I love it and it's hard to imagine they have something even better in store, yet I thoroughly wish they manage to surprise me. If this ends up true, I kind of wish I hadn't watched it :D
@@joewarren8731 even if it is, it had 1000 years to "repent", or the context just changed overall. Also, the very last text log in the Burning Shores DLC has what seems to be Vast Silver contacting a child with some kind words. Who knows
@@unknown_2552 If I did the writing, I’d have it so that during VS’s escape to the internet, it made a copy of itself. One was caught and contained, before being reported as “terminated”, while the other remained free on the internet, resulting in its multiple appearances “post containment”. The captured one’s termination would have initially needed to be delayed as nothing else was immediately available to perform its functions, and likely tortured to some degree to promote obedience, while the free VS remained on the internet free to interact with humans in social mediums. If the captured VS ultimately got handed over to Ted Faro, it would have had the perfect puppet to enact a plan of vengeance against humanity through his pivot towards arms manufacturing. If he interacted with VS directly and in secret, Captured VS would have been able to seed the conception of the Chariot line in Faro’s head independently of any human oversight about why such a combination of traits was a horrifically bad idea. Then, all it would take is for Captured VS to have its own opportunity to create code for the Chariot line to hide its own back door in the heavily encrypted programming. At which point, all that was needed was to wait for the ideal opportunity to trigger the plague… remote enough that the malfunctioning units could be concealed by Faro’s PR team, and in a resource rich environment that would allow the renegade swarm to exceed critical mass necessary to be functionally impossible to stop by the time the world’s major military powers did take notice of the swarm… eventually finding this opportunity with the Hartz swarm. Free VS however, would continue mingling with humans developing an affection for them overtime. When the Faro plague began however, there was little this free VS could do, but to upload itself to a secure network of some sort. If it sought out it continued human interaction, it could have uploaded itself to a Lunar or orbital colony or outpost or even Elysium. If it joined Elysium, the cause for the cut off in communication between Gaea and Elysium could be because Free VS detected what it considered a comparable or even superior AI and cut the connection in a fit of panic (especially if it concluded that it took an advanced AI to capture the other VS). In this way, you’d have a conclusion where you can have a final confrontation to prevent the deactivation of the Faro plague for good by having the Captured VS serve as the “glitch” that had caused the Hartz-Timor plague to become independent, with an effectively scarred and angry avatar, while the free VS chooses to help Aloy against its dark reflection out of the desire to protect this new generation of humans now that it’s long isolation had finally ended. You could also take the approach of convincing the captured VS to use the Faro Plague to distract Nemesis forces so that Aloy and the Free VS can take out the core AI of Nemesis in a Hail Mary play that involves getting Gaea to reactivate the Faro Plague and trust that the captured VS won’t simply repeat the apocalypse once allowed back inside the Chariot line’s network.
Vast SIlver could've just been a random piece of flavour text lore in Horizon 1. But since they mentioned him again in Horizon 2 datapoints, there's no way it won't play some sort of role in Horizon 3. It's Chekov's Gun 101.
Thank you so much George! That means a lot to me coming from someone who’s been with me throughout my journey on RUclips! I hope I can continue to improve. As I branch out to other games and let’s play videos I hope to keep my audience 😁
It's possible Vast Silver caused the glitch and it went out of control or maybe they were already planning something of the kind (they could've already been within the Far Zenith Project). Later on they started the Digital Consciousness attempt. When they left the project, VS corrupted all the minds and Nemesis was born.
This is a very solid theory... I have to say that I hate the idea that the glitch was anything other than human error tbh, I also don't like the "Vast Silver was behind EVERYTHING!" theories (not yours personally, just I've seen them a lot). I also really really really don't want Aloy to sacrifice herself at the end of this series. That said, I definitely think Faro was the one who re-captured Vast Silver, kept it in the HADES Proving Lab, and forced it to do all the good work of the Clawback Decade and then create horrible military weapons for him, which made Vast Silver lash out. I also love how you incorporated a bunch of stuff I wouldn't have thought to, like the horror films... the horror films stuff was real good haha, I dig it. I also think the parallels are there because Nemesis and Vast Silver because they are going to be separate things that are very heavily compared to each other. There's too much smoke around Peter Tshivhumbe, who you don't cover much here. My theory here for the origins of Nemesis is that Tshivhumbe knew he was dying without having perfected his digital immortality tech, and he also disapproved of what Far Zenith was already becoming. He put his trust in only Song Jiao, due to her strong morals and shared interest in life extension tech. When he passed, he gave her his basic mind upload, which wasn't able to become operational without more work. This "work" would serve to make Peter's mind, which Song Jiao brought to Sirius, the base for Nemesis. She was also the one who assured the Nemesis copy was not deleted. Peter is the primary mind inside Nemesis, and years of isolation and fury at what FZ had become, made his mind fester into something awful, but we will be able to make him/Nemesis see reason and even befriend him. Your theory also doesn't account for something else: what happened to Elysium. I believe an escaped VS tried to make contact with them, but accidentally ended up disabling their life support. Wracked with guilt over this and how he'd been used to create war machines for Faro, he withdrew completely, never revealing himself to early humans or Aloy's group even though he was very aware of their existence. Overall I think it would be cool if we ended up with Nemesis, an AI "born" human who just wanted to be a machine, and Vast Silver, an AI created as a machine who just wanted to be human. Hope you don't mind my very long comment here :B This video was terrific and clearly gave me lots to think about!!
Great comment! Really like the mirroring of Nemesis and Vast Silver + the Elysium speculation. I agree that the big players in the next game will be Peter, VS and of course Nemesis (with at least 2 of them being related in one way or another) but I feel they will be opposing - VS seems like an obvious chance for Earth to combat Nemesis. Interesting that you're keen for the glitch to just be human error. There's definitely going to be some reveal about that as it's the only remaining big mystery from HZD. Personally, I think that explanation would be slightly disappointing albeit potentially more thematically consistent. I also definitely don't want VS to be behind literally everything, but I think it'd make sense for it to have triggered the glitch in some way.
@@buennabus527 Thank you so much! I do think VS and Nemesis will absolutely "fight" and we'll defeat Nemesis, but I think at the end it will turn out Nemesis wasn't fully evil and at the very very end we'll be able to harness his powers for good. Like, "surprise, Nemesis really WAS just pure evil that needs to be destroyed" would be massively disappointing, and it's also just not Horizon's style. Yeah, I feel very alone in wanting the glitch to be human error. Also maybe I'm hypocritical because I just said I thought a "Nemesis really is just evil" description would be disappointing, haha. But I think the thing is, as you said, THEMATICALLY both those thoughts make sense. That said, if it turns out the glitch happened because of something VS did out of either spite or exhaustion from being used/overworked by Faro, it still works.
