[quote]I thought the final battle was a bit anticlimactic just fighting a deathbringer. They should have made it where we fight hades as a Metal Devil that would have been cool. Other than that I thought the game was great. And the reason all the machines shut down was because Hades was the AI that made all of the ancient machines possible. He was the one behind their "programming" I guess you could call it to take over everything and try to destroy. So once he was gone, the ancients shut down. As far a rebuilding GAIA, there wasn't much to really see. It's gonna take a long time to rebuild her and we already know how she works. Plus they explained how they could do that at one point in the game. It would just be a matter of time. And who knows that process might be included in the sequel to some degree. With Sylens, the entire game he is just completely obsessed with knowledge. He wants to know everything about the Old Ones no matter the cost. I kind of suspected he may turn and end up being a bad guy. Or at least a man on his own side working on his own terms. I mean think about it. While searching the old ruins during the game, whenever you mentioned something not related to figuring out what the old ones were doing there, he would always shut you up and tell you to focus on discovering the secrets of the place you were in. He never cared about Aloy. He just needed her because she was the only one who could access these secrets. And that's why he didn't help with the final battle. I think he knew Aloy would be able to win, and he left to prepare for what came next. I think he told Aloy his story just to kind of appease her. At the very end, I kinda saw that as Sylens capturing whatever was left of Hades into that container. I didn't read that as Hades necessarily working with Sylens. Hades has to be very disconnected with everything and very weak. With his connections to the ancient machines severed, because they did indeed shut down, which wouldn't have happened if he was still at "full power" so to speak. I think Sylens takes advantage of this to safely interrogate Hades without running the risk of being betrayed again. Since everyone thinks he's dead now.[/quote] Agreed. That doesn't make sense to me. GAIA is the one who sent out the signal that turned them off. Hades reactivating them shouldn't be an on or off switch. GAIA should have to rebroadcast their off button. I thought they were going to reactivate her because that's what GAIA said. When you see her recording she says she's going to make Aloy so that she could fix what she had to do to stop Hades. Unless I'm misremembering she specifically said she needed you to reactivate her. So Sylens is just a cartoon villain then? The world was at stake. He would have been destroyed right along with everything else had Aloy failed. His lust for knowledge is known, but having him be so obsessed with it that he would risk global extinction is just really dumb. Especially because you would have to assume that Aloy is going to keep digging into a way to reactivate and/or locate the old AIs. Why not just stick with her and learn from the AIs that aren't out to end all life on Earth? Again, it's just dumb. It's only that way to set up a sequel. Everyone saw Hades fly away. They know he went somewhere. It would make more sense to me had Sylens been at the final battle and then walked up and captured Hades secretly once no one was looking.

Remember Hades is basically the flip side of GAIA. His role is, when needed, completely take over all systems and destroy it all so GAIA can start over. So when he was intercepted by the signal and awoken, he started doing just that. He definitely has the ability to control machines. Yes she is needed to rebuild and reactivate GAIA. I'm just saying it will take a long time, maybe even years, to fully rebuild her and reactivate her. Sylens wouldn't have been able to make much of a difference against that entire robot army. He's just one guy. He has been watching Aloy since she was a child and seeing how extraordinary she was. And he knew all the help she would have. How big a difference could one person make? He went off to prepare to trap Hades after it went down. Because whether he would have been there or not, the outcome would have been the same. Well you can't assume everyone knew what was going on when Hades flew off. Remember Aloy and Sylens are basically the only ones in the present day who truly have an understanding of everything and what's going on. For all anyone else knows it could just be part of the signal that went out to deactivate the ancient machines. Or Hades just finally being completely drained. Also there were people and priests from Meridian always at Hades "corpse" and the spire. He couldn't just walk up there and tamper with an ancient and evil machine without being suspected of something

This are pretty much the same conclusions I came to. Sylens is the spiritual successor if not the direct clone of Ted Faro. People who seek knowledge and unleash powerful devices thinking they have everything under control.

I don't know about Sylens being a clone of Ted. Considering Ted realized his stupidity in the end which caused him to destroy Apollo. Plus Ted wasn't necessarily wanting knowledge of everything. He just was looking to be rich by inventing all this stuff without thinking of the dangers they presented. I think Ted and Sylens are a metaphor. Saying how no matter what timeline or generation, even if they aren't connected, there will always be people who go too far. Who try to take things into their own hands and be a danger to both themselves and the people around them. You can't escape that fact.

This is exactly what I thought.... but... What if GAIA wasn't the only program to get a personality? What if Hades isn't just using the self aware Faro Plague for a voice but it had the personality of the Alpha that explained how Hades worked in that Holo recording? Extrapolate to Apollo having the personality of the hooded lady [is she Indian?] because like Aloy said, knowledge isn't enough. If you want evolution then the programs need to care about thier charges. So Apollo [u]COULD[/u] have initiated clone Faro to try and save itself the same way GAIA did. A Ted Clone, unburdened by his progenitors mistakes and unaware of where the pursuit of knowledge led him, could be making the same mistakes all over again in Sylens. Just a Theory

Wow that's interesting. And I guess at the end of the day, what does Sylens want with all the knowledge? Probably to do or create something like Ted did. Even if he doesn't realize it yet. Hmm... God you're making my mind explode with all these well thought out theories lol