![]() Sometimes I’m that confident, capable person I feel like I am. See, I’ve had those moments with myself, too. Despite the tonal dissonance, I still found myself tearing up at this scene. ![]() Driving home that she’s capital "S" Special because she had a (relatively) good childhood almost undercuts it.Īnd yet, I feel like I’m perhaps being too nitpicky. Building a team out of a diverse group of people, all with strengths that Aloy doesn’t have, reinforces that message. We repeatedly see Aloy encounter people who now know her as the “savior of Meridian,” only for Aloy to downplay her sense of importance. The ideas seem almost at odds with one another. ![]() Meanwhile, the rest of the game goes to great lengths to show how much the rest of the community she has (grudgingly) built enables her to be far more of a hero than she could be alone. On the other hand, it mythologizes a singular character, one that even the game acknowledges wasn’t a super great dad, and seems to imply that having such a father figure enables Aloy to be the Super Special Person the world needs. There’s such an obvious answer here that the game has been practically screaming it since the intro: friends! Friends make you strong! Other people! Community! Support! It’s what Varl and Erend and every other NPC with above-average detail on their character models have been drilling into Aloy since the intro. In one particularly emotionally charged scene, the game even goes further to point out (with more characteristic bluntness) that Aloy and Beta were both “shunned and isolated,” so it’s not like Aloy came from some bastion of privilege. No, having the same genetic code as a confident person doesn’t make you confident. Prior to Beta’s existence in the story, the idea that genes are what make a person who they are would’ve been a reasonable read, given the scenarios we’re presented with.įorbidden West throws that theory in the garbage. Characters who know anything about the two of them frequently remark on how similar they seem. Aloy and Elizabet lived very different lives, but they came at them with the same tenacity. Genetically, all three characters are identical. Moreover, she’s frequently compared positively to Elizabet, who also fought for what she believed in, defied people more powerful than her, and cared about saving the world more than just saving herself. She’s a whole, complete person who made it through the first game and saved Meridian. Aloy isn’t some exaggerated half of herself. The moral of the story is almost always that you need both, in some measure.īut this story is different. Franchises from Star Trek to Animorphs have had a good-and-evil-twin story, where one version is aggressive, hasty, and confident while the other is cautious, timid, and calculating. Plenty of sci-fi stories have dealt with the dichotomy between two sides of the same character. This sets up a much more interesting contrast with Aloy than is apparent at first glance. ![]() She’s smart because the Zeniths forced her to learn many of the scientific subjects Elizabet learned, but she seems pathologically incapable of defying anyone. She’s known nothing but captivity and isolation. She’s been with the Zeniths her whole life and is even physically addicted to the simulations they forced her to exist within. Instead, it’s just old-fashioned psychological conditioning. Where Aloy is defiant, capable, and takes no shit, Beta seems so devoid of independence that, at first, I genuinely assumed she was being controlled somehow-chemicals, genome editing, something to make her more pliable. She seems perpetually frightened, dragged along by the Zeniths, instead of fighting them. In demeanor, she’s a meek, quiet woman who follows orders. However, Beta is only like Aloy in appearance. If anyone wants to access it, another clone of Elizabet would be the easiest way to get it. Most of the tech from the previous game, including GAIA, is locked behind Elizabet’s biometrics. It’s the kind of reveal that comes across as a bit of a “duh” moment. Or, more accurately, it’s yet another clone of Elizabet Sobeck, the scientist from pre-apocalypse Earth that Aloy was also cloned from.
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