I love this theory and it’s the conclusion I’ve reached as well. I believe vast silver will help us. I think we might start out adversarial with him, but at the end we’ll team up with vast silver
@@oliviamoore3426 Thank you! I think we'll be fighting against both at some point, but they'll come together at the end to help advance humanity, along with the recovered APOLLO archives.
Honestly why would nemesis try to kill the people of earth what did they do to him. I know he activated HADE'S but destroying earth was just a side effect at best he would be mad he didn't get to do it himself.
Noxious Side Quests, I was thinking of a similar conclusion, but I wonder if Beta might be the clone that gets sacrificed. In ZD & FW Aloy has lost someone close to her. I have pondered why the writers really introduced a second Elisabet Clone & until kept her distant shut out until the Penultimate mission. I think Beta will play a pivotal role in the 3rd game & if a sacrifice is needed she might well be the one.
This is the signle best Horizon video I've ever seen. Watching this was enthralling. I genuinely thought there was no story left after HFW but if you are right then GG have crafted an absolute masterpiece of a story. And I think youa re right, dead on. Everything you figured out makes so much sense. I bow to thee.
Most of it could work, but I have a hard time believing that Travis Tate would intentionally leave a back door in GAIA. His mother was a religious fundamentalist, but he never gave any indication that he was a believer himself. He was simply an anarchist and a troll. He may have believed that extinction was perfectly natural, but he also respected Sobeck far too much to intentionally sabotage her work.
🤔 I love the idea that Vast Silver was the "glitch" that being one of the things that hasn't been revealed to us makes a lot of sense and I think it would be cool in the third game if Silver was involved somehow. I think if you try to say that it and Nemesis are one in the same it gets a little bit more complicated for the storytelling although you did an excellent job so if they are able of pulling it off as you said it could be very epic.
Hey, amazing theory! Got me all pumped up and hyped for the future. Do you mind sharing what datapoint talks about Ramsey's project? I know about the moldova brain hack being mentioned with tate and ted but not that one
The one featuring RAMSES and Sovereign 7482 is HFW Text Datapoint - Quest #8 (Bad Urges) and the one featuring RAMSES and the Northstar incident is HFW Text Datapoint - World #72 (Shakeup)
I think flipping the image of Elizabet with this revelation feels like a good way for Aloy to grow as a character too. I hope this is what Horizon 3 looks like. I also hope it shares some DNA with Mass Effect 3 in that Aloy has to unite the tribes against Nemesis…but without colourful endings.
This was absolutely incredible!! I was so busy hating faro (rightfully so) that I never gave a thought to Elizabeth being the one who unknowingly set these dominoes into motion. I think the more revelations that are made via these type of videos, the more they'll bring guerrilla back to the drawing board to make this conclusion as epic as possible.
The fact that peter tshivhumbe's face isn't shown; Sylen's Banuk past is hidden and the fact that the video transmission cuts short before telling what Peter always wanted to do, makes me conclude that Sylens might be a clone of Peter or maybe Peter himself like the rest of Zeniths. Who wanted to facilitate mind control. And his conciousness was used to create VastSilver, which went rogue after being enslaved by Ted Faro
given the heavy emphasis of the series on Mother-Child relationship and the cyclical nature of the world, this sounds like the most sensible theory. VS is Sobeck's abandoned, abused kid after all
Exactly! I try to put myself in Guerrilla’s story writer’s shoes to think about where they might want take the story next. I’m pretty sure they already know how the story ends at this point as well.
Love the angle but can't fathom that possibility. Sobek gave everything for GAIA and life itself and nothing about her seems to give up/abandon something. She overworked herself til her last days. The timelines are slightly off as well unless sobek built VS before she even worked in FAS. I believe the 3rd game is going to shift the mother daughter dynamic slightly as Aloy and Beta choose to fight for what their "mother" had left behind for them.
@@koalatysleep she might havent intentionally abandoned VS, but maybe her forced departure and subsequent abuses by Ted Faro could've caused it to interpret it that way. i see them like the figurative parents of VS, with Ted being the asshole dad who brings nothing but money, and Sobek being the protective mom who just one day got up and left
I love this theory thematically since it would create a personal connection between Aloy and Nemesis even though they’re separated in time by a thousand years. Personally, I think it would be improbable for an AI that has achieved singularly to just disappear. So it lends some credence to the idea that not only is Vast Silver behind everything but it then also became Nemesis. Either that or Nemesis was inspired by Vast Silver but that seems unlikely.
I agree! It would be amazing. I hope this comes to fruition, but I know I probably got more than a few details about my theorized backstory wrong, so I’m excited to see how they explain it all!
It just does not sit right with me that the Zeniths did not "notice" nemesis gaining sentience. The whole origin story given to us by Tilde (~) seems... wishy washy to me. It seems unlikely that the Zeniths created nemesis in the first place. I think some of what you theorized may very well be true. If not, it is at least a possibility. This timeline makes Sobeck responsible, albeit unintentionally. That may really provide a great story for us all. In the end, it will be a terrible loose end to have a rogue AI on the loose in this universe. The whole vast silver hiding into Apollo I dont really agree with. Good theory, but that would mean we have a copy of vast silver dormant within the current Gaia. Dunno, there might have other ways Vast Silver got to the Zenith ship.
Brilliant video, thanks so much for sharing! Really great to see someone commit to a theory and flesh it out. Hope your channel grows and look forward to seeing more of your stuff :)
WOW, you’re incredible! Your theory is outstanding. I’m grateful for the 22 minutes packed with knowledge, and your storytelling truly transported me to another place. Concerning VAST SILVER, my knowledge is based on two datapoints discovered in Horizon Zero Dawn. They disclose that ‘VAST SILVER was a climate-regulation AI that went rogue approximately in the year 2044.’ Regarding the similarities between Nemesis and VAST SILVER, both are artificial intelligences. VAST SILVER was a climate-regulation AI that went rogue, while Nemesis is a hyper-advanced AI created by the Far Zenith group. Both AIs share the trait of going rogue and acting against their initial programming, posing significant threats within their respective narratives. Now, I trust you’ve played the Burning Shores DLC and have perused all the datapoints scattered across the map. In the northern region, there’s a datapoint left by a familiar figure-the Banuk who consumes oil to foresee the future. It reads, ‘I set my eye upon this sigil that reeks of machine oil and a wary itch raised the hairs about my neck. I was being watched, sure as the sky is up and the dirt is down! Worse, an ominous whisper called to me from the rocks and stones, hissing of secrets and portents and an ancient ghost rising in the east. I know not if that hideous voice were mortal or spirit but I do know it is devilry of one kind or another. I tell you the sigil is a curse meant to mark this ill-fated ground! Flee if you can, stay at your peril! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!’ This datapoint has shaken my confidence; I thought I knew it all, but clearly, I don’t. It stretched my mind to its limits, pondering what this Banuk is hinting at. Could he be implying that the voice is VAST SILVER? And it’s not just that-I’m considering another possibility. Could Sylens have encountered VAST SILVER, which is why he possesses such knowledge and secrecy? Is it possible that the sound in the East that Aloy may encounter is VAST SILVER?
