Horizon: Zero Dawn's future is blind to the failings of our present

Sun 02 January 2022

“Isn’t it just amazing how a century-and-a-half of science fiction did nothing to swerve our species from the path of doom?”
—Audio Datapoint: Interview 2: Brad Andac

There is a point almost at the end of the game where all the different systems and plot points of Horizon: Zero Dawn seem to click together and the beautiful hums of its virtual world evoke a powerful emotional tale. But despite its many achievements that even in the world of Triple-A games are rarely to be seen herding together, the story it wants to tell about hope, nature and the future never seems to be able to relieve itself from the ideology of the past.

Warning: This piece contains spoilers for the entirety of Horizon: Zero Dawn.

When Horizon: Zero Dawn was announced and subsequently advertised as one of the next big, high-budget video games the spokespeople at Guerilla Games made it clear that players would play in a post-apocalyptic world unlike any seen before. Instead of herds of zombies there would be herds of robots, friendly ones (unless disturbed) and not the Terminator-type one has become accustomed to in science fiction. The world would be lush, with green jungles, red deserts, white mountains and crystal blue rivers. A paradise after the apocalypse, ruled by machines, where humans are reduced to tribes with barely the knowledge to smelt iron.

The main protagonist of the game is Aloy, a Nora tribes-woman who was outcast at birth, because apparently she had no mother. Being an outcast comes with quite the burdens as it means that neither are you permitted to speak to other Nora nor are they allowed to speak to you. This includes other outcasts as well, a fact that is shown to the player when in the first minutes of playing as adult Aloy, a side quest tasks her to hunt for meat for an elderly outcast named Grata, who refuses to speak to Aloy and instead thanks the goddess All-Mother, patron of the Nora, for the bounties. This and many other interactions are meant to display how Aloy detests these rules and actively challenges the traditions of her tribe. That these traditions are in fact meant to be understood as quite brutal and archaic is reinforced when it is learned that outcasts who violate the duties and chastisements placed upon them are released into the open, more dangerous wilds outside of the so-called Embrace. With rampant machinery and murderous bandit clans about, such a punishment is to be understood as a death sentence. The Nora tribe is, so the game teaches us, a spatially tripartite society: the true Nora are living relatively comfortable inside one of the three Nora villages; outcasts and other Nora — like hunters or Nora soldiers, called “braves” — are living in the so-called Embrace, a bordered and defensible part of the tribes territory that is relatively safe; and everyone else exists outside of the Embrace, a heavily contested and unsafe region. Mechanically, this is ideal for the open world system of Horizon: Zero Dawn as the game can teach the player the ropes before releasing Aloy into the untamed and perilous wilds.

Besides the Nora there is the mention of exactly four other tribes: the Banuk, a shamanistic group of people wandering the snowy region of contemporary northwest Wyoming, USA; the Oseram, an industrious people of traders and tinkerers; the Carja, a feudalistic and until recently murderous, terrorising society; and the Shadow Carja, a people that separated itself from the Carja after the coup d’état which ended their raids on the other tribes and which includes the main antagonist of the game, the cult called the Eclipse. Before the game’s first and only expansion The Frozen Wilds, which introduced a small part of the Banuk lands and through that gave insight into their society, the only tribes that Aloy was able to visit outside of the Nora were the Carja and their counterpart the Shadow Carja. Although the Oseram are presented throughout the game, Aloy can never visit their homelands.

This is a very interesting choice by the creators of the game. When Aloy first comes into contact with Carja society — first in an outpost on the borders to Nora lands, then in the capital city — it is striking how very different the Carja are from the Nora. Large, looming towers made out of stone, huge marketplaces with all kinds of people trading all kinds of likely never before seen things. The difference of technological and social advancement between the Nora, in their wooden houses, protected by wooden barriers, and the Carja, with their palaces of stone, is quite overwhelming — at least for the player, as Aloy never seems to be fazed by any of it.

There is always an elephant stepping into the room when a western media company tells a story about pre-european-antiquity or non-european native people. It is a fact that Europeans have over the centuries colonised most of the world, in some cases multiple times, starting with Alexander the Great and — despite the liberation of many colonial regions in the 20th century — never having really stopped, be it in the form of cultural or actual imperialism. So when Westerners tell these stories great care has to be taken not to perpetuate the same concepts of superiority that legitmised the looting and pillaging that their own ancestors committed.

