levels of technological development. Their technologically-advanced predecessors are remembered as the "Old Ones". Large robotic machines dominate the Earth. For the most part, they coexist peacefully with humans, who occasionally hunt them for parts. However, a phenomenon known as the "Derangement" caused machines to become more aggressive toward humans, and caused larger and deadlier machines to appear. The surviving humans are divided into distinct cultures, ranging from the mountain-dwelling, matriarchal Nora hunter-gatherers to the Carja, an empire of desert-dwelling city builders.



Plot

Aloy is cast out from the Nora tribe at birth and raised by a fellow outcast, Rost. As a child, she obtains a "Focus", an augmented reality device that gives her special perceptive abilities. Curious about her origins, Aloy undergoes years of training to win the "Proving", a tournament that will compel the Nora tribe's matriarchs to reveal her past. Aloy wins the competition, but masked cultists suddenly attack. Rost sacrifices himself to save Aloy from the cult leader, Helis. When Aloy awakens, the matriarchs explain she was found as an infant before a sealed door within the Nora's sacred mountain. They allow Aloy to leave their lands to pursue the cultists. Aloy learns the cultists are a splinter faction called the Eclipse and that she was targeted for her resemblance to an ancient scientist named Elisabet Sobeck. Exploring the ruins of Faro Automated Solutions, Aloy discovers that the past civilisation was destroyed a thousand years ago when Faro lost control of its self-replicating, biomass-consuming military machines. Sobeck spearheaded "Zero Dawn", a project to create an automated terraforming system to eventually deactivate the machines and restore life to Earth.
Aloy is contacted by Sylens, a secretive figure interested in uncovering the fate of the ancients. He guides her to a decommissioned military base beneath the Citadel, the centre of Eclipse power. Aloy learns that Zero Dawn was an underground network of cloning facilities and databases controlled by a single artificial intelligence, GAIA. After the extinction of life, GAIA successfully deactivated the Faro machines and built her own animalistic machines to restore the biosphere. She then reseeded life on Earth using stored DNA, intending to teach the new humans not to repeat past mistakes. However, Ted Faro sabotaged the subsystem containing humanity's history (and thus his culpability for the destruction), reducing the new generation to a tribal society. Aloy also discovers that the Eclipse are secretly controlled by HADES, another of GAIA's subsystems originally designed to enact a controlled extinction if the terraforming process failed.
After obtaining a registry to open the door in the Nora mountain, Aloy is captured by Helis but escapes with Sylens's help. She returns to the Nora, helps them defeat the Eclipse, and finally unlocks the mountain's door. Inside, a recording from GAIA reveals that a transmission of unknown origin caused HADES to go rogue. GAIA attempted to stop HADES by self-destructing, but failed and lost control of her terraforming network, causing the machines to become aggressive. As a contingency, GAIA created a clone of Sobeck in the form of Aloy to one day destroy HADES and restore her functions. Aloy retrieves the master override needed to destroy HADES. Sylens admits he originally founded the Eclipse, tempted by HADES's promises of knowledge, but now realises the AI intends to reactivate the Faro machines and extinguish all life again.
Aloy, aided by her allies, defends Meridian, the capital city of the Carja kingdom, against an Eclipse siege using awakened Faro machines. She kills Helis, and fights off the corrupted machines. She stabs HADES with the master override, ending the war. Aloy journeys to Sobeck's childhood home to mourn her predecessor. In a post-credits scene, Sylens captures the fleeing entity of HADES, intending to interrogate it to find out who sent the signal that awakened it.

Horizon Forbidden West

The game continues the story of Aloy, a young hunter of the Nora tribe and a clone of the Old World scientist Elisabet Sobeck. In the six months following the defeat of HADES, Aloy has been searching fruitlessly for a working backup of GAIA to restore the planet's rapidly degrading biosphere. After she discovers that her former associate Sylens did not destroy but instead stole HADES, he contacts Aloy and asks her to continue her search in the region known as the Forbidden West.
Aloy and her friend Varl cross into the West to find the ruling Tenakth tribe amidst a civil war between Chief Hekarro and the rebel leader Regalla. Aloy tracks Sylens to a facility where she finds HADES badly damaged and permanently deletes it. She recovers a GAIA backup without its subsystems but is interrupted by a group of futuristic humans. The group, consisting of their leader Gerard Bieri, his lieutenant Tilda van der Meer, enforcer Erik Visser, and a clone of Sobeck named Beta, possesses advanced technology that renders them invulnerable. They take a second GAIA backup, while Aloy barely escapes, and passes out when Varl manages to find her.
Aloy awakens days later in the village of Plainsong, home to the Utaru tribe. Zo, a member of the Utaru, guides Aloy to a control center, where she rejoins GAIA with her subsystem, MINERVA. GAIA locates the other subsystems AETHER, DEMETER, and POSEIDON, and advises Aloy to retrieve them before attempting to capture the more advanced HEPHAESTUS. GAIA reveals that the extinction signal that triggered HADES and mutated the subsystems originated from the Sirius system; Aloy suspects that the futuristic humans sent it. She later tracks down Beta, who informs Aloy that her group is, in fact, Far Zenith, an organization of billionaire colonists who fled Earth during its global extinction, having managed to extend their natural lifespans. After their colony on Sirius collapsed, the Zeniths returned to Earth to use GAIA through Beta's genetic make-up for their own recolonization. At this point they have already acquired subsystems ELEUTHIA, ARTEMIS, and APOLLO, but Beta has stolen their GAIA backup.
Aloy recovers AETHER after helping Hekarro advance in the civil war, retrieves POSEIDON from the ruins of Las Vegas, and recovers DEMETER in San Francisco with the help of Alva, a member of the Quen, a seafaring tribe from foreign lands. Aloy and her companions then devise a plan to help GAIA trap HEPHAESTUS. Aloy, Varl and Beta manage to trap HEPHAESTUS in an inactive Cauldron, but are then attacked by the Zeniths. Erik kills Varl and recaptures Beta while Gerard steals GAIA, but Tilda double-crosses them and helps Aloy escape. Tilda explains that she was romantically involved with Elisabet Sobeck and regretted leaving her; having been inspired by Aloy, she wishes to stop Far Zenith. She further reveals that Sylens has been supporting the Tenakth rebels to use them against the Zeniths. Aloy refuses to sacrifice the Tenakth and instead defeats Regalla herself after thwarting the latter's final attack on Hekarro, forcing Sylens to reconvene with Aloy and help her formulate a new plan.
Aloy and her companions assault Far Zenith's base, while Beta releases HEPHAESTUS into the Zeniths' network, and it builds a near-endless amount of machines that tie down Far Zenith's army of drones. Aloy and her companions defeat and kill the Zeniths, including Erik and Gerard, but learn that their colony was destroyed by Nemesis, a failed mind uploading experiment they created. With Nemesis preparing to pursue them, the Zeniths fled to Earth, hoping to steal GAIA and colonize a new planet unknown to Nemesis. It sent the extinction signal to Earth to deny them that opportunity and it is en route to destroy the planet. Tilda tries to coerce Aloy into leaving Earth with her, but Aloy refuses and is forced to kill Tilda. Aloy's companions disperse to spread the warning of Nemesis while Aloy and Beta reactivate GAIA.