Lurker > Panthera

You paired Chrom with Olivia, so I'm assuming you're trying to recruit their son right now? The chapters for recruiting children get stronger and stronger enemies based on the order the parents are recruited in (so Morgan's chapter is easy since Robin joins right away, Lissa's kids chapter is almost as easy, while Olivia and Cherche's kids have chapters with very strong enemies), so grabbing certain kids early can be tough
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Meow!

And then Pun learned that it's possible for the same woman to give birth to more than one child in her life, which he realized in retrospect explained a lot about how humanity was able to continue existing

:)
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Meow!

Jakyl25 posted...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1022097879253635072?s=21

What kind of a lawyer would tape a client? So sad! Is this a first, never heard of it before? Why was the tape so abruptly terminated (cut) while I was presumably saying positive things? I hear there are other clients and many reporters that are taped - can this be so? Too bad!

I continue to marvel at his obtuse use of parentheticals

I like the use of "presumably", personally. He's not even sure what material was cut, but by god is he going to insist it must have been something that would make him look good
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Meow!

Normally I'm pretty quick to point out how creepy the relationships in video games can be, but in this case I actually don't think it's weird, Robin met her adult self a few times before she was even born, any desire to "hit that" would have started before he had any reason to think it was wrong
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Meow!

The recurring theme of her supports is that it really isn't like she has any particular reason for not knowing how to have normal interactions with people besides that she doesn't care about other people as anything other than tools for her experiments and general amusement, unless they're Robin in which case she's just a creepy stalker because reasons
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Meow!

Oh. I'm not entirely sure I was ever behind an already hostile Corruptor at any point <_< They seem to track you extremely well once they know you're around.
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Thinking back on this, I realize I literally never made sense of how Corruptors work, gameplay wise. Never did notice where that heat sink weakpoint was despite using fire on them constantly, never figured out what's up with the bonkers targeting on their jump attack, never figured out what their projectile attacks are even doing beyond shooting in my general vicinity, I just kind of blindly failed at them all game long and the more time passed the quicker the fights went <_<
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Meow!

They have very little in common besides hair colour <_<

Very different stats, classes and personality.
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That harbor mission is super silly on Lunatic and pretty much the part where you start realizing how poorly balanced the game really is
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I hope Braun cashes in successfully soon because honestly he's already a ways past his expiry date for me and I'd rather they do something with him while I can still enjoy it to at least some extent
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On normal the reinforcements don't act on the turn they spawn IIRC

Even on higher difficulties it's usually not much of a problem, there's like one map where the reinforcements are really dickish
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Heroic Bigpun posted...

So how is Olivia as a unit? I feel compelled to use her now that she's chroms wife

She's a dancer. Dancer = good.
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There end up being a lot more than 25 chapters to actually do if you pair up all the girls

I think Chrom/Maribelle is good in terms of how strong the kids end up after grinding, but not so hot without grinding. On Normal difficulty it really doesn't matter much though. Unless you're playing Lunatic you can do whatever pairings you feel like without it hurting anything
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You know, I hate to fall for marketing shenanigans and all but the sequel hook in the ending worked like a charm on me. Spent the entire credits thinking about how annoyed I am they never explained what exactly caused the signal that led to Gaia getting messed up, then they drop a cutscene in that basically says "Hey, we'll explain it to you next time, also you know that guy you never fully trusted, yep there's still reason to not fully trust him, and also have you ever thought about actually seeing one of these big Horus things in action, 'cause I'm not saying you will or anything but it's sitting here you know..." and now I want it.
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You know, I definitely did find myself thinking at times that the Banuk tribe didn't get much coverage despite being referenced a fair bit here and there...I don't think I'll get it in the super near future (ie while this topic is still active, probably) but maybe at some point if I come back for a second playthrough I might pick up the DLC to go along with it
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What is the Frozen Wilds all about anyway? How long is it, is it mostly combat or is there a story (and a present day one or is there stuff about the past too), etc. DLC generally has to be pretty appealing to make me want to spend money on it
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XIII_rocks posted...

Oh wow, I didn't think you liked it that much!

It's funny, if people had asked how I was enjoying it you'd have known, but since no one did I just kind of kept rambling, and left to my own devices, my writing style tends to focus mainly on either dwelling on negative things, (bad) jokes or matter of fact statements. I'm usually the type to complain the whole time I play a game about everything that bugs me, then look back on it fondly, so the fact that I seemed neutral a lot instead of negative is actually a sign I was hooked <_<

XIII_rocks posted...

Yeah. I was surprised she went that hard, but it was so great and satisfying. Helis is far from an iconic villain but god he's a bastard.

