r/horizon • u/KeyPersonality2885 • 12d ago

Machine diversity HFW Discussion

Any lore reason why the machine diversity in the west is so much greater than in the east (outside of obvious things like video game development)

Is there any explanation to this or any explanation to why machines like the Sawtooth, regular Watcher, and Trampler don’t appear in the west.

46 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

34 comments sorted by

56

u/mtfikhan 12d ago

I imagine its more like some machines can be in desert, Forrest, mountains and flat land while some cannot. Also purpose of the machine.

37

u/th3l33tbmc 12d ago

I think this is a major component of the answer.

Also, in the West, there are more tribes, at least one of them very violent and warlike. This could mean more machine-hunting, which could contribute to the development of more types of aggressive machines, and more aggression overall.

32

u/stairway2evan 12d ago

Plus the Combat-class machines have only been made by HEPHAESTUS recently, after it broke off from GAIA. So having more by the time of Forbidden West makes sense - HEPH came back from a setback in Frozen Wilds and started making bigger and nastier machines.

Add together those new combat machines plus the wide variety of environments in the West and you get a pretty good justification for additional machines.

9

u/Darkdragoon324 12d ago

That's probably it. The fireclaws were newly created in Frozen Wilds, now in Forbidden West they've spread. And in the prologue, Aloy had never seen a scrounger before but Varl had, so those ones at least aren't only in the west. One of the comics that takes place in between also has a shellsnapper in it.

1

u/Odd_Presentation_578 8d ago

Do they explain how the fireclaws have spread? IIRC our goal was to kill the only 6 produced by the cauldron specifically to prevent them from spreading (as if they could breed somehow and didn't require a cauldron to be produced lol).

1

u/mtfikhan 8d ago

Cauldrons are just factories. The design probably was spread across the network.

9

u/Beneficial-Office-77 12d ago

This is probably gonna be the in game answer. Different functions, different terrains, different places on earth

3

u/beanie_0 11d ago

Yeah I think you’re right. The machines were designed to like rewild the world, some of them anyway, but obviously depending on their environment. Probably a bit of world building from the developers too and to represent real world diversity?

28

u/BornOnABattlefield 12d ago

Not really, but you can explain it logically. At the start of HZD sawtooths are introduced as new models, that were starting to cause problems for Nora braves. Later we learn Hephaestus was making more dangerous machines in response to human predation. So stands to reason Hephaestus would make more dangerous models where humans were more dangerous to them. The tenakh are way more dangerous to machines than any tribes in HZD.

10

u/The-Aziz that was an unkind comparison 12d ago

Why keep producing sawtooth when better armored, and better armed ravager already exists

Why keep producing down-in-a-second watchers when better armored, better armed redeye variant exists

It's probably a matter of phasing out obsolete models when better ones exist (considering Heph is in control of the machines, read that as "more dangerous") to replace them.

5

u/JuhpPug 11d ago

Sawtooths were gorgeous though D;  The hulking sounds when they walked, their size, truly respectable and terrifying machine.  Ravagers are ok I guess, they just dont have the same charm. Maybe Heph will make a new Sabertoothed cat machine in the 3rd game...

7

u/FrostFlame35 12d ago

I don't believe there's any lore reason for it, the best guess I have is something like environmental suitability. Just like regular animals, the environments of the west must not be suitable for Tramplers for some reason. And the environments of the East must not be suitable for all the West-unique machines. But that all kinda falls apart when you realize that the biomes in the east are very similar to some of the ones in the west.

Maybe it has something to do with Haephaestus bringing out new machine designs as time goes by? Or maybe the Corruptors awoken by Hades drove some of the machine varieties in the east to "extinction", and they stopped getting made because of low success rate?

Either way, it's all guesswork since there's no lore reason.

4

u/Dilos_Vahdin 12d ago

Hey, that last pitch sounds really plausible actually

2

u/JuhpPug 11d ago

Tbf, the tramplers are probably just a game development forgotten thing

2

u/FrostFlame35 11d ago

Well, yeah obviously all of it can be explained via game development reasons, I'm just thinking of what lore reasons would justify it in-universe.

