Horizon Zero Dawn Story Explained Part 3: Deep Lore Only The Biggest Fans Know - THE ODYSSEY & MORE

Zoe Delahunty-Light is back and this time it's with her favourite #HorizonZeroDawn lore! These niche bits of lore from the game will keep the brain of yours ticking over and give an extra bit of depth to all the Horizon Zero Dawn gameplay doubtless running through your head, from The Odyssey to why there aren't many real-life animals in the game. So if you're eager to play #HorizonForbiddenWest this video will make sure you don't miss the tiniest of reference to the lore of Zero Dawn, so what are you waiting for, Seeker? Get watching! #Eurogamer

00:00 - Get Cosy Snd Settle In
00:39 - The Odyssey
05:18 - The Turing Act
07:39 - Lightkeeper Protocol
08:50 - Why Animal Machines?
10:08 - Where Are The Real Animals?
12:00 - The Metal Flowers
13:14 - Surprising Carja Origins
14:26 - Thanks For Watching!

[eurogamer]

Hey folks, you can watch the other videos right here!

[NEKOSEI]

My first playthrough, I loved the reveal of the triangle around Elisabet's body. Collecting those metal flowers was a very memorable chore, with that detail of them being a tribute, made it all the more special.

[RevanSurik]

14:35 How funny would it be if the Carja Leaves are just an astrology magazine? xD

There's a few other bits I find particularly interesting:
- In The Frozen Wilds, you can find a bunch of audio logs left by the last two human workers at the Dam, Laura and Shelly. Not only is that one of the most adorable side stories in the whole game, but near the dam you can find a datapoint where Laura claims to have tricked Blevins (that annoying director of security of the Firebreak project) into getting lost somewhere in the snow mountains while riding a snow vehicle. Cut to the Firebreak facility, little before the Fireclaw fight, and you can find another datapoint where someone tells that Blevins' body had been found in the mountains, years after his mysterious disappearance, due to the thawing of the snow. Basically Laura avenged everyone Blevins ever screwed (which is kinda dark, but still) xD

- One of the mugs (or "vessels") you find is called "KZ", and has a logo of a red-eye robot thingie. That's a reference to Killzone, another game by Guerilla.

- Not sure if it's so secret, but that orb-like machine you find in "A Moment's Peace" (whose tampering by the Oseram causes the nearby machines to go aggro) is actually a piece of GAIA, blown away during the Gaia Prime's explosion. The Oseram themselves comment how the machine looks like it "fell from the sky", and judging by the angle it's lying, it came from the general direction of Gaia PRime (which indeed isn't too far from there).

- There's a datapoint (iirc one of Elisabet's journals) that says, after Zero Dawn's evacuation, Ted Faro went to a bunker he'd built for himself, a bunker called Thebes. Thebes was an ancient Greek city, but it was also the Hellenised name of one of ancient Egypt's most long-lived capitals. Add to that the fact Faro's name sounds a bit like Pharaoh, as well as the fact his machines all have names referencing ancient Egypt (Horus, Khopesh and Scarab), and we have our very own, albeit less smart, Ozymandias lol

- The "Forbidden West" datapoint we find near the Blazon Arch has some very interesting hints about what we may find in the next game. Other than describing the sea (as a giant lake whose waters push back those who try and cross it), it talks of deserts of blue and white sand, of grass as sharp as blades, machines as new as they're strange, people who dig in the sand only to fill it again for no apparent reason...

- Not really hard to miss, but my mind was blown when I learned that ruined Nora village we find near the Carja fort was Rost's home.

- Teersa mentions that, when Rost came back from his Death-seeking journey, he could only be brought back into the Sacred Land because a huntress broke taboo to step out of Nora frontiers to carry him herself. Said huntress had also lost her children to the same 12 bandits Rost had killed; also, by breaking taboo she too became an outcast. That is all Teersa says of her, but my personal theory is that the huntress who rescues Rost is none other than Odd Grata, who lives suspiciously close to Rost, and whom he seems to care about.

[meander]

I know it's a bit much, but I would love if you did something about the amazingly touching story held in the Vantage points. For all the times the vantages show up in videos of the game, no one talks about the story in them & the way that story is discovered by the player.

[bluecat]

"Welcome to a little treat to myself." Don't worry, this is a treat for all of us too.