There are moments in the game where the presentation of the different tribes becomes more than icky and sometimes outright offensive. Other people have written much more insightful and illuminating pieces about Horizon: Zero Dawn’s issue with representation than I ever could (as a white, male, European), but it is a structural issue that cannot be overlooked. Shortly after the game’s release, columnist Dia Lacina called out the game and game reviewers for the absentminded regurgitation of known racial slurs used by white colonists to refer to Native Americans. Guerilla Games’ narrative designer John Gonzales’ response to this was a simple “it’s impossible to predict what it is that may offend”, as if it couldn’t be expected of a studio with a multi-million budget to do the research. Guerilla Games blindness towards colonialism becomes very visible in the game’s expansion The Frozen Wilds, where — to progress with the story — Aloy is tasked with challenging the local Banuk’s chieftain, Aratak, overtaking the leadership of his clan, just to progress with her own story. At the conclusion of the expansion’s story this leadership (that is never translated into any kind of game mechanic for the player that could make the responsibilities of chiefdom tangible) is returned in a laughed-about manner to the old chieftain. To note is that this exchange happens privately between Aloy and Aratak without any of the tribe’s people present. How hurtful and incomprehensible this whole episode must feel for the clansmen: There comes an outsider, challenging (perhaps illegally?) their chieftain, whom they have to trust the wellbeing of their life and family with, seemingly just for her own personal gain — which is inherently proven by how she just leaves days after she came?

To Guerilla Games credit, the mythologies, idioms and peculiarities of the factions present in the game are astounding, ground breaking even. It never becomes annoying to hear the Carja talk in their Sun-themed analogies — tiring, perhaps —and there is always an honesty to their sayings that it becomes hard to image that these people did not actually used to exist. It is clear that a lot of care has been given to the narrative of this game to make the people in this world feel as believable as possible. But all this care has been done in service of the story and as a backdrop for Aloy's narrative arc, not more or less important than the numerous rocks scattered about the open world or the different types of machines roaming the lands. This is very apparent in the way the game portrays the different tribes of the game. By contrasting the Nora with the Carja (through the difference in architecture, their relationships to Aloy, the relative openness of their societies) as poignant as has been done here it is difficult not to view the Carja as the more advanced, more relatable society. That they have committed atrocious acts of genocide in the past is a sad state of affairs but since Aloy has not suffered by these personally they are never tangibly bad. As if the game tries to say that as long as people are willing to work for the future what happened in the past is of secondary concern. Progress is an endeavour more important than responsibility or reconciliation of past aggressions.

There is a spectre haunting the game’s narrative where the Carja can be equated with European colonialists and imperialists — read: advanced, civilised— and the Nora with Native American people — read: primitive. Not only is this exhibited in the contrast of architecture and willingness for "openness" of the two tribes, it is also reflected in the game’s mechanics where the Carja capital is factually the main story hub and Aloy returning to it to progress the story far more often than to her own Nora lands. It’s also reflected in the way that Aloy, despite being brisk towards all characters, gets along better with the Carja’s putschist king than with the Nora’s elderwomen. What is important here is that from the societal viewpoint of the Carja, they — just as the European peoples who invaded and murdered countless others in the past while demanding to not be beholden to their ancestors’ crimes — desire absolution from their own history. For a game appropriating tribalism and pre-hellenistic feudalism as backgrounds for its world Horizon: Zero Dawn is too eager to grant that absolution.

In the scene alluded to at the beginning of this piece — late in the game where the systems and plot of the game come together to paint an emotional tale — Aloy has just realised that she was cloned and born in a birthing facility of the Old Ones (in short, 21st century humans), which the Nora regard as a temple and its speaking AI as a goddess — All-Mother. After Aloy returns (both from the outside world and the heart of the mountain, aka the 21st century facility) to the Nora, they regale her as an “anointed” person, worshiping her. But Aloy protests, wasn’t she made an outcast from birth for the very same reason? That she “came from the mountain”?

In that very moment, it becomes apparent why the Nora have their strange traditions and archaic rules. If Aloy would have grown up alongside them as a normal Nora person she couldn’t have reacted in that way. Perhaps her faith would have compelled her to accept her new role as “anointed one”, because there she was, stepping outside of the innermost sanctum of the temple she used to pay tribute to. But since she was cast out, made special from the very beginning, she was able to reject these notions while simultaneously feeling enough relationship towards her tribe that she may order them to protect a foreign city — the very city in fact that used to terrorise the Nora for almost two decades.

Here, in that dramatic moment, Aloy’s reaction seems relatable. She outgrew the protective and suffocating barriers of her childhood and gained insight and knowledge that would help her overcome any obstacles. But this coming-of-age story ingrained in Horizon: Zero Dawn’s narrative comes at the price of her tribe. Just like the Nora lands only ever were meant as the training grounds for Aloy, the Nora too only ever existed for her, to prepare her for the difficult and arduous tasks ahead, the people themselves who form her tribe were always secondary to that purpose.

