"Only in the struggle against death to we find, even for a moment, the spark of life."
Hello everyone!
I figured I'd review Horizon Zero Dawn and then move on to movies and TV shows again, but then I started watching the playthroughs for the DLC and ... well.
The rest, as they say, was history.
To be fair I didn't think I was going to review the DLC until somewhere three quarters in though. Initially I definitely thought I'd just watch it, and actually already decided not to touch the review somewhere at the halfway point.
But then I just couldn't not.
Both the DLC and the main game are probably some of the best I've watched in a long, long time, so I thought they both deserve the recognition.
Which means we're heading into The Frozen Wilds.
A link to the main game review will be waiting for you all at the bottom of the page, as always, but also as always here's a very brief recap of what happens there:
Aloy is a young Nora outcast who eventually travels beyond the lands of her people to figure out who wants her dead, discovers that back in the Old World (that would be OUR timeline) some idiot lost control of his war machines, and realizes she's a clone of the doctor who created a terraforming program that would repopulate Earth after the robots had been stopped. Unfortunately, an unknown signal woke up a part of the program that wasn't supposed to be woken up and it wants Aloy dead, but eventually she defeats HADES and the people can live free.
Now, in the DLC, the story actually unfolds a little BEFORE the final battle with HADES and the Eclipse, when Aloy gets word that some crazed new machines are popping up in the northern territories of the Banuk, and decides to go check them out.
Against Sylens' wishes, of course, but she tells him to stuff it.
Travelling into the Cut, she's told by various NPCs who are fleeing the Banuk lands that the new machines are fiercer, more dangerous, and seem to be controlled by some sort of different entity than their own.
Aloy initially thinks it's HADES again, but once she learns about a massacre of the tribe that inhabits the Cut, she goes to find the shaman who might be able to help her discover more - and along the way she actually runs into some of these possessed machines, who turn out to be ... not of HADES' make.
See these guys have purple light instead of the usual red. Also tendrils of black smoke or something.
And they seem to be controlled by some weird towers that remind me of those sea flowers that sort of open and close depending on whether or not a predator or prey are close.
If you played the main game all the way through you may have some pretty wicked armour by this point - one that absorbs and deflects hits from enemies, specifically machine shots - but the towers render it null so you HAVE to destroy them along the way to find the shaman, like her apprentice says.
Eventually, through trials and tribulations, Aloy does in fact complete the Shaman's path (which is a whole lot of puzzles for the player to work through) and gets to another one of what looks to be the Old Ones' bunker, situated close to a dangerously smoking caldera of a volcano.
Inside, she does indeed find old tech AND the shaman, Ourea, who explains that she comes here to communicate with what she calls the Spirit, or Blue Light, according to Banuk beliefs, though Aloy has by then figured out it's probably another Old World AI - but this one sends a distress message about being controlled by a Daemon.
Because she wants answers about the machines AND Sylens, who looks like a Banuk shaman, Aloy decides to help Ourea, though this entails challenging her brother Aratak for leadership of the werak (the tribe that is). She eventually beats him and the three of them head up towards the mountains (because all these bunkers were stashed away in mountains, naturally).
Aloy's other side quests include rescuing hunters, closing off a dam, fighting these snow monsters, and murder mysteries, but the main plot takes her up to another Cauldron, which if you recall from the main game was used to update her staff and learn how to override machines. The trio venture into the facility, defeat whatever the Daemon throws at them, and Aloy manages to open the core once more.
Once there, tragedy strikes as Ourea sacrifices herself to free the Spirit, or CYAN as she's called, and Aloy and Aratak return to the mountain retreat alone, where they finally speak with the AI they've freed.
CYAN explains she was created to watch over the Yellowstone caldera and prevent it from errupting - which by the way has now been stopped for another 3000 years or so - but that she was made at the time right before the Faro robots overran the world, and her creator went to join Elisabet Sobek to work on GAIA. She and Aloy speculate that this Daemon (again, not defeated, just kicked onto its butt somewhere out there) is actually HEPHAESTUS, another one of GAIA's programs come to life, which indicates that the signal that woke HADES actually kickstarted more than just the one subconscious.
HEPHAESTUS' job was to build machines for GAIA, but now it seems to have gone rogue and is creating deadlier machines to protect the Earth and them from the hunters that go after them - and also, the AI dislikes Aloy, too, and wants her dead.
What else is new?
Aloy and CYAN come to an accord and reach a sort of understanding, with Aloy promising she'd be back to speak with the AI more; then she returns leadership of the werak to Aratak, who thanks her for all she's done, before they part ways after hunting some of the possessed machines together one last time.
As for Sylens - he'd managed to weasel his way into the Banuk shaman ranks, always thirsty for more power, but then disappeared and has been on the run ever since, after committing some crimes that may be unforgivable. But Aloy doesn't really have the time to dwell on it, because the last battle approaches and so she leaves the frozen wilds of the Banuk behind, in all their devastation and beauty, and heads back to the warmer southern climes with some new weapons, and new experiences in tow.
Like the main game, the DLC is absolutely breathtaking for its cinematography (that smoking volcano YO), its animations, and of course Aloy, who continues to draw you in whether you like it or not. Ashly Burch did SUCH A TREMENDOUS JOB with this character, I can't even. Aratak and Ourea are both very strong side characters in their own right, as chieftain and shaman respectively, especially once you learn they're siblings, and Aratak is only trying to protect Ourea since she'd been captured and tortured by the Carja for years in the past.
I will say that you might feel a bit tired from the same motions of killing the same machines after a while, but this DLC isn't as grand as the main game so you don't have to go through it for too long, and the positives definitely outweigh everything.
Plus THE SNOW. I remember watching some preliminaries for Assassin's Creed Valhalla and how proud everyone was for the snow animations and sounds, but The Frozen Wilds released back in 2017 ... and already covered that so well, I half thought I was plodding right along with Aloy.
What makes the game, in my opinion, is the little tidbits dropped all over of the red-head shivering and complaining about the cold up in the mountains and the snow. It makes it REAL.
And honestly, there's just something about this storytelling and the GAIA theme that isn't over yet, I now can't wait for autumn and hopefully the release of Forbidden West to see what the next step is for Aloy and her friends.
Until then, stay frosty everyone!
xx
*images and video not mine
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