[AceRide]

I'm a huge fan of the theory that some of the metal flower poems were an attempt by Demeter to warn people of the red blight/impending danger in the west. I really hope we meet them in Forbidden West, it seems like they may be one of the few subordinate functions willing to work with Aloy to fix things.

[eceidil]

I think not just Carja and Nora, but all tribes we see in the game were together in the past, because they were all released from the same cradle facility, that is, the All-Mother. I can't fully remember now but the Carja scripts we find in the game say that they came from the savage East (becasue they were released from All-Mother), they saw the transmission tower, then they've found the writings from the old ones. Also, the astronomy theme they picked up from those writings did not just influenced their city name, but also their name for the royal line as well- The Radiant Line.

[Phanthief]

To anyone who paid attention to the lore in Zero Dawn, good job.

Reason why: It is very important to the story of Forbidden West.

[hasanitoro]

The metal flowers are warnings and hidden messages by demeter of what's going on with the red blight and the land in the west, multiple poems mention storms, red head lightning, clouds, mountains winds and petals falling specifically mark A, F, E

[UGNAvalon]

If Horizon ever gets adapted into film/tv, I’d love to see a mini-sode of an Artemis team braving Faro-seiged cities in order to rescue cryogenically frozen zoo animals!

[ThomasMurch]

This video is for all the biggest fans of the game ... the Horizon Zero Dorks.

[itaftrs]

When you mentioned the "sundial book" it got me thinking of something I read about in archaeology: during the 16th century in Germany the first (as far as I know) portable sundials were made in - you guessed it - the shape of a book, compass included and everything. Maybe they took some inspiration from real-life historical objects

[tadhggoreyoneill]

One of the reasons why I love HZD so much is that for every 1 question answered another handful appear

[mark]

Zoey and Random Side Quest should team up

[harkness]

Loving all these lore vids, Zoe. You keep making 'em, I'll keep watching 'em!

[dekkert]

Excellent video - can't get enough Horizon lore l. Thanks. I always had an (unlikely) personal pet theory that the signal that caused the derangement came from the Odyssey.

[TheRedAvenger]

I absolutely love how deep the story and lore is in Horizon. I’m looking forward to more reveals in Forbidden West. Currently on a re-run and just finished the Grave Hoard. What I was wondering is that up until the last video I had no idea that the Corrupter, Deathbringer and Metal Devil were called the Scarab, Khopesh and Horus. Also that Aloy says “Another Khopesh, and it’s moving.” But I don’t remember this on a previous playthrough. I’m wondering if the lore is more revealed in dialogue the more datapoints you uncover because I may have missed the holograms on the first playthrough. In Maker’s End. This time I am being thorough and looking in every single room and these demonstration holograms are off the beaten track as you can go straight for the elevator shaft and miss them. Also Sylens starts using the terms from then on and in The Grave Hoard the audio datapoints mention Horus’ and Titans which I would have glossed over at the time. I wonder if anybody else had come across this?

The thing that amazes me the most though is how they not only justify the existence of the machines but give an utterly plausible explanation for their existence. Zero Dawn has probably one of the cleverest, believable back stories I’ve come across in any media. AI plus War Machines plus biomass fuel plus a glitch that makes them go independent and adhere to their core programming laws is a frightening prospect. If only you’d built that back door, Ted.

The tribes interest me, I can see where both the Nora and the Carja come from although I would like an origin of the names. The Oseram are a bit of a mystery as are the Banuk. Looks like we’ll find out more about the Utaru in Forbidden West.

Anyway. Great video Zoe. I’ve been devouring these like a swarm of angry killer robots 🙂

[Leave_Angry]

Your lore series are always great. This one in particular has been an incredible refresher on the events so far, thank you for that! Can't wait for Forbidden West!

[LacroixboiMarx]

Georgia guidestones are so cool. Another great lord video. Gettin me so hype for HFW.

[Fafhrd]

The Leaves of the Old Ones are explicitly a book or other printed material, as there's a readable that mentions that the 'original' Leaves had long rotted into dust.

I suspect that they were a high school or college level astronomy text book. We know that the Sacred Land is very close to the US Air Force Academy and a bunch of other museums, so it's likely in the early days after being forced to leave the Cradle facility that the first couple generations probably did a lot of exploring of the more easily accessible ruins before the taboos were invented and might have found some surviving books and magazines. Then in the thousand odd years since, the story of the schism changed in much the same way the story of the Faro Plague did.