First appearing in the Horizon Zero Dawn comic series, Apex machines are prominent throughout Horizon Forbidden West, possessing black armor instead of white, with enhanced destructive features. Hephaestus designed Apex machines, and they generally appear with a purple outline through Aloy’s Focus, indicating they may be the successor to Daemonic machines, which were found in The Frozen Wilds DLC.
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Far Zenith and the Old Ones’ AI Machine Designs
Anything that would follow up to Apex machines needs to be unique and more than just variations of the base machine version. While this provided a nice change of pace for Horizon Forbidden West for more demanding challenges and to collect rarer parts for crafting, the threat and capabilities of Hephaestus have increased significantly after exposure to Far Zenith’s technology with the printing matrix. If any exposure to their data, designs, or code has been learned or absorbed by Hephaestus, he can produce machines unlike any Earth’s current inhabitants have seen.
This could be seen through machines built off designs from the 21st century. With access to Far Zenith data, Hephaestus would unknowingly learn more about the type of AI and robots used for war and entertainment. With different governments and corporations using other corporate war machines, if replicated, players would get a glimpse at the type of machines other entities had besides the Chariot Line, which ended the world.
If this exposure were a theme in the third game with Hephaestus, he could replicate and learn designs for the future technology and parts that Far Zenith was aware of. It’s already been determined that they could upload their minds and consciousness through the creation of Nemesis. It’s unlikely they didn’t do this in some form to back themselves up at different times, especially when on the run from their creation. On the other hand, Hephaestus could create more deadly weaponry to utilize through new machine designs and more robust defense measures, similar to the shields used by Far Zenith.
Increased Derangement in the Machines
There have already been Corrupted and Daemonic machines, and maybe with Hephaestus free and so powerful, the Derangement will be increased as time for restoring the terraforming system is running out. Perhaps there’s a Frenzied state where machines are just causing havoc to everything around them - almost working in opposition to GAIA’s wishes and what the terraforming system is supposed to do. This could be because Hephaestus is becoming rampant, with the function disconnected from GAIA for too long and affected by being in Far Zenith’s printing matrix. Perhaps being in the printing matrix infected Hephaestus’s code, creating a struggle to maintain or destroy the terraforming system.
This increased Derangement state could be an essential theme or story point in the third game if utilized, giving Aloy another threat to pursue and deal with on a world-saving scale as players await Nemesis’ arrival. Hephaestus, in such a potential state of Derangement, could also explain the creation of new types of deadly machines beyond the Apex variants seen in Horizon Forbidden West. With Hephaestus’ different codes merged and failing, players could encounter a darker, more twisted form of machines that serve as a thematic element showing the distortion of nature.
Horizon: Forbidden West is available now on PS4 and PS5.
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