Yeah, he was a pretty generic concept for a villain but quite well executed, only real problem I had with him is he was absent from the plot for such a long time, even when you were fighting the Eclipse they started seeming like just an obstacle rather than anything important until fairly late when they got tied back into the story. And that final scene was legit amazing.

IfGodCouldDie posted...

Did you do the dlc?

No, I generally don't buy DLC unless it's a "Complete Edition"/"Game of the Year" edition type thing that I buy. And in this case, I bought a used copy of the original release of the game...and then like two days later the store I got it from had a used copy of the Complete Edition version for the same damn price lol.
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XIII_rocks posted...

Murphiroth posted...

I always took Ted deleting Apollo to be him trying to make sure no one in the future would know the end of the world was his fault and the whole "it'll poison future generations" thing was his way of rationalizing that.

IIRC the game kind of implies it and it's well within what we see of his character.

Yeah this. The guilt of what he had done drove him half-mad as well. I think the audio logs throughout the mission but before the final hologram showed his descent into madness very well, especially once Sobeck was dead and thus unable to keep him in check

This is why everyone agrees on the one universal truth: fuck Ted Faro

Alright so to get back to this, I think my problem is I was worried when Faro was first introduced that he was just going to be a boring evil dude who doomed the world for little reason beyond being a boring evil dude, and I liked the fact that he ended up not seeming evil in any deliberate sense, just a guy who didn't think through the consequences of the work he was doing and was suitably horrified when he finally realized what he's brought about. So to have him turn around and fuck the world over more knowingly kind of undermines that for me.

The thing is, I can see the logic behind a character arc where he goes mad from guilt and eventually gets paranoid that knowledge will make people follow in his foot steps, but he's a guy we see a couple of hologram recordings of total, which isn't enough time to show that in a way that really resonates. And the fact that he outright killed the Alphas just doesn't seem to fit the character at all, it didn't really serve any purpose (given how vast an undertaking Apollo was, a handful of people in a sealed bunker couldn't hope to replicate it from scratch) beyond just making his scumbaggery intentional when it had always seemed unintentional previously.
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And then it was over

We visit Avad to warn him of the imminent threat, and travel around talking to a ton of familiar faces, people we've worked with in main or side quests before who have come to help out. Then it's time to sleep (in Olin's old apartment, of all places) before the final battle.

Things get off to quite the start, with an army of Deathbringers breaking holes in the walls and gates, but more to the point, Helis and some minions burst in beneath our position, and Aloy heads down to finally be rid of him for good. A pretty tough battle ensues and Aloy finally avenges Rost and co in a badass scene, I picked the "nice" option with trepidation that it would end up too soft, but instead Aloy answers Helis' lament at not actually being a chosen one by pointing out that nothing that was going on was destined, all the death and destruction for nothing because of his choice to serve a power he barely understands. She tells him to face the sun before stabbing him in the throat. Amazing scene.

We hurry down to the ridge and find ourselves beset from all sides by an army of corrupted machines backed up by Deathbringers and Corruptors. Fortunately we have some Oseram heavy weapons to help out, these things are basically rapid fire grenade launchers and they make short work of most enemies, but the sheer number of enemies makes for a tough fight. Especially when the Corrupted Stormbird shows up. Holy shit if it weren't for those fancy cannons that would have been impossible. The battle ends with rubble collapsing and taking Aloy out for a while, though not before she sees a Deathbringer dragging Hades along with it. She wakes up to follow, cutting down a couple of machines before seeing that Hades has begun its transmission, waking up Deathbringers across the map. We hurry up to the Spire, meet Erend, Varl the badass and Sona who are ready to follow us, and together we head up for our final battle.

Hades calls a Deathbringer to defend it, which is accompanied by everything imaginable as the fight goes on. I feel like this Deathbringer has much more health than any previous ones, it took insane punishment to bring that thing down. Corruptors and Ravagers and Longlegs and probably some more things I'm forgetting joined the fray, all while the Deathbringer fired away its steady stream of machine guns and missiles, and it took a ton of resources, but in the end they were finally all destroyed. Aloy approaches Hades and activates the master override, and just like that, it's over. The Faro war machines woken by Hades deactivate and everything is good.

In the ending, Aloy heads off to find Elizabet Sobeck's old home where she went to die after sealing herself out of Gaia Prime, listening to one of her audio logs we had recovered but not yet fully decoded along the way. Everything ends on a nice, pleasant note...until after the credits, where Hades seems to briefly reactive to send out a signal, which seems to lead to Sylens capturing Hades. He has more information he wants to find out, like the identity of who he calls the Masters, the ones who sent the signal that activated Hades in the first place (throughout the credits, this was my main question actually, why Hades got turned on and what sent the signal that made Gaia lose control). As the camera pans out, we see he's standing by the remains of a Horus...now there's a sequel hook for you.