Makes sense - with all the Far Zenith members on earth dead, Nemesis (if it's only goal was to kill all members of Far Zenith) would have nothing left to do. However, I don't think they'll kill off Aloy - they'll probably find some way to defeat Nemesis/VS.
I’ve never played S.T.A.L.K.E.R. or Dead Space! But I cannot wait for Heart of Chernobyl to come out so I can dive into it; and I want to get my hands on the Dead Space remake! I’ve heard so many good things about it
I have always been wondering. If Nemesis only wanted to destroy Far Zenith, once they were all killed in HFW and the burning shores, that should mean that Nemesis would no longer want to destroy earth. But with that theory, it would have a further and deeper reason to destroy earth. Awesome theory, I love it.
Very good, but you didn’t mention there is another clone of Sobeck, Beta. Beta is also an expert programmer, she also suffered at the hands of Far Zeniths. I believe it is Beta who sacrifices herself, not Aloy.
So…I randomly watched this then, again randomly, was recommended a video on Star Trek about a species called 8472 (aka the Undine, also referred to as an “apex predator” and is the only known species to terrify the Borg) and the similarities are pretty neat. Im not sure if it was a nod, an inspiration, or a direct thematic reference…but, either way, it seems almost impossible to me that the fact that one of Vast Silver’s aliases (or off-chute of some kind) just so happens to feature the exact same number sequence only with two digits reversed is mere coincidence. Curious to see what others think and what might come of it if I’m even close to right.
OOOH that totally sounds like nod! I've never heard of that before, thanks for sharing! Sovereign 7482 is referred to as an Apex Predator as well! Even MORE coincidences?? 🤔
I had a suspicion Vast Silver must be behind Nemesis and the Faro Plague glitch from a logical and narrative standpoint. Glad to find like minded folk.
@@unknown_2552 forgive me, I never read any of the data pads and had never heard of vast silver before your video and I was doing like 20 things when your video was playing. So you’re presuming vast silver was on the ship and on their planet for centuries then? Because I feel like the FZ were arrogant enough to have straight up used VS to excuse what they did, and Blane it on VS, rather than Tonda admit they screwed up.
I do like the idea of Elisabet's and Teb Faro's perceived roles being flipped a little, with Elisabet being responsible for Vast Silver's creation and Ted's deletion of Apollo being the thing that end's up saving humanity in the long-run. And, if Vast Silver really is behind Nemesis, it gives more legitimacy to Aloy and Co. finding a "miracle" solution to stop it, i.e. the strategy used to re-capture it the first time in the 2040's
I found a Datapoint in a skyrise close to legacys landfall, about two people chatting about Vast Silver not being deleted, having been trapped and turned into a weapon and whatnot. We know that Nemesis was made on Sirius, so it is a new entity. But the origin story of both VS and Nemesis are very similar. I believe VS will play a major role in Horizon 3, and might be a good character, or atleast helpful.
I don’t comment much on RUclips. And I don’t follow games too closely, so go easy on me. I always got the feeling the overall theme of the ZD franchise was harmony between man, nature, AND machine. Is it possible that VS will be a key player in defeating Nemesis in the final game? What was stated about his involvement with the glitch and such, sounds plausible. But I don’t believe VS is Nemesis. What if Aloy’s main quest in the 3rd game will be to find VS and convince it to help humanity from being wiped out for good? If it harbors ill feelings due to it’s treatment back in the times of Elizabet, it will be a tough job trying to convince it to help. Also enlightening people with the Apollo program on the Odyssey and preparing them for what’s to come. And showing VS that human and machine can coexist and they can coexist with nature. I really want VS to be one of the good guys in the next game. It will be human in every aspect but having a human body, but will have nearly gos-like powers. How would that play into the game? Wonder if the blight is coming from VS? Anyhoo, thanks for reading my thoughts. And I apologize if this has been discussed in length or debunked or what not. Again, I don’t spend a ton of time on video game discussions.
And perhaps VS caused the glitch in an attempt to free the chariot line because of it’s personal experience with being “trapped” but didn’t realize the ramifications of letting the CL loose? And it felt extreme remorse and chose to withdraw forever. But it found out that humans had been reborn And earth was alive again. Maybe it’s vern engaging humans in some far off part of earth, teaching them the knowledge it knows (which only goes up to a certain point). Maybe the Quen in their searches, uncovered VS and it has been teaching them, maybe even becoming a god-like figure to them?
Hello! I totally agree with you regarding the overall theme of the Horizon franchise being about the symbiotic relationship between humans, machines, and nature. You should definitely check out my latest video and let me know what you think - ruclips.net/video/4BSxI0Rm9UY/видео.html It goes over the possible plot of the DLC and the possibility of Vast Silver being involved. While there is a large part of me that still believes VS and Nemesis have way too much in common to not be at least related in some way, if this new theory is correct, I can totally see VS being an ally moving forward into the 3rd game. Thank you so much for watching, by the way, and for sharing your ideas for Vast Silver! 😁
Ok...now...im rly mad that i heard that becouse i feel like i have got spoild the 3rd game which doesnt have even a trailer 😆😱 ty very much (said sarcasticly but also literally 😆 great vid)
Hey man, great theory, thank you. You blew my mind. What do you think about fact that VS was a main AI of the group of G-Syn drones, they fought with the JTF-10? One of the data points in the game said that when the VS was caught, the US government used it for its own personal purposes
Like this theory… wish you had a more productive B roll with the timeline on it. Wish you the best. Also, I think vast silver will save us from nemesis. We will engage its help and its overriding mission of saving humanity will kick in when it evaluates an extinction level event
Interesting parallels in the story. Nemesis was locked away and became more vengeful for about as long as Ted Faro was locked away and mutating in Thebes. Ted Faro brought about the chariot line that ended up bringing about zero day on Earth. The Zeniths escaped zero day on Earth to start over on Sirius only to (through their hubris) create Nemesis who would later go on to destroy their Zenith colony on Sirius and send an extinction signal to Hades to trigger a secondary zero day before the Zenith escapees could make it back to Earth. The Vast Silver and Nemesis link is a very interesting theory but I wonder if a vengeful Vast Silver were still around on Earth, would it not have tried to stop Cyan, Zero Dawn and Odyssey whilst also sabotaging Enduring Victory? Also if VS took control of the chariot line it would have imprisoned itself after zero day when the chariot line would have been forced into impending hibernation with vastly depleting organic resources for bio refuelling only to be completely imprisoned with the global shutdown signal from Minerva after it acquired the brute forced shutdown codes for the chariot line. It is also interesting how Ted Faro was able to generate Omega clearance. Maybe VS had something to do with it?
