Gamers have had experience with futuristic games like Fallout and its Armageddon, but Horizon took the future to a new level by creating a millennium’s worth of lore. Horizon Zero Dawn revealed bits and pieces of humanity’s history from the 21st century in its gameplay - from their struggles against climate change to inadvertently creating the Faro Plague extinction event. Zero Dawn ended with Aloy foiling HADES’ plans to end all sentient life on Earth, but the protagonist only gets six months of respite as the blight rendered land expanses uninhabitable at the start of Forbidden West. Players meet the Far Zenith species and discover Nemesis is hot on their heels, and the impending arrival suggests Aloy’s world-saving adventures will resume sooner than Forbidden West’s time skip.
RELATED: Horizon Forbidden West’s Sequel May Give Varl the Center Stage
Horizon Zero Dawn’s Lore and Stage Setting for Forbidden West
HADES, the robotic villain from Horizon Zero Dawn, wasn’t always a rogue Terminator-Esque AI. It served as a subordinate function of GAIA - the terraforming AI tasked with facilitating humanity’s return to Earth, helping to defeat the Faro Plague. However, GAIA picked up a strange signal, and its functions (mainly HADES and HAEPHESTUS) became erratic and fully self-aware, with HADES attempting to wrest control of GAIA’s terraforming systems to wipe out all life on Earth. Knowing it couldn’t defeat its former subordinate, GAIA created Aloy as a clone of her inventor before self-destructing her prime reactor in a fiery explosion.
As a result of GAIA’s implosion, Earth is plagued by the Derangement, causing all machines under GAIA’s control to become hostile and evolve into dangerous combat robots. To make matters worse, HADES survived GAIA’s heroics, slinking away with the help of Sylens to form a cult known as the Eclipse. Aloy would eventually defeat HADES by impaling his core vessel, preventing extinction - at least for the time being. Guerrilla Games set up the Forbidden West sequel with a clue of what signal caused HADES’ malfunction, and Forbidden West would eventually become one of the better sequels in recent memory.
Forbidden West’s Plot Shows Nemesis is on a Dead-Set Path For Earth
The timeline skip for Forbidden West was only six months, and the sequel began with Aloy on the hunt for GAIA’s backup to find a cure to the Derangement. In a Far Zenith facility, the protagonist finds a deteriorating HADES who reveals the malfunction-inducing signal was sent by “The Masters”. A large chunk of Horizon Forbidden West is a mechanical treasure hunt, as Aloy searches for all remaining GAIA’s subordinate functions to use in the fight against the Derangement. No sooner than Aloy completes her hunt for the functions, the Far Zenith - who have long been presumed dead - make their debut in the Horizon series, seeking a copy of GAIA to colonize a new planet.
RELATED: Horizon 2 Should Craft Its Narrative Around the Forbidden West Flying Mechanics
The Far Zenith are on the run from an evolved enemy of their own, Nemesis, as their home planet has been destroyed by the AI. The new group of humans has attained physical immortality, and they mean to secure GAIA’s copy by any means necessary to ensure their survival. However, Aloy triumphs over the new threat to Earth, destroying the Zenith and their base. Horizon Forbidden West’s final act ends with a nail-biting cliffhanger, as the final boss Tilda revealed Nemesis was already in the outer solar system before her demise.
Humanity has seen its fair share of extinction-level events in the Horizon storyline, but Nemesis is a greater threat by incomprehensible levels of ordinance than the likes of HADES and HAEPHESTUS - who gained sentience thanks to its signals. The Far Zenith were far more technologically advanced than the humans on Earth, attaining physical immortality and thirsting for more scientific conquests in the Sirius solar system. In typical human fashion, the group was unsatisfied with their exploits, seeking digital immortality as another feather in their caps. Unfortunately, the project didn’t pan out as planned, and the collective consciousness of Zeniths festered into a vengeful sentient AI. Nemesis destroyed the Far Zenith’s home planet in a few hours, prompting the survivors to head to Earth for a copy of GAIA.
Unlike the Far Zenith refugees who traveled on a single ship, Nemesis appears to be traveling using a host of machines, powering it toward Earth at neck-breaking speeds. Tilda’s revelation of Nemesis’ location leaves Aloy and her allies very little time to prepare, and it is safe to assume the time skip between Forbidden West and Call of the Mountain would be very brief, as the threequel comes to a head. Series’ main antagonists can struggle to generate the appropriate fear in gamers, but Nemesis has driven equal amounts of unease and anticipation in Horizon’s fan base. All roads lead to Earth, and many expect an epic showdown between the rogue AI and the last remnants of the human race.
Horizon Forbidden West is available for PS4 and PS5.
MORE: Horizon 3: The Case for a Playable Beta