And that's Horizon Zero Dawn. I'll probably do a more detailed write up later of my overall thoughts, but I'll give you a preview by saying I'm pretty confident in saying this is going into my top ten games of all time. Maybe top five even. So for everyone who has been reading, thanks for joining me on this little project. It's been a hell of a ride.
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Well that was a bit shorter than expected. Probably because I'm not quite done yet!

Heading up the mountain, we discover the facility is partially intact, partially broken down. Sylens greets us via hologram, revealing he's had a workshop up here for ages as he's tried to get inside this place. We go through a lot of wandering, climbing and hear a lot of info about how the Alphas (the leaders of each division of Project Zero Dawn) were living out their lives and trying to get the finishing touches on the project complete. Then it turns out there was some sort of mistake with the sealing of the facility, and it would allow the swarm of Faro robots to detect the place. The only way to fix it was to go outside and seal it manually, which would be a death sentence for whoever did it. And while the rest of the group was arguing, Elizabet went out and did herself, unsurprisingly.

And then we find out why Apollo (the cumulative knowledge of humanity) was never delivered to the people in the Cradle facilities...because Ted Faro decided it would poison the minds of the future people and so he sabotaged it. And also killed the Alphas, because why not at that point. Congrats Horizon, you just went from having Ted Faro be an interesting villainous figure who fucked up the world but is human enough to be horrified at the consequences...to having him seem like a nonsense caricature who just does random evil shit because he's the villain and the writers couldn't conceive of a villain who doesn't toss in some pointless evil shit here and there even if it doesn't fit the character. Hooray for stupid cartoon villains.

Anyway, we get the Master Override that will allow us to destroy Hades, and then climbing out, we meet Sylens in person and learn his full story. He is the guy who discovered Hades in the first place, and worked with it for a while because it offered him knowledge in return. When the Shadow Carja were cast out of Meridian, he took advantage of the situation to introduce their leaders to Hades, thus establishing the Eclipse. Sylens apparently did feel some guilt at one point when he first saw the old war machines being dug up, but not enough to actually leave. He only departed when, upon getting the Focus network up on running, he used a back door in the programming he had put in just in case to overhear Hades ordering him killed (guess he outlived his usefulness) and so he ran away.

He also revealed that the Spire, the tower Meridian is built around, is part of the system Gaia used in the past to send the signal that would shut down the robot swarms once it cracked their deactivation codes, and Hades is out to take control of it so he can use it to reactive the old robots and use them wipe out all life and start again. It presumably is unaware Gaia is no longer functional enough to actually restart things again, or maybe it's just gone totally rogue and doesn't care.

So. Off to Meridian, for what I assume will be the final battle with the Eclipse/Shadow Carja. I don't know if they'll drag Hades along with them or if I'll be able to destroy it from the Spire somehow or if I'll have to hunt it down, but either way I feel like it's pretty safe to say the next update you get will be once I've finished the game (watch something crazy happens to prove me wrong now)
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A surprisingly uneventful trip north ensues. I say that because I came across a pair of Thunderjaws wandering together, saw a Stormbird in the distance, saw another Stormbird that I passed somewhat close to (man you can see Stormbirds and Thunderjaws from a mile away), saw two Longlegs and a Sawtooth fighting some bandits (the bandits won, oddly enough), came across another Thunderjaw with some Longlegs, saw some Snapmaws, passed by a Behemoth convoy...and yet a single Scrapper is all I actually fought. Hooray? That brings me to what seems like the last campfire before I head on up to what I assume will be either the last or second last part of the game (just a matter of whether everything finishes off up here or if we go back to Meridian/Sunfall to settle the Carja civil war down there as well, unless I'm wrong and the plot manages to find even more for me to do). This might be another stretch where I forego the detailed summary of events because I'm too caught up in it to take a break...

Well, first up I have to climb up and deal with some Stalkers. Haven't seen those in ages, only ever killed the one that showed up on that one side quest way back when. Waaaayyyy back when...these things are no slouches when you have to deal with multiple. Looks like kind of a long walk to my destination so I guess I will be providing some detail as I go along for now. There seem to be some motion detecting mines on the ground that shoot up flares when I go nearby (or hit them with a rock or arrow), I guess those are there to make it harder to just sneak past the entire encounter?