It is important to acknowledge that it is not uncommon to build the world around a character to be able to tell a story of human’s innate ability to grow and overcome obstacles. Even classics of fantasy literature that have a clear desire to tell as much about the world existing beside their characters do this. Tolkiens’ The Shire is as much a place for all Hobbits to live in as it is a place for Frodo and Bilbo Baggins to get away from, balanced perfectly between wanderlust and homesickness. But in this moment, Horizon: Zero Dawn seems almost to do a suckerpunch to all the Nora living in the Embrace. When shortly before the final battle the Nora’s war-chief’s son, Varl, tells Aloy that he feels overwhelmed by all the rapid changes — he being in “a foreign land, a tainted land” after living his entire life in a tiny corner of the world, “defending a faithless city that looks like nothing [he has] ever seen” and how his faith commands him to worship Aloy even though she forbids him to —Aloy’s only reaction is: “Boy, things are pretty tough for you, huh?”

The Nora people, a tribal folk from the North American Mid-West, are a tool in the game’s narrative, to be used, to be outgrown, to be cast aside. And to be regaled with contempt once their use has run its way.

Over the entirety of the story, especially during side quests, Aloy’s character is presented as that of a skeptic. This is exemplified in the way she behaves very brisk towards other people. Even though she can show compassion for others she also shows great malice to people whom she sees as undeserving. Here Horizon: Zero Dawn’s BioWare-style dialogue mechanic comes into play where the player can choose between three options that determine how Aloy will continue her interaction. Every option is a very short text supposedly distilling what Aloy is going to say (but never identical to it), accompanied by a little icon — a clenched fist for an abrasive response, a heart for a compassionate response and a brain for a clever solution. In the first third of the game Aloy confronts Olin, a Delver of the Oseram tribe who was coerced by the game’s antagonist to work for them. In exchange for the life of his family he was to work as a spy for the Eclipse and ultimately — and unwillingly — caused The Proving Massacre where many aspiring Nora hunters as well as Aloy’s foster father were killed. By the time Aloy confronts Olin we have learned that he neither knew of nor was able to intervene in the consequences of his actions. We have also already learned that he was forced into his position of a spy. So when the player is tasked to choose what to do with him the clever solution makes Aloy stall, prompting again for a decision by the player, this time limiting the options to either kill Olin or to spare him. Even if the player elects to not put a spear in the man’s heart the spotless voice-acting by Ashley Burch leaves no doubt that Aloy is meant by the writers to really want to murder that person. Aloy, bringer of death and giver of life.

That Aloy is undoubtedly also the latter is made apparent by the identification of Dr. Elisabet Sobek and Aloy through genetic essentialism: Aloy is revealed to have been cloned from Dr. Sobek’s genetic data. Dr. Sobek was, in Horizon: Zero Dawn’s history, a genius scientist from the 21st century who devised the project of Zero Dawn, a terraforming system that would recreate the earth into a livable habitat long after the world’s flora and fauna has gone extinct and drinkable water just as breathable air has evaporated ages ago. The game goes out of its way to explain how it was possible for one person to single-handedly devise such a cunning plan: she enrolled at Stanford University, USA, at the age of 13, earning her first academic degree at the age of 16 and her (first?) Ph.D. with 20. Giving that Aloy and Dr. Sobek are genetically identical and we can see with how much ease Aloy is able to climb insurmountable cliffsides there is almost no doubt that Dr. Sobek in addition to her incredible intellect was also an outstanding athlete.

What the game does not reveal, however, is why it deems it necessary for the protagonist to be this larger-than-life person. Yes, her genetic identity with a highly privileged person does make it easy to explain why Aloy is able to enter into places that are closed to others. But then, would it had made a difference, if Dr. Sobek had gained her Ph.D. at the age of 30 or even later in her life? There is a need in the game’s narrative where it wants to tell a story about a person who is not bound by her surroundings. Just as Aloy was always meant to overcome the social and spatial boundaries of her Nora tribe and travel the world, Dr. Elisabet Sobek was always meant to transcend the boundaries of science, technology and academia. For if Horizon: Zero Dawn is meant to be a story about humanity overcoming ecological collapse, then — so the creators of the game must have thought — it would need a protagonist who could rise to the challenge. It follows, then, that Dr. Sobek would be the one to design GAIA, the administrative AI controlling all subsystems of the terraforming process.

Our actual world is factually facing the greatest existential threat to humanity in history. The academic community of actual scientists are all concurring that our actual, current trajectory of greenhouse gas emission (chief among them carbonmonoxide and -dioxide) will lead to unforeseen consequences with the actual, likely possibility of runaway processes that might not be stoppable by anything we actually will be able to invent. What is even more disconcerting is that despite assurances of change, humanity does not seem to be willing to implement the large scale changes necessary to prevent actual disaster. The way it looks now, the world will need a miracle.

