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.

THE FROZEN WILDS — EXPANSION STORY

Aloy travels to The Cut, a territory of the Banuk tribe, after hearing word of dangerous machines appearing and a mountain belching smoke. There, arriving at the settlement of Song's Edge, she learns from a local chieftain named Aratak that the Banuk have been attempting to battle a Daemon on the mountain, Thunder's Drum, which is apparently the cause of the machines in the area attacking the Banuk. However, their first attack had been a failure, and their shaman, Ourea, had disappeared afterwards. Aloy searches for Ourea, coming across strange robotic towers which corrupt any nearby machines. She finds Ourea in an Old World facility that had been converted into a Banuk shrine, and is housing an AI they call the Spirit that the Banuk have been worshiping as a god. Aloy is briefly able to establish communications with the Spirit, which warns Ourea that the Daemon is blocking its transmissions before being cut off. Aloy and Ourea agree to work together to save the Spirit. However, Aloy must first oust Aratak and replace him as chieftain, since he refuses to lead any more attacks on Thunder's Drum. It is also revealed that Ourea and Aratak are siblings.

Aloy challenges Aratak, but Daemonic machines ambush them during the challenge. They both team up to fight off the machines, and impressed by Aloy's skills, Aratak concedes leadership to her. Aloy, Ourea, and Aratak head for Thunder's Drum. They infiltrate the Old World facility built inside the mountain where Aloy discovers that the Spirit is actually CYAN, a highly advanced AI designed to prevent the Yellowstone Caldera from erupting. Traveling further inside, they discover that the Daemon has corrupted much of the facility already, but CYAN suggests using lava from the caldera to destroy the infected areas while preserving the facility. It is also revealed that the Daemon is in fact HEPHAESTUS, another of GAIA's subordinate functions. The group fights through HEPHAESTUS' defenses and Ourea sacrifices herself to override CYAN's core, allowing it to transfer to an auxiliary data center and initiate destruction of the facility. Aloy and Aratak are able to narrowly escape. Aloy returns to the Banuk Shrine, where CYAN has transferred herself to, and CYAN provides additional information about the Old World but warns that HEPHAESTUS is still active somewhere and seeks to build an army of machines designed specifically to kill humans for some unknown purpose, which is why it tried to seize control of CYAN and its facilities. Aratak thanks Aloy for all of the help she has provided to the Banuk, and Aloy puts him back in charge of his people before parting ways.