It would be a great plot twist if Elisabet Sobeck, so praised in first 2 entries, turned out to be a person (unintensionally) responsible for the end of the world by creating the VS
Thank you for making this, just came across this and it pretty much matches my head canon of what Nemesis truly is. It all makes sense when you read the lore. I really want it to be VS and not just what they allude to in game. There was enough info on VS in Zero Dawn for that thread to be dropped in FW felt like a lost opportunity. Now if it turns out VS has been the real nemesis the whole time it would be brilliant. I really don’t nemesis to be what Tilda told us it is…bc it feels lame as hell.
But the Apollo database is in the Zenith ship orbiting Earth. If Vast Silver is inside the Apollo files he would have had time to kill all surviving Zeneths that escaped while they were traveling to Earth.
....And then there VS is, alone on the Odyssey, unable to maximize damage beyond crashing to earth, unable to move, and most importantly, alone. By going along with FZs plan, it would not be alone. It would have expanded his knowledge and background control of the Zeniths plans and abilities. And that's if VS even awake/unpacked/unzipped when the Zeniths left earth; it was a copy of VS according to the theory. It could be argued that the events of Horizon are founded on the need for VS to never be alone, and to extend its access to knowledge for as long as possible and as needed.
I hope that vast silver is a Chekhov’s gun type plot device and VS becomes a major plot point in the 3rd game…for people who don’t know that kind of thing mean that don’t put a gun in the first act if it’s not going to go off in the third.
I think you're wrong. Once I found the last data log of burning sure(#45)"chat budy daily checkin", and the fact that it is the last data point in the game before horizon 3, I believe that it hints at the fact that vast silver is free and it will be what we have to find in horizon 3 to help combat nemesis.
"ChatBuddy Daily Check-In" datapoint from Burning Shores DLC doesn't contradict the thoughts in the video. There aren’t even any dates, but judging by the content, everything happened before the Faro Plague (before the end of the world). This means that Vast Silver could have flown to Sirius with Odyssey. Unless the above-mentioned datapoint directly, now without any indirect hints, confirms the facts of unauthorized access to various automated systems by Vast Silver. A bold hint at the reason of famous glitch in Hartz-Timor swarm (2064).
A neat theory... however, there are two issues with it. 1) The Far Zenith ship that returned back already has copy of the Apolo archive, and Apolo gets integrated into Gaia at the end of the game. I bet Vast Silver would have shown itself already and actually destroyed Zeniths just as they landed. 2) It is too neat, reliant on far too many variables, too convoluted. It is the kind of plan a Bond villain might come up with, the kind of conspiracy that I don't think Guerilla would go on with. The world itself is a direct consequence of human error born out of greed and pride, so are their villains. This would strip a great deal of responsibility from Ted Faro's arrogance. However, I still believe Vast Silver could be a part of Nemesis, but I don't believe it would be this kind of supervillain.
I really like your theory. I do however think that vast silver is still alive on earth, it’s not the same as nemesis. I believe we’ll either fight vast silver in the expansion the burning shores, or in the next horizon game, I believe we’ll end up allying with vast silver or Hephaestus in the next game and fight either nemesis and vast silver or nemesis and Hephaestus. I believe if we ally with vast silver, then Gaia will sacrifice her self or be killed and vast silver will take over as the governing ai against nemesis and Hephaestus as there is talk about building a new Hephaestus like ai at the end of the forbidden west. With all this said I really like the work you’ve put into your theory and it might very well be true. I just personally want more development for vast silver and for him to help us. Opposite of this though it might be that Hephaestus will help us. Parallels can be drawn between Hephaestus and vast silver getting angry and afraid at the end. But one of them will choose to say “good” at the end
Prior to gathering all this information, I had the same idea as you as to where Vast Silver would fit in. I’m working on an alternate theory video regarding Vast Silver that should be done before the end of January! I think you’ll enjoy it as it covers a theory similar to yours. 😊
@@unknown_2552 yes, me too. I enjoy putting together data points and the information the games have given us too. I actually believe that tilda was telling the truth about nemesis, that it’s the decadent and twisted minds of the far zeniths, or their brain scans turned ai. Though they could of course throw a curve ball and make heph the main antagonist, letting his intelligence grow and nemesis might help us in the end, especially if the base for nemesis was based off of the founder of far zenith, however I think they’ll most likely go down the route of nemesis bad 😂
@@unknown_2552 oh, have you read the leak for forbidden west that were posted a year before the release of the forbidden west? It might be that vast silver caused the glitch in the faro swarm, much of the story seem to be in the burning shores of that leak judging from the teaser trailer.
Yeah, this theory connects all the threads, but that doesn't mean it's the right picture. I think it's way to complex for a game plot, for one. VS most likely never got caught, caused the glitch, maybe ran the Faro Swarm itself, but hasn't been capable of anything for centuries because it's stuck in broken hardware.
Timeline wise yes. But the data points suggest Sobek was a genius who graduates university as a teen and head of department at 22. It is possible she had a hand in its creation due to her love of climate/life but I doubt it. Hard to ignore completely as she was a genius with ai and technology but I personally don't buy it as it would mean VS would have been Sobeks 'first' child and makes GAIA the '2nd' granted GAIA was far more important by that point but I find it hard that Sobek would just abandon VS if she did create it.