The singular fascinating thing about humans, though, is how very resilient, adaptable and hopeful they are, even in the direst of situations. This is the reason why most narratives — oral or otherwise — tell stories of hope and overcoming hardships. Stories of insurmountable obstacles that tell us: Yes, anything is possible if you put your mind to it, do not lose hope! These are the stories we need right now, that make us deal with this crisis we face so that we find the courage to overcome it. How fitting then when in Horizon: Zero Dawn the triangular, trinitarian relationship between GAIA — nature-as-goddess — , Dr. Elisabet Sobek — creator of GAIA and, therefore, the reborn world — and Aloy — Sobek-returned —  is made visible and the game is making it very explicit that its story is supposed to be understood as a Christian saviour myth. Only God made flesh, so the game wants us to know, will be able to sway our detractors and lead the world from the brink of destruction.¹ The sacrifices might be high, they might even be terrible. But paradise is possible if we put our minds to it.

But how very depressing when it is revealed that in Horizon: Zero Dawn’s narrative it’s not the climate crisis that is the bane of humanity (and everything, really), but instead a Terminator-style science fiction of rampant and uncontrollable machinery. Strangely, the game’s narrative even mentions the climate crisis but hand-waives it away, saying outright that it was solved by technology and human ingenuity in a matter of a few decades, just to then tell a story that has been told countless times before. When presented with the options to either contemplate a very real extinction scenario or a presently purely theoretical one, Horizon: Zero Dawn actively chooses the latter. The destruction of nature due to overextraction and overconsumption is only a technological problem to be overcome not a structural one; in short the game's thesis is that the climate crisis is not a real end of the world scenario, just an annoyance.

It is possible that life on earth will continue or return once the direst of consequences of the climate crisis have washed over this world and eradicated all human life — given time, in perhaps millions of years from now. But it turns out that was never a story Guerilla Games wanted to tell, because in their vision, nature needs to be controlled and administered. And if not by us then by machines we have built, or at least by mechanical Gods that we have designed. In the narrative of Horizon: Zero Dawn, Nature on earth — a floating rock 4.5 billion years in the making, forming water, air and soil all by itself and creating life in countless different ways — needs humans to exist and to survive, even if it were humans who destroyed her in the first place. Horizon: Zero Dawn’s narrative unveils a harrowingly tale about how we — read: Westerners — are actually viewing the world. As our birthright, to be exploited, extracted and colonised as we see fit.

When almost at the end Aloy discovers that Ted Faro, a 21st century billionaire, erased all of humanity’s past by destroying APOLLO (the project aimed at preserving and teaching our collective knowledge and culture), he says he does so to protect humanity from gaining the “disease” of knowledge. It could be inferred that by doing so he only wishes to not be remembered as the one bringing about the Faro plague (i.e. rampant, uncontrollable war machines) and ending life on earth — which seems irrational giving that his name is on everything, including his war robots, and likely too irrational even for him to justify the premeditated murder of eight persons. What is more striking about this scene, however, is that he chooses to simply destroy one project, not the others. He could have, for instance, destroyed ELEUTHIA and thereby prevented humans from ever returning to earth. But he didn’t, he destroyed the project containing humanity’s knowledge. For it is not human’s fault for destroying the world, nor is it technology, but people who are unprepared and inept to use it correctly so it is better to prevent them from gaining the required knowledge in the first place. In the end that is what Horizon: Zero Dawn teaches us: nature is never as scary as technology, inaptly wielded. Only the wise are meant to make home of the earth and exploit its bounties whereas the unworthy only want to take it for themselves time and time again. The classist and racist undercurrents of this narrative are combined with an extractivist and consumerist understanding of nature that at its logical conclusion could never have understood that nature can exist without humans. That it doesn’t need to be settled and colonised.

What the current times desperately need is an understanding of the world — of nature as well as our living together — that is based on mutual nurture. Not extracting whatever shines brightest, but living subsistently with our surroundings. Not artificially declaring what differentiates us, but working on how we can support each other; not in spite of our differences, but because of them. Not to take whatever the strongest presently desires, but to use our privileges to assist those who lack them.

There are moments in this game that seem to want to inch closer to these ideas. But ultimately, all of them fail, because they never were able to shed the ideological shackles that bound its narrative. In a recording found late in the game a character asks how it is possible, that “a century-and-a-half of science fiction did nothing to swerve our species from the path of doom”. Horizon: Zero Dawn could never manage to find the answer: For as long as science fiction and other kinds of media are beholden to a worldview that takes racism, classism, extractivism and consumerism for granted and inescapable, these stories cannot help us swerve ourselves from the path of inevitable disaster.

fin

*In reality, it will not be larger-than-life or god-like people who will have to find a solution for the climate emergency. It will be us, together, with all our abilities, defects, privileges and limits — or it will be no one.

1. In reality, it will not be larger-than-life or god-like people who will have to find a solution for the climate emergency. It will be us, together, with all our abilities, defects, privileges and limits — or it will be no one. ↩︎