A snowstorm begins as we climb up some conveniently placed handholds (got to love these yellow poles just stuck everywhere I need to go, don't know where I'd be without them), and it looks like there's Glinthawks to deal with. Yay. Okay several Glinthawks and two Ravagers and some Redeye Watchers. That could have gone a lot smoother, didn't see just how many enemies there were before I alerted them. Turned what should have been a nice slow shooting gallery into a frantic scramble. Still quite a ways to go, I'm going to assume there will probably be at least two more encounters before I get inside this place...and then probably Eclipse or something shows up once I do. At least there's a vantage along the way for me to collect. But before I can get to that, I come up a cliff, and...Stormbird time. I had a feeling one of these would appear before too long.

Holy every lasting shit that thing was brutal. Forget the Thunderjaw, forget the Deathbringer, THIS thing is a monster. Also it makes sounds that remind me of Legiana in Monster Hunter World, but that's neither here nor there. Seems to be easily lit on fire, but it doesn't crash like Glinthawks do nor does it take much damage from it, and the rest of its parts seem to take an incredible number of hits to actually break. Endless HP, hits like a truck, leaves huge area of effect pools down behind it, has nasty melee attacks even on the ground...wow. Aloy even comments after that she hopes that's the biggest guard Gaia has, and I agree whole heartedly (and the machine catalogue suggests it is, at least!). Hopefully that was the last encounter up here before whatever awaits me inside my destination.

Well, going to collect this vantage and then head on in. If this is the endgame, it looks like I'll be finished with this game fairly soon.
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IfGodCouldDie posted...

What is Rost's story?

Some people from outside Nora land came attacked a village and took some hostages, for reasons that were never discovered. They were tracked, but they killed a hostage whenever the Nora got too close. Eventually they left Nora territory, but they killed their remaining hostages when they did and left the bodies just outside the border, knowing the Nora taboo against leaving the Sacred Lands would prevent the bodies from being recovered. Rost was one of the braves tracking them, and his daughter was one of the victims. He ended up choosing to do some old Nora ritual to be a "Death Seeker", someone they believe has left his spirit behind in All-Mother Mountain and can thus allow his body and mind to go outside Nora territory to die in the process of seeking vengeance.

He ultimately succeeded in hunting down and killing the attackers, but was badly injured in the process. He dragged himself back to Nora land in the hopes of dying as close to home as possible, but someone who had also lost family in the attack saw him and broke taboo to cross the border to drag him back and eventually nurse him back to death. A Death Seeker isn't supposed to be allowed back, but the Matriarchs settled on a compromise with him, where he would promise to never speak of what happened and be allowed to live on as an outcast. The Matriarchs eventually gave Aloy to him because they trusted he would raise her to follow Nora tradition, since he wasn't an outcast due to some sort of crime but rather because of a decision he made out of his sincere belief in the Nora way.
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Moving further up I can hear some metallic stomping sounds, which remind me the Deathbringers although this doesn't seem to be quite the same sound. Some cultists and a Corrupted Scrapper go down, and looking up the hill with the power of PURPLEVISION I can see what I think is making that sound...a Corrupted Thunderjaw. Oh man, the game's pulling out the big guns on me. There's going to be a Corrupted Stormbird at some time too, isn't there? And I've still never even killed one of those so I'll little idea how to fight it...welp. Maybe it won't happen, but I assume it will. This Thunderjaw I at least know how to fight, if I can face it down without any other enemies noticing I feel pretty confident I can handle it without too much trouble. Unfortunately, it's surrounded by Eclipse, but as I get a bit closer to try to start picking them off, a cutscene plays. Sona and Varl are here and they're brought some reinforcements, waiting for their moment to strike...which they decide is right now. Epic battle time? Epic battle time.

That got uglier than I would have liked it to, mainly because with all the dead bodies and the heavy weapons dropped by two Eclipse guys, the Disc Launchers were too hard to actually find once they'd been shot off so I had to take that Thunderjaw down without using its weapons against it. Took a lot of damage but in the end, we won. Varl gives us a heads up on how badly the Nora have been hurt and also informs us Matriarch Teersa (remember her?) decided to ignore the taboo about non-Matriarchs entering the mountain in order to let people take shelter inside. Good old Teersa, not being an idiot. The other one, Lansra, objected but that's to be expected. Now time to head inside the mountain and see what we can learn...and probably also have a confrontation with the Matriarchs over the fact that we know their sacred mountain is actually home to one of Cradle sites from Zero Dawn, and thus a lot more mechanical than they'd probably like.

