Who The Far Zenith Are In Horizon Forbidden West | Screen Rant
Horizon Forbidden West and its predecessor are lore-heavy games, with players expected to keep track of two casts of characters living a thousand years apart, including an organization known as Far Zenith. Although the sequel has, for the most part, a self-contained narrative, those who didn't play Horizon Zero Dawn before Forbidden West may find themselves almost immediately lost. Forbidden West picks up not long after the conclusion of Zero Dawn, but puts players in control of Aloy as she's in the middle of exploring the ruins of a mysterious, ancient organization known as Far Zenith.
To the tribal denizens of Horizon's rebuilt planet, the members of Far Zenith would be considered Old Ones. The term "Old Ones" refers to those who lived in the 21st century (Horizon Zero Dawn starts in the year 3040), whose ruins lie throughout the wilderness but remain almost a complete mystery to the layman. Throughout the first game, Aloy learns that the Old Ones went extinct as a result of the Faro Plague, a swarm of war machines that became self-sufficient, multiplying by feeding on the Earth's biomass.
There is a lot players need to know from Horizon Zero Dawn, but Far Zenith played an exceptionally minor role in its story. Far Zenith was a collective of the planet's ultra-wealthy who, assuming Earth was doomed even prior to the discovery of the Faro Plague, aspired to make humanity an interstellar species. The organization was quite secretive, with spokesman Osvald Dalgaard the only publicly known member. A few years prior to the Faro Plague, Far Zenith acquired and repurposed a defunct spacecraft known as the Odyssey. According to a Datapoint in Zero Dawn, the Odyssey mission failed due to an antimatter containment breach while attempting to leave the Solar System.
Despite the rather selfish wish for Earth's elite to leave a doomed planet, Far Zenith became one of two hopes for humanity's survival alongside Project Zero Dawn, and is one way that Horizon Forbidden West's story connects to the original. The two organizations even collaborated, with Far Zenith providing a prototype for the ectogenic chambers that the ELEUTHIA subordinate function would use to grow preserved human embryos. In exchange, Far Zenith received an alpha build of Project Zero Dawn's APOLLO subroutine, which contained an archive of all human knowledge and cultural information.
Without getting into late game Forbidden West spoilers, Aloy is exploring the Far Zenith headquarters during the prologue, looking for a back-up of GAIA, the AI that oversaw Project Zero Dawn and the reconstruction of the Earth's biosphere. She and Varl run into multiple promotional holograms of Dalgaard in the facility, and learn a bit more about Far Zenith's opinion of Project Zero Dawn. Far Zenith being heavily featured in the Horizon Forbidden West prologue indicates that they will play a larger role in the game's narrative.