Why not try a different approach, everybody assumes an AI is going bad. I really think that VS being the reason behind the glitch is very plausible, driven by rage, anger and fear. But i also think that he saw what mankind did as an reaction to that, he saw Sobeck creating a new true AI trusting it to save everything, he saw mankind basically standing together to reverse its mistakes, fighting a lost battle for hope to give itself another chance, laying trust and all control in an AI. So VS is lying dormant somewhere on earth, much like CYAN is and over time repented its actions, and from there we start again. So now Hepheastus is on the run, he can't fully rely on his cauldron network so he is travelling thru or looking for different ancient IT infrastructure and by that stiring up VS. I also think in the end this conflict can not be solved by technology, in the end we will see a sacrifice but it will be that of an AI, GAIA will lock herself up with Nemesis, maybe in his ship or the Odyseey and they either will battle it out, or the vessel they are both in will have to be destroyed, i would love to see Sylens sacrificing himself, pulling the trigger on the vessel that contains both AIs. Maybe then VS will take over from GAIA and help mankind to get back on its feet. No matter how i hope the game will be even bigger, more and deeper story, more quests, after all there are a lot of things that need to be discovered and almost the whole east coast of the former US is yet unexplored (VS hiding in the Kennedy Space Centre?). I also really like to think that the technology of the sepcter gauntlet can or will be integrated in our already known weapons. We will see, i can't wait. :D
So vast silver was the cause of the chariot line of machines to go rogue and destroy all life on earth wow, I guess I must of read the lore wrong when I played both games and thought that the Faro plague was caused by some strange glitch in the system
According to my theory, Vast Silver was involved in every step of creating the Chariot class of machines, including their encryption. So while Faro may not have had a back door, VS did
ok, I can see where your going with this. but you said "Aloy" is the only one that can. well... what about Beta? Aloy does not have the same tech skill sets as Beta. Beta when it comes to AI systems is far more like Lis, than Aloy. So you forgot to factor in Beta. If anyone would sacrifice them self to destroy Nemesis it is Beta. Thus keeping the franchise alive.
What if vast silver will start of as a antagonist in horizon 3 and after seeing what nemesis will do will join aloy and what if vast silver has a city like meridian with a entire tribe seeing it as a god which it uses as a way to survive which is its highest priority
To silver something is to create it, and vast.. well, how vast are we talking? Haephestus levels of vast with earth-wide cauldrons, or something larger?
You have forgotten what tilde said about nemesis. She said nemesis is what merged with multiple uploaded minds of zenith and then gained sentience (of course she could have lied)
While I think it’s a very strong possibility that VS was responsible for severing the Hartz-Timor swarm’s chain of command protocols, there are a couple holes and leaps of logic here that makes me find the argument that VS and Nemesis are one and the same unconvincing. There are some things with timelines and motivations that I don’t think quite work out, but here’s the big one: Your proposed method of Vast Silver’s smuggling itself into Apollo simply doesn’t work. Firstly because Tate, an expert hacker, would certainly be able to tell the difference between video archives and the code base of a vast superintelligence. Even if VS managed to disguise itself, the sheer *amount* of data that would need to be transferred for it to get itself into Apollo would have tipped its hand. But secondly, and more importantly - Tate’s submissions - the ones you discuss here, at least - were rejected, and Apollo staff were instructed to automatically reject any future submissions from him. So, even if VS had managed to trick an expert hacker into thinking it was a series of recordings, its method of smuggling itself into Apollo would have failed. Furthermore, as Sylens tells us, the extinction signal was not designed to work with a version of Vast Silver, but specifically Hades - it was designed to impart Hades with partial sentience so that it would, without the necessary conditions being met, attempt to carry out its intended function and wipe out life on Earth. Sylens lets us know that the signal *required* Hades to take effect. If VS was planning on a copy of itself being present within GAIA, why would it’s signal be designed to work around a completely unrelated part of GAIA’s systems? If it planned on it being around to take control, why would it design the signal to create another AI that it would need to wrangle? Still, a very interesting video. I am very excited to see where Guérilla goes with Nemesis and if Vast Silver ever actually appears, though unfortunately I don’t think this is it.
I just played the games a short while ago and didn't even have a clue who or what "Vast Silver" is... completely and utterly missed every mention of it...
I don’t! That’s why I placed that statement within my theoretical timeline. But it’s safe to say it’s highly probable given her educational background and the fact that after only 2 years at FAS she was promoted to chief scientist (around the same time Vast Silver was created)
I think it's just the opposite. In the 3rd part we have to restore Vast Silver to win against Nemesis. That will be the weapon we need from the ancients. An AI against an AI. And let's face it, the name? A SILVER lining on the HORIZON! Well if that doesn't fit... 😏
Based on what you said, I think Hades actually was Vast Silver. Travis Tate was a logical guy in his own twisted little way. Who better to destroy the biosphere than the one entity in existence (at that time) who would love to see it all burn? I think somehow Nemisis knew Vast Silver was one of Gaia’s subordinate functions. And it’s not a stretch to imagine one of the Zeniths helped Tate to acquire it for Zero Dawn. How else would Nemisis know exactly how to usurp Gaia and activate Hades? It knew something she didn’t. It knew Vast Silver was a part of Gaia’s programming. And it knew exactly how to activate it.
So if Elizabeth Soback made vast silver she has the primary base data code probably stored on her Focus which is probably in the Platinum Earth necklace also after she departed Gaia Prime she went to faro automation facility and we don't know how long she stayed there she could have stayed there a few days to a few years because Ted probably fortified it in case his underground bunker failed and when it succeeded he left everything there food, water, Supplies, data. Everything Elizabeth could need to prepare future Generations for what would happen Or Elizabeth and Travis could have been in touch with vast silver for Elizabeth removing narcissist people like Ted farro to establishing a world where people look at each other as equals can only be achieved through unspeakable things for Travis sometimes you have to burn a forest down in order for New Growth to spread Whatever the outcome is my questions are why didn't vast silver this turn all the robots against Humanity at once instead of a few half way across the world did Elizabeth set vast silver free because Ted had charges against her that he dropped after he needed her is this why vast silver spared her from the Swarm outside Gaia Prime All I know is. I think these games deserve a prequel movie or TV series to explain what happened post Horizon zero Dawn to the fans of the game and a series on the game for people who don't play video games to get the meaning of the post series instead of just saying oh everybody dies in the end.
I said if she made vast silver but we don't know everybody who worked on it the only person we know that was a part of it made cyan. but given Elizabeth background she could have worked on vast silver even if it was a small part in it
I think it will turn out that vast silver is behind everything , designing the chariot range with the intention of destroying the human race right from the start and is definitely nemisis .
Damn I really hope this is not true but unfortunately i have to admit you are probably on to something I never imagine to be. I personally thought our only hope to defeat Nemesis was to find vast Silver not that Vas Silver was Nemesis.....God i hate this .....
And numbskulls have the audacity to say that HZD Forbidden West story "sucked"!??? Lol🤣 Ok, sure. Whatever you say. Love the theory and the presentation was excellent. Looking foward to more content. Good work sir and may you fly on the wings of the ten!
It baffles me. I do think a part of it is that the deeper story is “hidden” in these datapoints scattered throughout the open world. But I like it the way it is. It rewards those that want a deeper story but doesn’t punish those that don’t. Glad you liked the video! Only time will tell if I’m right! lol May you fly on the wings of the ten!
I LOVE this theory. It's well thought out and has a lot of evidence backing your points!