Well, the Matriarch business goes pretty smoothly, and we head inside. Seems like the facility had some serious problems that prevented it from working properly, and it eventually dumped people into the outside world only partially prepared. Looks like it at least worked out in the end though, and it certainly explains how the Nora came to view the mountain as a goddess. Then the big reveal...Gaia was forced to deactivate itself as a precautionary measure against some sort of mysterious virus that set all its subroutines running amok. However, Hades seemed to think that went against its role and tried to prevent it, which I guess explains why its still active. We need to head somewhere to try to reboot Gaia to get everything back under control. Oh, and Aloy was designed by Gaia in its final moments to be almost an exact clone of Elizabet Sobeck so she'd be able to enter the various DNA identity locked facilities, a reveal that shocks her and leads to more douchebaggery from Sylens.

On the way out, the Nora pretty much start worshiping Aloy, who gets pretty frustrated at the quick turnaround from the days when they shunned her as an outcast. She chews them out for it, Varl asks how he can help, and it was agreed that those who want to help her will be made Seekers so they can go to Meridian, presumably to form an alliance against the Shadow Carja and their efforts to help Hades fuck up the world. The Nora continue to be pretty worshipful of Aloy, which I guess she just decides to put up with?

We also learn Rost's story. This post is getting too full as it is so all I'll say is I didn't see it coming, I was expecting something related to the main plot instead. Kind of interesting, and yet another reason to think the Nora are kind of bozos.

Anyway. Off to "The Bitter Climb" to find Gaia PRIME and try to reboot it and get the world to unfuck itself before its too late
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Alright, I guess it's time to go help the Nora, those people who I totally haven't gone ages without interacting with at all.

Our journey begins with a bit of traveling to stock up on medicine, then it's homeward we go. Unable to teleport directly into Nora territory, I go to a campfire outside one of the gates and immediately spawn next to a Corruptor. That was fair, game. It goes down pretty easy though, especially since a Watcher is all the help it had. Signs of a battle are everywhere here, wonder just how much chaos will await further in? Walking inside I immediately stumble across a Deathbringer and some buddies, so this is probably not going to be just one big battle at the end of a casual stroll, but rather a grind to even get close to my destination. The Deathbringer is accompanied by at least one Corruptor and some other dudes, so that's...a pretty nasty fight that I'm not sure I want a part of when I can just slip by it and pick off some cultists in the nearby town to clear an easier path.

Actually it turns out the smoke from all the fires (plus the rain) make seeing enemies at long range very difficult, so cleaning out the dudes is tough...and unnecessary, when I can just sneak past this whole area. I'm likely just going to play this stealthy until I get to where I start having to kill things to make progress. Doesn't look like all that long a walk from here. I have to say it's kind of crazy that the Eclipse, despite the massive losses they've suffered at my hands over the course of the game, can still field a gigantic army here in the Embrace no problem. And that they managed to get in here by stealth when it was established earlier in the game that the Carja have the entrances to Nora territory pretty well guarded to keep track of who is coming and going. Especially since they have Corruptors and Deathbringers with them. I'm going to assume that the references earlier to the Eclipse being a cult within the Shadow Carja were kind of misleading and in truth they basically run the Shadow Carja (the scene at the Sun Ring with Helis sure seemed that way), since otherwise this would be beyond implausible. It strains credibility a bit as it is.

Slipping past a couple of enemies on the road, we get to Mother's Watch, where a bunch of dudes and two Corruptors are lurking. Ah, the good old days of fighting a Corruptor here. A mixture of stealth and blast sling attacks wipe out almost everything, leaving a single Corruptor to be fought head on. Man, the nostalgia is off the charts, I remember when one of these things took forever to kill in this very place. Now it's time to head up on the mountain. I'm sure there will be more unpleasant surprises ahead, but with luck I'll get into that door inside All-Mother and find out some more stuff as well.
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It's pretty good, the story started getting on my nerves past a certain point though and the last few hours are among the worst in video game history
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Punnyz posted...

yes, but does it give the same amount as if they were separated?

I think you get slightly more support points when paired up than if you were just standing side by side.
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Punnyz posted...

