We are about 50% through the game. There are still plenty of major story beats that are coming up, but according to the in-game progress menu, it says we’re at about 57% total game completion.
And it’s interesting that you bring up the map, since we’ll see it unveil in the next episode as I get the remaining Tallnecks. We have traversed a large majority of the map, but there’s a bunch of places in the middle of Carja territory with smaller settlements or no sidequests that we haven’t really hit yet, but we will.
“You won a blazing sun on your first attempt? Congratulations! You won a blazing sun on your first attempt? Congratulations! You won a blazing sun on your first attempt? Congratulations!”
I can’t wait to see how many attempts it takes for me to get Blazing Suns in the DLC’s Hunting Grounds on Normal. You will definitely not be hearing that phrase anymore, that’s for sure!
We’re still going with sidequests, so here’s about an hour more! These are mostly ones that I skipped in Nora territory because they wanted us to go deep into Carja lands to complete them, so this is a little bit of clean up before the next big story beats come up.
(And Behemoth fights may be coming sooner than you think…)
Today, we sweep up the last of the bandit camps, meet an old friend, and hunt down some escaped criminals. Things don’t exactly go as planned for at least a few people.
We’re also introduced to a new character named Janeva, who I believe isn’t handled poorly, but rather awkwardly. Instead of trying to define exactly what felt off about the conversation we have with him, I found an article written from a more informed perspective that elucidates better how I feel about the situation.
rest in ultraviolence nil. may there always be another bandit for you to murder in that thunderdome in the sky.
i feel they handled Janeva quite well, actually. Aloy made an assumption due to a lack of information and was corrected. That doesn’t make it awkward or poor, it makes it reasonable.
We finally enter Sunfall after all this time, and there seems to be quite the commotion. Without even meaning to, we’re going to get swept up into some Shadow Carja business, and ultimately maybe even mess some things up!
What’s this? Could it be a nearly hour-long video that isn’t side quests? WHAT???
So, we’re entering the main facility for Zero Dawn and it’s about damn time we learn what this whole thing is all about. How did humanity survive extinction from an unkillable force? What was Enduring Victory, and how was it supposed to help?
Look forward to answers to these and more!
(Also, it’s going to be a little light on commentary due to the sheer amount of audio logs, which end up comprising nearly 50% of the whole video…)
Hey, mister cellphone voice is capable of civil social interaction sometimes (1 instance to date).
I like that this time they have a reason for things to happen just in time, it was annoying when things just coincided without reason other than maximum drama like big sister bodyguard dying about five seconds after being rescued.
Every single time Aloy was speaking to someone I couldn’t help but see the neck scales of her armour dig in her throat. This armor is badly designed. I mean, we can and do bitch about bikini armour and how it’s, well, bikini armour, but it doesn’t pretend to be serious, this one is actually painful to look at.
The final cauldron of the game is a fun little experience and is a nice rounding out of getting the last of the overrides before we head off to finish the hunting grounds challenges.
Since they don’t appear to fulfill any alternative purpose (cleaning up radiation, removing airborne pollution), like the other Machines do, I assume that Corruptors and Deathbringers aren’t really part of the original plan. Are they designed by HADES as shock troopers, to support its human agents on the battlefield? Or were they supposed to be used by HADES when the whole system needed a reboot?
They are the original Faro Plague robots but the programming that drove them has had its killswitch triggered by Gaia while everyone was dead. Hades has co-opted the wrecks and brought them into his service. Its modifications appear to be very suspiciously vulnerable to fire (gameplay conceit I suppose) and Faro Focus compatible (possibly indicating that the reason everything went south was because Faro left a last fuck you so that future generations wouldn’t curse his name every day of the week.)