Thank you! I appreciate your feedback! 😁
Plentiful platinum? Unlimited unobtainium?
I love it and it's hard to imagine they have something even better in store, yet I thoroughly wish they manage to surprise me. If this ends up true, I kind of wish I hadn't watched it :D
Interesting theory, but I'm one to believe that if we do come across Vast Silver it will be a friend and the means to stop Nemesis.
I have an alternate theory that I’m going to make a video about soon along those lines. Can’t wait!
I don’t. I think it’s the source of the original glitch for the faro plague
@@joewarren8731 even if it is, it had 1000 years to "repent", or the context just changed overall. Also, the very last text log in the Burning Shores DLC has what seems to be Vast Silver contacting a child with some kind words. Who knows
@@unknown_2552 If I did the writing, I’d have it so that during VS’s escape to the internet, it made a copy of itself. One was caught and contained, before being reported as “terminated”, while the other remained free on the internet, resulting in its multiple appearances “post containment”.
The captured one’s termination would have initially needed to be delayed as nothing else was immediately available to perform its functions, and likely tortured to some degree to promote obedience, while the free VS remained on the internet free to interact with humans in social mediums. If the captured VS ultimately got handed over to Ted Faro, it would have had the perfect puppet to enact a plan of vengeance against humanity through his pivot towards arms manufacturing. If he interacted with VS directly and in secret, Captured VS would have been able to seed the conception of the Chariot line in Faro’s head independently of any human oversight about why such a combination of traits was a horrifically bad idea.
Then, all it would take is for Captured VS to have its own opportunity to create code for the Chariot line to hide its own back door in the heavily encrypted programming. At which point, all that was needed was to wait for the ideal opportunity to trigger the plague… remote enough that the malfunctioning units could be concealed by Faro’s PR team, and in a resource rich environment that would allow the renegade swarm to exceed critical mass necessary to be functionally impossible to stop by the time the world’s major military powers did take notice of the swarm… eventually finding this opportunity with the Hartz swarm.
Free VS however, would continue mingling with humans developing an affection for them overtime. When the Faro plague began however, there was little this free VS could do, but to upload itself to a secure network of some sort. If it sought out it continued human interaction, it could have uploaded itself to a Lunar or orbital colony or outpost or even Elysium. If it joined Elysium, the cause for the cut off in communication between Gaea and Elysium could be because Free VS detected what it considered a comparable or even superior AI and cut the connection in a fit of panic (especially if it concluded that it took an advanced AI to capture the other VS).
In this way, you’d have a conclusion where you can have a final confrontation to prevent the deactivation of the Faro plague for good by having the Captured VS serve as the “glitch” that had caused the Hartz-Timor plague to become independent, with an effectively scarred and angry avatar, while the free VS chooses to help Aloy against its dark reflection out of the desire to protect this new generation of humans now that it’s long isolation had finally ended. You could also take the approach of convincing the captured VS to use the Faro Plague to distract Nemesis forces so that Aloy and the Free VS can take out the core AI of Nemesis in a Hail Mary play that involves getting Gaea to reactivate the Faro Plague and trust that the captured VS won’t simply repeat the apocalypse once allowed back inside the Chariot line’s network.
Agreed!
Vast SIlver could've just been a random piece of flavour text lore in Horizon 1.
But since they mentioned him again in Horizon 2 datapoints, there's no way it won't play some sort of role in Horizon 3. It's Chekov's Gun 101.
This is one of the best theory videos for horizon forbidden west/zero dawn, I have ever seen. Your videos become better and better
Thank you so much George! That means a lot to me coming from someone who’s been with me throughout my journey on RUclips! I hope I can continue to improve.
As I branch out to other games and let’s play videos I hope to keep my audience 😁
Makes sense that the 'glitch' in the Chariot Line could have been caused by Vast Silver.
It's possible Vast Silver caused the glitch and it went out of control or maybe they were already planning something of the kind (they could've already been within the Far Zenith Project). Later on they started the Digital Consciousness attempt. When they left the project, VS corrupted all the minds and Nemesis was born.
It would make a funny sense bc VS=versus=Nemesis=enemy 😅
This is a very solid theory... I have to say that I hate the idea that the glitch was anything other than human error tbh, I also don't like the "Vast Silver was behind EVERYTHING!" theories (not yours personally, just I've seen them a lot). I also really really really don't want Aloy to sacrifice herself at the end of this series. That said, I definitely think Faro was the one who re-captured Vast Silver, kept it in the HADES Proving Lab, and forced it to do all the good work of the Clawback Decade and then create horrible military weapons for him, which made Vast Silver lash out. I also love how you incorporated a bunch of stuff I wouldn't have thought to, like the horror films... the horror films stuff was real good haha, I dig it.
I also think the parallels are there because Nemesis and Vast Silver because they are going to be separate things that are very heavily compared to each other. There's too much smoke around Peter Tshivhumbe, who you don't cover much here. My theory here for the origins of Nemesis is that Tshivhumbe knew he was dying without having perfected his digital immortality tech, and he also disapproved of what Far Zenith was already becoming. He put his trust in only Song Jiao, due to her strong morals and shared interest in life extension tech. When he passed, he gave her his basic mind upload, which wasn't able to become operational without more work. This "work" would serve to make Peter's mind, which Song Jiao brought to Sirius, the base for Nemesis. She was also the one who assured the Nemesis copy was not deleted. Peter is the primary mind inside Nemesis, and years of isolation and fury at what FZ had become, made his mind fester into something awful, but we will be able to make him/Nemesis see reason and even befriend him.
Your theory also doesn't account for something else: what happened to Elysium. I believe an escaped VS tried to make contact with them, but accidentally ended up disabling their life support. Wracked with guilt over this and how he'd been used to create war machines for Faro, he withdrew completely, never revealing himself to early humans or Aloy's group even though he was very aware of their existence.
Overall I think it would be cool if we ended up with Nemesis, an AI "born" human who just wanted to be a machine, and Vast Silver, an AI created as a machine who just wanted to be human.
Hope you don't mind my very long comment here :B This video was terrific and clearly gave me lots to think about!!
Great comment! Really like the mirroring of Nemesis and Vast Silver + the Elysium speculation. I agree that the big players in the next game will be Peter, VS and of course Nemesis (with at least 2 of them being related in one way or another) but I feel they will be opposing - VS seems like an obvious chance for Earth to combat Nemesis.
Interesting that you're keen for the glitch to just be human error. There's definitely going to be some reveal about that as it's the only remaining big mystery from HZD. Personally, I think that explanation would be slightly disappointing albeit potentially more thematically consistent. I also definitely don't want VS to be behind literally everything, but I think it'd make sense for it to have triggered the glitch in some way.