Ya know

I was half expecting Lisa to be revealed she was adopted or something

just so those weirdos that are into the whole ONI CHAN thing to make them hook up

Come on, it's not like Fire Emblem would ever do something weird and creepy like that with sibling relationships

<_<
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You can promote at basically whatever level you feel like, even in the games with actual level caps promoting before level 20 is usually a good idea, and in Awakening with infinite room to level up and a ridiculously generous minimum amount of experience per kill allowing you to level at a decent speed regardless of how overleveled you are, you really don't lose anything regardless
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Yes. Master Seal is promotion, Second Seal is class change.
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I have no idea what that means but I assume it's probably a declaration of war
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Money is way better than a power that is both creepy and useless
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Okay
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Video game progress is a thing that will occur within the next seven years. Possibly the next few hours but maybe not
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I bash you, sir. I am bashing you at this moment. Experience true bashing, knave.
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If you were given a choice between understanding everything you can think of or being able to shoot delicious chocolate chip cookies out of your eyes, which would you take?
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I would open the bag while doing my best impression of a guy straining to take a huge dump
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Bayleef is less lame than Meganium or Shitorita I guess
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20 is the cap, you don't promote automatically, have to use a master seal. At level 10 you can use a second seal to reclass, which resets you to level 1. A promoted unit can use a second seal to reclass to an unpromoted class at any time, but needs to hit level 10 to be able to reclass to other promoted classes. Promoted classes get skills at level 5 and 15, so a promoted unit should probably just wait for their level 15 skill before switching classes
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Punnyz posted...

Panthera posted...

No

FBike1 posted...

Yeah, that's a thing.

which one of you is the liar

I think he's referring to Frederick's obsessions as a thing. Same sex marriage is not included in Awakening.
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No
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Fuck yeah Log
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You get rewards for saving them, I think the reward for all three is a stat booster of some sort. They're pretty easy to save as long as you hurry, although it's tougher if you don't know how Awakening works yet ie Awakening rewards having one or two units (plus their pair ups) do almost everything so they get ahead of the level curve to the point that they can just move wherever and win without you paying attention. I'm assuming you're on normal difficulty so it isn't really necessary, put the right pair up bonuses on someone and they're going to be able to just run out and do whatever with little issue
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Since every male/female support can turn romantic but you can do as many A ranks as you like, for whatever reason they decided to just write most supports to not seem vaguely romantic at all for the first three ranks (I guess they were worried people would be mad if their "waifu" was having romantic conversations with someone other than them...which granted is probably a legit worry with the audience they were targeting here sadly) and then randomly "Have I mentioned I've wanted to fuck you since the day we met" "What a coincidence, I want to fuck you right now" at S rank, which makes most S rank conversations terrible (the exceptions being the ones that actually break that pattern to some extent anyway)
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That's the difference between us, you see. I fired through this way faster than you did. Oh yeah, I'm making dramatic claims here like a boss.
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Somewhere over 30. It really doesn't feel like I've spent as long playing it as I have, but I guess those long journeys from one distraction to another really add up. And when I stop to think I realize I have been playing two or three hours most days since I started, with the days I haven't played being balanced out by the times like today where I played for much longer.
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Starting off with a bang, we run into a door that recognizes Aloy as Dr Sobeck...but malfunctions. We're forced to use an emergency procedure to force the door to open, which ends up attracting some outside attention. Guess I'm going to run into some trouble on the way out of here! Hopefully we can figure some stuff out before everything starts getting all explodey on us.

Heading in, a bunch of audio logs consist of the reception staff complaining about working conditions and also a reference to needing sound proofing because people in the lounge can hear those who scream or cry during a presentation...well that's not creepy at all. And then we see the presentation: General Herres informing people that extinction is inevitable and Zero Dawn's goal is to in some way prepare for what comes after. We don't find out the details yet though. The next room features some more datapoints, but it turns out some Shadow Carja dudes have gotten in through the vents and are probably not too happy with me, so I guess it's murder time.

Murder time doesn't last very long (though it certainly gets the blood flowing...and spilling) and we continue examining the area. Sounds like some of the people brought into this project handled it a lot better than others. No one seemed to like it much besides the one guy that sounds like he was mildly crazy in general. Probably not surprising that "we're all gonna die" didn't go over well.

And then...okay way too much stuff to summarize or I'd be filling this topic to 500 on my own right now. So I'll have to keep it brief

So Zero Dawn was about creating an AI that would be able to work out for itself how to rebuild life on Earth. I predicted the general concept but the exact execution of it is pretty neat. And Hades is a program designed to wipe everything out again if another restart becomes necessary. Why it's seemingly gone haywire (and why it's using the Faro robots that you'd expect it to be programmed not to fuck with) is unknown, but this does explain why it seemed to have a bit of a personality...especially since the guy in charge of the project was more than a little eccentric. Then we get captured by Helis and get dragged out to the Sun Ring to be sacrificed, but we escape with a mixture of ingenuity and Sylens making an appearance and actually not being a douchebag for a change. Well, not a total one. Now it's off to Nora territory to stop the Eclipse troops who were sent there to try to find us and kill everyone else. Why Hades wants us dead remains unknown, but I'll probably find out soon, it sure seems things are approaching the end now. But I'm going to take a break for a while, probably won't play more until tonight or tomorrow.

