Can we not just talk about hidden stuff and things we caught in the game and then discuss some theories instead of fighting?
I'm actually surprised the thread got any attention at all. I expected the observations would be so obscure, no one would care. But I guess in retrospect, it's not surprising. The mere mention of Christianity is enough to agitate some people. It's kind of weird that the discussion has taken the turn it has, but I guess once you create a thread, you don't have much control over where it goes.
Re. your theory about Ted Faro... The problem I see with that is, would he have the programming expertise and resources necessary to pull off something like that? He was more the CEO type, whereas Elizabet was the programming whiz. Gaia and all her subordinate functions took an enormous amount of intelligence, talent, resources, and manpower to pull off. Faro would be all alone.
I wonder if Ted has a clone, too, like Aloy. Ted Jr.
His post is so vague it could be applied to many religions.
No, 3 out of those 4 are specific to Jewish/Christian literature (unless the Gaia/Hades relationship/story parallels the God-Satan one, I'm not familiar enough with those mythological figures to say). I grant that the 4th (virgin birth) isn't specific to Christianity, but the rest are. Not that it matters, really. Consider it a thread about "religious themes," if you like.
As much as I did enjoy Horizon (really need to play the DLC...damn you backlog) I still picked up on the writers less than subtle political cues and as mentioned found the fact I mentioned prior amusing...
Re. that, one caveat about your idea that the patriarchal society in the game (the Carja) were more advanced than the Nora. They were actually incredibly barbaric, just prior to the game's beginning. They waged war with everyone, had human sacrifices in the Sundom, kept slaves, and were run by a Mad Sun King. It was only the overthrow by the new king that brought peace and turned it good, but that was a recent development. Prior to that, it was much worse than Nora land. Personally, I didn't see anything terribly barbaric about the Nora, apart from maybe their purity/exclusion rules. They seem like a lot of primitive, nature-based societies. I kind of liked them. They had the best land, that's for sure.
As for the feminist themes, there was only one point where it got a little annoying to me. It's when Aloy is talking to Burgerend (this is part of the DLC, which you haven't played). Burgerend says that she should visit his daughter up north. He mentions that Aloy reminds him of her. Aloy responds, "Why? Because we're both
women?" That was a little grating. I mean, you come from a matriarchal society, girl, don't be sounding like a modern wahman. Burgerend seems chastened and says, "No no, because you're both independent." Meh. I winced.
The only other thing I noticed was a gender imbalance, with women characters tending to be good/strong and male characters tending to be corrupt or foolish. Some of that is attributable to the fact that the game has a female protagonist and a matriarchal culture. If that's the setup for the fictional world, you're naturally going to get a lot of strong female characters. That's fine and didn't seem "feminist" to me, just fictional. What did bother me a little was the relative lack of good, noble men. There were some -- most notably Rost and the Sun King, but also Varl, Teb, Aratak, and even Errend to some degree.
I guess that might've bothered me in a different game, but it didn't bother me in this one. I'm not sure why exactly. I took an early liking to Aloy, the setting, the story, and the combat. Those took center stage for me, and the rest just seemed like part of the fictional world I was immersed in. I didn't even notice the things I mentioned until subsequent playthroughs. And really, if I'm focusing on gender representation, how different am I from the identity politics people who annoy me, who make everything about gender, race, etc.? In the end, I just want an enjoyable game.
One day I will play Horizon.
I bought it 2 years ago, it's installed since then and I only played 5h in the first 2 days and got distracted by something else. Everytime I finish a game I think about playing Horizon but something else shows up. It's the same thing with GTA5. Doomed to be forever installed and never played.
It's a great game, imo. Great combat, beautiful environments, interesting science fiction story, an open world that has plenty to do but is not overstuffed with extraneous content the way other games are... It's my favorite game this gen.