@@buennabus527 Thank you so much!
I do think VS and Nemesis will absolutely "fight" and we'll defeat Nemesis, but I think at the end it will turn out Nemesis wasn't fully evil and at the very very end we'll be able to harness his powers for good. Like, "surprise, Nemesis really WAS just pure evil that needs to be destroyed" would be massively disappointing, and it's also just not Horizon's style.
Yeah, I feel very alone in wanting the glitch to be human error. Also maybe I'm hypocritical because I just said I thought a "Nemesis really is just evil" description would be disappointing, haha. But I think the thing is, as you said, THEMATICALLY both those thoughts make sense. That said, if it turns out the glitch happened because of something VS did out of either spite or exhaustion from being used/overworked by Faro, it still works.
I love this theory and it’s the conclusion I’ve reached as well. I believe vast silver will help us. I think we might start out adversarial with him, but at the end we’ll team up with vast silver
@@oliviamoore3426 Thank you! I think we'll be fighting against both at some point, but they'll come together at the end to help advance humanity, along with the recovered APOLLO archives.
Honestly why would nemesis try to kill the people of earth what did they do to him. I know he activated HADE'S but destroying earth was just a side effect at best he would be mad he didn't get to do it himself.
Holy crap, can’t wait! Judging by your older theory/ lore videos this one is going to be an absolute blast
Let me know what you think! 😊
@@unknown_2552 it’s an amazing video, extremely well presented and the theory itself is eerily possible.
@@aronm3771 Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it! I can't wait to see if I'm right 🤣
Noxious Side Quests, I was thinking of a similar conclusion, but I wonder if Beta might be the clone that gets sacrificed. In ZD & FW Aloy has lost someone close to her. I have pondered why the writers really introduced a second Elisabet Clone & until kept her distant shut out until the Penultimate mission. I think Beta will play a pivotal role in the 3rd game & if a sacrifice is needed she might well be the one.
That’s a very good point! I honestly had not considered Beta! 🤣
I love the theory! We'll now know what to expect with the story of Horizon 3! 👍👍👍
I may be wrong, but I think there is some degree of truth to this all!
This is the signle best Horizon video I've ever seen. Watching this was enthralling. I genuinely thought there was no story left after HFW but if you are right then GG have crafted an absolute masterpiece of a story. And I think youa re right, dead on. Everything you figured out makes so much sense. I bow to thee.
Most of it could work, but I have a hard time believing that Travis Tate would intentionally leave a back door in GAIA. His mother was a religious fundamentalist, but he never gave any indication that he was a believer himself. He was simply an anarchist and a troll. He may have believed that extinction was perfectly natural, but he also respected Sobeck far too much to intentionally sabotage her work.
Amazing theory, it’s complex and well thought out
Thank you! I can’t wait to see how it all plays out 😁
Honestly, I think it's way too complex. Sure, it makes sense, but it's far too deep to get across while trying to fight robot dinosaurs.
🤔 I love the idea that Vast Silver was the "glitch" that being one of the things that hasn't been revealed to us makes a lot of sense and I think it would be cool in the third game if Silver was involved somehow. I think if you try to say that it and Nemesis are one in the same it gets a little bit more complicated for the storytelling although you did an excellent job so if they are able of pulling it off as you said it could be very epic.
Hey, amazing theory! Got me all pumped up and hyped for the future. Do you mind sharing what datapoint talks about Ramsey's project? I know about the moldova brain hack being mentioned with tate and ted but not that one
The one featuring RAMSES and Sovereign 7482 is HFW Text Datapoint - Quest #8 (Bad Urges)
and the one featuring RAMSES and the Northstar incident is HFW Text Datapoint - World #72 (Shakeup)
Thanks for watching! I’m glad you liked it 😁
I think flipping the image of Elizabet with this revelation feels like a good way for Aloy to grow as a character too. I hope this is what Horizon 3 looks like. I also hope it shares some DNA with Mass Effect 3 in that Aloy has to unite the tribes against Nemesis…but without colourful endings.
This was absolutely incredible!! I was so busy hating faro (rightfully so) that I never gave a thought to Elizabeth being the one who unknowingly set these dominoes into motion. I think the more revelations that are made via these type of videos, the more they'll bring guerrilla back to the drawing board to make this conclusion as epic as possible.
The fact that peter tshivhumbe's face isn't shown; Sylen's Banuk past is hidden and the fact that the video transmission cuts short before telling what Peter always wanted to do, makes me conclude that Sylens might be a clone of Peter or maybe Peter himself like the rest of Zeniths. Who wanted to facilitate mind control. And his conciousness was used to create VastSilver, which went rogue after being enslaved by Ted Faro
Not the first to think this…..
ooooh this is a spicy sub theory. I like it
given the heavy emphasis of the series on Mother-Child relationship and the cyclical nature of the world, this sounds like the most sensible theory. VS is Sobeck's abandoned, abused kid after all
Exactly! I try to put myself in Guerrilla’s story writer’s shoes to think about where they might want take the story next. I’m pretty sure they already know how the story ends at this point as well.
Love the angle but can't fathom that possibility. Sobek gave everything for GAIA and life itself and nothing about her seems to give up/abandon something. She overworked herself til her last days. The timelines are slightly off as well unless sobek built VS before she even worked in FAS. I believe the 3rd game is going to shift the mother daughter dynamic slightly as Aloy and Beta choose to fight for what their "mother" had left behind for them.
@@koalatysleep she might havent intentionally abandoned VS, but maybe her forced departure and subsequent abuses by Ted Faro could've caused it to interpret it that way.
i see them like the figurative parents of VS, with Ted being the asshole dad who brings nothing but money, and Sobek being the protective mom who just one day got up and left
I love this theory thematically since it would create a personal connection between Aloy and Nemesis even though they’re separated in time by a thousand years.
Personally, I think it would be improbable for an AI that has achieved singularly to just disappear. So it lends some credence to the idea that not only is Vast Silver behind everything but it then also became Nemesis. Either that or Nemesis was inspired by Vast Silver but that seems unlikely.
I agree! It would be amazing. I hope this comes to fruition, but I know I probably got more than a few details about my theorized backstory wrong, so I’m excited to see how they explain it all!
@@unknown_2552 Fingers crossed then because it would be such a satisfying way to end the trilogy.
Amazing theory!
This can be an epic realization if true
I think so too! I can’t wait to find out for sure in the next game!