That whole sequence was pretty damn awesome.
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Meow!

Nothing of interest happens on the way to Sunfall. Nothing that was boring happened either. Really I just walked in a straight line. Should get a lot more exciting once I head inside though!

It seems we can walk in casually at least part of the way. The Shadow Carja are so odd with how they're sometimes hostile and sometimes don't seem to care. We come across their "Sun Ring" where some people seem to have been thrown into a pit against a Behemoth. I have no idea if I can do anything about it but I'm not going to bother, I have enough stuff to get done that I don't need to be picking extra fights around here. It seems the Shadow Carja's king, the son of the old crazy one, is a young kid who seems in over his head, and they're hiring mercenaries or bounty hunters or whatever. A side quest pops up to get involved in stopping the death of a traitor who is apparently actually innocent, but I'll get around to that later. It seems kind of wacky that sneaking into this place is as simple as walking into an audience chamber and waiting for everyone to get distracted by the sounds of their own voices, but apparently that's how it works around here.

Okay seriously how do I just drop off a ledge where people are standing, go jumping across some rocks and climbing down a wall and not be seen by anyone? Did Aloy learn how to turn invisible or something?

We find a vent to use to get in, and Sylens warns us this is a point of no return. So is this the final dungeon? Or just a fake out where we won't be able to leave during the middle of it? I kind of feel like it might be the latter, there's still a lot of stuff that hasn't been resolved in the plot (dealing with Helis, finding out why Rost was an outcast to begin with, going back to the Nora at some point) in addition to the Zero Dawn business...not to mention there were several "Main" quests (revenge on the killers, that whole business with Dervahl) that I assume were relevant to the endgame and which don't fit into what's going on here, so there will probably be some follow up on those later. But maybe I'm wrong. Regardless, I'm going in and we'll see what happens. If given the choice to save inside I can always just make sure I'm holding onto my last save outside to be safe.

Alright, let's do this.
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Meow!

The Adventures of Aloy continue as we head west to the place we need to go, and stumble across a settlement I didn't know existed where I pick up three side quests. Investigate a missing 17 year old, investigate who has been stealing food, and...go pick something up and deliver it at the docks to a sketchy dude. Yeah, nothing could wrong with that one. I'll probably get around to those at some point, but first, I'm enjoying this whole progress thing so I think I'll make some more. South of town I come across a Sawtooth site that has one Sawtooth and a Bellowback of both fire and ice varieties? Why only one Sawtooth at a Sawtooth site? Oh well, I'm going to kill these things just for novelty, this is only the second Freeze Bellowback I've ever seen. Turns out blowing up the Fire guy lures in a second Sawtooth, who I override to help me with the Freeze Bellowback, after which...it just wanders off and I lose sight of him? Farewell, good Sir Sawtooth, may your travels be merry.

Nothing else of note happens until we get to our destination, where Sylens guides us up a cliff and then reveals that what we're doing here is...infiltrating the Eclipse's main base. No big deal or anything, right? This leads to him revealing he did some prior work with the Eclipse before turning against them, as Aloy realizes his knowledge of their operation pretty much requires that to be the case. She also gets very cranky when he reveals he assisted them in the past, probably because given his knowledge of how to spy on people via the Focus, he's the most likely explanation for how the Eclipse found out how to use Olin to spy on people and thus try to kill her at the Proving. But he's just a hologram here so of course he vanishes before anything can come of it.

Working our way into the base, we have to cut through several areas full of corrupted machines. The Scrappers put up a bit of a fight, but went down to my rarely used Blast Sling. Explosions can be heard in the distance but Sylens says not to worry about it. I am so inclined to trust this guy, he's so obviously trustworthy that I almost trust him as much as I would trust someone I don't trust at all. We get to the destination and discover the top of the Tallneck we were trying to get to has been moved. These guys dragged a broken Tallneck up here, then moved the top of it somewhere else? Must have been hard work! I can sneak past the guards or kill them...let's be real I'm not going to pull off the sneaking thing even if I try, so I'll just start shooting stuff. Sylens seems to want us to hurry, so instead I look around and discover a bunch of audio logs from Helis that show what a crazy fanatic he is. Hooray?