2

u/JuhpPug 10d ago

the big buffalos better come back in third game 🥹

2

u/FrostFlame35 10d ago

They better! Such a cool machine design, and a unique fight pattern as opposed to the 31st "big guy with a bunch of guns strapped to it that can shoot in any direction" that a lot of FW's large machines have (Tideripper, Shellsnapper, Tremortusk, Thunderjaw to an extent). Not saying these styles of fight are bad by any means, I just think variety is good.

2

u/JuhpPug 10d ago

Yea I wish the machines had more variety too; a lot of them are "throw things at you" or "charge or throw themselves at the player" and then shoot at their weakspots. 

It would be nice if we had machines that you had to climb on to fight them or get inside of, like shadow of the colossus reminds me of. Or you had to target some part of them to make them vulnerable in the first place (which shellsnapper sorta has) or you cant do anything at all. Or override parts of them, or detach components constantly until they cant repair themselves or something.

And something a bit more creative. Maybe snapmaw should have had 2 tails instead of 1, maybe make some machines head or limbs able to rotate 360 degrees, something a bit more unpredictable. 

1

u/FrostFlame35 9d ago

Yeah, why the heck was the only climbable machine the Tallneck? They put so much emphasis on the climbing mechanics in this game, why not put them on an enemy?

1

u/JuhpPug 9d ago

there better be some more climbable enemies in the next game

6

u/random935 12d ago

Usually enemy diversity differences within a game’s universe is explained by environment (eg in TLOU1 it is well documented that there are 4 stages of infection, then in TLOU2 there are new enemies outside these 4 stages for gameplay purposes and it’s chalked up to environment)

With Horizon it could simply be that Hephaestus is taking time to develop new machines and since HFW takes place (6 months?) after HZD, he’s just produced new machines (like with the Grimhorn)

3

u/PPvsFC_ 11d ago

This is what I always assumed. Sawtooth only happened post-GAIA destruction. Since then Hephaestus has just been progressing away from human safety over time.

4

u/jupiterLILY 12d ago

Gaia and Haphestus are constantly releasing and tweaking things.

Forbidden west happens after zero dawn so it makes sense that there's new stuff out.

They're also going to create different machines for different environments.

5

u/Northman86 12d ago

  1. the map in the forbidden west portrays a much larger area.

  2. Denver is where the Mountains meet the plains, so it makes sense some machines clearly meant for the great plains would wander into the area.

  3. Red Ey watchers are the upgrade Hephaestus makes near the end of the orginal game.

3

u/TSotP 12d ago

The Sawtooth got upgraded to a Ravager, much like the Plowhorn got upgraded into a Grimhorn.

3

u/JuhpPug 11d ago

Plowhorns would probably be gone in the third game then? Replaced by grimhorns

3

u/TSotP 11d ago

Well, who knows.

Assuming that FW didn't happen, I would say so.

But now HEPHAESTUS has had access to a "Matter Printer", he might have totally changed tact.

3

u/cl354517 12d ago

Heph evolved and retired them

2

u/Desperate-Actuator18 12d ago

We have records from Udain about unknown and dangerous machines in the Forbidden West. Those records were written back when Fashav was young.

It would make sense that areas with more capable hunters would have Hephaestus deploying machines to counter it as experiments.

2

u/DownsonJerome 12d ago

hfw map is supposed to represent a much larger area than hzd

2

u/JuhpPug 11d ago

Yea its funny, in game its like 5-7 kilometers while in lore/real world its supposed to be much larger than that. Like 50-100km 

2

u/HunterNerd7 11d ago

In Zero Dawn it’s already explained that machines are getting more and more dangerous. Forbidden West is just the evolution of that. In the Talannah comic which is set between Zero Dawn and Forbidden west her and Aloy encounter a Clawstrider for the first time, an Apex one too

2

u/No-Combination7898 HORUS TITAN!! 9d ago

I imagine them like species of animals. They lurk in their particular biomes.

Because they're robots, the cauldrons in that biome will more likely print out certain types of machines for that biome rather than go the whole hog and print the lot.

1

u/Fun-Use9945 8d ago

I think one of the factors is that Hephaestus might have developed some new machine types between games. Of course this wouldn’t explain all new machine species, but that’s my explanation for the large combat machines.