Making this topic because I couldn't find any others that were relevant. I know I'm a little late, but I just beat it and got the platinum trophy today and was hoping to find some ending discussion. So yeah spoilers ahead, obviously...
[spoiler]I didn't particularly like the game all that much for probably the first ten hours. You didn't have any cool shit, and the combat felt incredibly tedious and boring. I can definitely say however that it gets a lot better. By the time I hit the level cap I felt like an all powerful god. This is not uncommon for an RPG, but HZD was trying to be both a true action game and RPG I felt like, so it being bad at first was less excusable than I would normally feel.
I feel like the ending of the story fell flat. I was expecting payoffs beyond just eliminating Hades. I was hoping to get to talk to GAIA and find out what happened to the other AI's, so that humanity could start to rebuilt for real. Sadly, it seems we'll have to wait for the sequel. Also, why did the machines shut themselves off after you took out Hades? Shouldn't you have had to reactivate GAIA in order to reverse it? Was Hades planning on hanging out at the spire, broadcasting that signal for the rest of its existence or what?
Not that the story was all bad. To the contrary, I actually really enjoyed it. I thought the revelations were all well done, and the overall set up was very cool. I'm interested to see what direction they take the series.
As for Sylens, I felt like his ending was a bit cheap. First of all, why did he abandon you after telling you his real story? He definitely could have been useful at the final battle. He basically just assumes that you are gonna take care of everything, but you very nearly fail, and if you had the world would have ended again. Wtf was he doing that was so important? And then for Hades to magically fly back to Sylens for some reason... You would think he learned his lesson from what happened the last time he tried to -blam!- with Hades. It just didn't seem to fit the story at all and was just a dumb way to set up plot points for expansions or sequels.
Overall I really liked the game. Almost surprisingly so given how I felt about it out of the gate. It's definitely a franchise I will look forward to playing in the future and is probably my new favorite Sony exclusive. [/spoiler]
-
Edited by FrostD: 4/15/2017 10:48:55 AM[spoiler][quote]I feel like the ending of the story fell flat. I was expecting payoffs beyond just eliminating Hades. I was hoping to get to talk to GAIA and find out what happened to the other AI's, so that humanity could start to rebuilt for real.[/quote]Humanity could not start over for real because (Ted?) Faro erased all Humanity Knowledge that was stored in Apollo. GAIA and her subordinate programs could not impart this knowledge. They could only Teraform and breed humanity letting them into the world. This means humanity never cracked the codes for the Faro Plague either. Since the Faro Plague already had a "slave" system in place it's likely the plague is what originally infected Hades. Hades then used it's override programs to seize control of all the other systems. Before things could get too horrible GAIA blows herself and Hades up. They are programs so what happens is they lose the physical components needed to interact with things. Transmission antenna, manufacturing arms etc. She also sets Aloy up to fix it all. Even without Apollo GAIA is confident Aloy will rebuild her. Slightly corrupted by the Hades/Faro takeover and without any guidance the subprograms start doing thier own thing. In the case of Haphestus the Teraforming bots start developing anti human defenses. The Thunderjaw should never exist but humans were forced to hunt machines for resources. So Haphestus has been under attack for awhile now and the game tells you that over the last 19 years or so, Aloy birth, the machines started fighting back and getting bigger. They got Mean. This is the Hades/Plague corruption and the death of GAIA. [quote]Was Hades planning on hanging out at the spire, broadcasting that signal for the rest of its existence or what?[/quote]Hades was built to bring about Day 0 over and over again however many times it was needed.. So in a way yes. In its corrupted state Hades Goal is to kill the earth again. But there is no GAIA or Zero Dawn project to save it this time. [quote]As for Sylens....[/quote]I put explanation in other posters reply.[/spoiler]