Coming around the corner, we find the top of the Tallneck, propped up in some weird structure. Sylens is really weirdly eager for us to get out of here, which makes me wonder if he's hiding something or just being his usual douchebag self. Aloy seems to suspect some sort of trouble is afoot, as do I honestly. Something will probably go wrong here...and it kind of does, as Hades turns out to be nearby and tries to fuck with us. Aloy still manages to destroy what we came here for, but is forced to make a dramatic retreat through armies of everything shooting all the things at her. So that happened. Now it's off to Sunfall to hopefully find out what Zero Dawn was, for real this time, really, legitimately. I hope.
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Meow!

Heading into what I expect is the final room, or close to it, we get a pretty cool audio log with Dr Sobeck talking to a General Herres about how Operation Enduring Victory has bought just barely enough time for Zero Dawn to be finished. The General also wanted a file to be archived that contained...basically his role in both integrating into the armed forces the machines that would become such a threat, and I guess also his enacting of a plan he knew would sacrifice millions across the world to buy time for Project Zero Dawn. I like this General Herres character, that brief little conversation was great. The hologram recording that's required to watch (the audio log was optional, it seems) basically expands on it, showing the rest of the military commanders not happy with the sacrifices being proposed but also unable to come up with a better idea. Herres' plan seemed to involve telling people about Project Zero Dawn, a secret weapons program that would save humanity...which I'm guessing was propaganda, as it's already been pretty heavily established by this point that whatever Zero Dawn was, it wasn't going to be pretty.

Oh. Well, it turns out we're not going to find out more quite yet, as that's the end of the dungeon. Now I need to go to the place Project Zero Dawn was being worked on, which tells me this whole area is in Utah I believe...but the exact location is underneath the Shadow Carja capital, and Sylens can't hack enough Focuses to make that plausible to infiltrate. So he's sending me off to crash their focus network some other way. Guess I've still got a ways to go here!
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Meow!

Deeper and deeper we go, getting more looks at the past, ziplining into pits and trying to open a door. Oh video games, no one ever just has a key, there's always some puzzle or "follow the power lines" or something. Doors, every hero's greatest rival. It's odd that we're doing this little "puzzle" that consists of doing what the game obviously tells you to unlock a door when there's a pretty good chance we'll find dudes on the other side of the door anyway. Maybe they locked it behind them or something?

With that open, we do indeed find Eclipse dudes and a Scrapper inside. Stealth trivializes them as usual, with only a couple ever even getting an attack off before being brought down. Of note was the shock canister on the Scrapper being detonated to take half health off one of the elite cultist dudes, the first time I've used a machine's explosion to damage human dudes. I am officially the greatest strategic mind you've heard of since at least Thursday.

Now we come into a room where a gigantic tentacle monster machine is hanging and the Eclipse are working on it...I'm guessing this is a Horus? And those tentacles could be part of what was giving the exterior of this place such a doom fortress vibe, they look like some of the stuff that was jutting out. It drops a Deathbringer, which Aloy confirms me was called a Khopesh back in the day, and this one can move around, she notes. I had a feeling that first one was deliberately nerfed...with a bunch of goons and a full power Deathbringer, this is shaping up to be a tricky battle, although my high vantage point can likely be used to cheese it. Is that how it will go, first Deathbringer is nerfed, second one you're high above, and then the third one will be out in the open? We'll have to find out, but first I have a lot of stuff to kill.

Okay that was cheap as hell, I shot a dude, moved to the side to try to block the Deathbringer's line of sight, and it just shot the platform under me, destroying it and causing me to fall to my death instantly. Guess I have to figure out how to get down before I can play unless I want to roll the dice with "lol you die" bullshit. Wow this fight is the dumbest, the only ways down are to rappel in full view of everything? And if the Deathbringer notices anything it will detect you eventually and instant kill you via floor destruction that tracks your position faster than you can roll? What the fuck, can I just magically rappel down without being seen or something to make this work, because that would be stupid as hell and I'm not trying something so idiotic to test. Alright that was dumb, I got lucky in that the area you rappel from had a platform below it so the fall didn't kill me when the floor blew up. That Deathbringer was an intense as hell fight once the game wasn't pulling stupid bullshit on me though, I'm not sure why the notebook says its weak to shock when all 20 arrows with barely any pause between them had no effect on it, but sure. Eventually I figured that status effects are less valuable than just dishing out damage to its legs to knock it over. Pretty cool enemy, I'm terrified of the idea of facing one of those alongside something more serious than some shitty cultists, like a Corruptor...or a second Deathbringer.

Anyway, it's time to move on, this post is getting to be too big so I guess I'll leave the final revelations of this place for the next one. Beware my cliffhanger, mwahaha. I mean, there's no save point in between so obviously I'm going to continue right away, meaning the next update will be soon, but...shut up, pretend I'm making sense.
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Meow!