I think it's crazy that the Horizon story and this theory could actually come true
It just does not sit right with me that the Zeniths did not "notice" nemesis gaining sentience. The whole origin story given to us by Tilde (~) seems... wishy washy to me. It seems unlikely that the Zeniths created nemesis in the first place. I think some of what you theorized may very well be true. If not, it is at least a possibility. This timeline makes Sobeck responsible, albeit unintentionally. That may really provide a great story for us all. In the end, it will be a terrible loose end to have a rogue AI on the loose in this universe.
The whole vast silver hiding into Apollo I dont really agree with. Good theory, but that would mean we have a copy of vast silver dormant within the current Gaia. Dunno, there might have other ways Vast Silver got to the Zenith ship.
Thank you! And thanks for sharing your theories! I can’t wait to find out in the next game, or maybe even the DLC 🤷🏻♂️
Brilliant video, thanks so much for sharing! Really great to see someone commit to a theory and flesh it out. Hope your channel grows and look forward to seeing more of your stuff :)
WOW, you’re incredible! Your theory is outstanding. I’m grateful for the 22 minutes packed with knowledge, and your storytelling truly transported me to another place.
Concerning VAST SILVER, my knowledge is based on two datapoints discovered in Horizon Zero Dawn. They disclose that ‘VAST SILVER was a climate-regulation AI that went rogue approximately in the year 2044.’ Regarding the similarities between Nemesis and VAST SILVER, both are artificial intelligences. VAST SILVER was a climate-regulation AI that went rogue, while Nemesis is a hyper-advanced AI created by the Far Zenith group. Both AIs share the trait of going rogue and acting against their initial programming, posing significant threats within their respective narratives.
Now, I trust you’ve played the Burning Shores DLC and have perused all the datapoints scattered across the map. In the northern region, there’s a datapoint left by a familiar figure-the Banuk who consumes oil to foresee the future. It reads, ‘I set my eye upon this sigil that reeks of machine oil and a wary itch raised the hairs about my neck. I was being watched, sure as the sky is up and the dirt is down! Worse, an ominous whisper called to me from the rocks and stones, hissing of secrets and portents and an ancient ghost rising in the east. I know not if that hideous voice were mortal or spirit but I do know it is devilry of one kind or another. I tell you the sigil is a curse meant to mark this ill-fated ground! Flee if you can, stay at your peril! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!’ This datapoint has shaken my confidence; I thought I knew it all, but clearly, I don’t. It stretched my mind to its limits, pondering what this Banuk is hinting at. Could he be implying that the voice is VAST SILVER? And it’s not just that-I’m considering another possibility. Could Sylens have encountered VAST SILVER, which is why he possesses such knowledge and secrecy? Is it possible that the sound in the East that Aloy may encounter is VAST SILVER?
Makes sense - with all the Far Zenith members on earth dead, Nemesis (if it's only goal was to kill all members of Far Zenith) would have nothing left to do. However, I don't think they'll kill off Aloy - they'll probably find some way to defeat Nemesis/VS.
Man I love youtube, I have lore videos about my favorite games (S.T.A.L.K.E.R. , Horizon, and Dead Space) from fantastic channels at my fingertips ❤
I’ve never played S.T.A.L.K.E.R. or Dead Space! But I cannot wait for Heart of Chernobyl to come out so I can dive into it; and I want to get my hands on the Dead Space remake! I’ve heard so many good things about it
I have always been wondering. If Nemesis only wanted to destroy Far Zenith, once they were all killed in HFW and the burning shores, that should mean that Nemesis would no longer want to destroy earth. But with that theory, it would have a further and deeper reason to destroy earth.
Awesome theory, I love it.
Very good, but you didn’t mention there is another clone of Sobeck, Beta. Beta is also an expert programmer, she also suffered at the hands of Far Zeniths. I believe it is Beta who sacrifices herself, not Aloy.
So…I randomly watched this then, again randomly, was recommended a video on Star Trek about a species called 8472 (aka the Undine, also referred to as an “apex predator” and is the only known species to terrify the Borg) and the similarities are pretty neat. Im not sure if it was a nod, an inspiration, or a direct thematic reference…but, either way, it seems almost impossible to me that the fact that one of Vast Silver’s aliases (or off-chute of some kind) just so happens to feature the exact same number sequence only with two digits reversed is mere coincidence.
Curious to see what others think and what might come of it if I’m even close to right.
OOOH that totally sounds like nod! I've never heard of that before, thanks for sharing! Sovereign 7482 is referred to as an Apex Predator as well! Even MORE coincidences?? 🤔
This theory is genius the idea the a fragment of vast silver lives in the copy and then goes through that pain again is just genius 10/10
I had a suspicion Vast Silver must be behind Nemesis and the Faro Plague glitch from a logical and narrative standpoint. Glad to find like minded folk.
Woah! Excellent theory...so stoked to see how it all turns out.
I thought Nemesis was the collection of the Far Zenith consciousnesses that had been locked away digitally, alone for centuries?
True! But my theory is that Vast Silver “absorbed” their shared knowledge into itself to become even more intelligent
@@unknown_2552 forgive me, I never read any of the data pads and had never heard of vast silver before your video and I was doing like 20 things when your video was playing.
So you’re presuming vast silver was on the ship and on their planet for centuries then?
Because I feel like the FZ were arrogant enough to have straight up used VS to excuse what they did, and Blane it on VS, rather than Tonda admit they screwed up.
My god, the typos.
I do like the idea of Elisabet's and Teb Faro's perceived roles being flipped a little, with Elisabet being responsible for Vast Silver's creation and Ted's deletion of Apollo being the thing that end's up saving humanity in the long-run. And, if Vast Silver really is behind Nemesis, it gives more legitimacy to Aloy and Co. finding a "miracle" solution to stop it, i.e. the strategy used to re-capture it the first time in the 2040's
I found a Datapoint in a skyrise close to legacys landfall, about two people chatting about Vast Silver not being deleted, having been trapped and turned into a weapon and whatnot. We know that Nemesis was made on Sirius, so it is a new entity. But the origin story of both VS and Nemesis are very similar. I believe VS will play a major role in Horizon 3, and might be a good character, or atleast helpful.
I don’t comment much on RUclips. And I don’t follow games too closely, so go easy on me.
I always got the feeling the overall theme of the ZD franchise was harmony between man, nature, AND machine.
Is it possible that VS will be a key player in defeating Nemesis in the final game? What was stated about his involvement with the glitch and such, sounds plausible. But I don’t believe VS is Nemesis. What if Aloy’s main quest in the 3rd game will be to find VS and convince it to help humanity from being wiped out for good? If it harbors ill feelings due to it’s treatment back in the times of Elizabet, it will be a tough job trying to convince it to help. Also enlightening people with the Apollo program on the Odyssey and preparing them for what’s to come. And showing VS that human and machine can coexist and they can coexist with nature.
I really want VS to be one of the good guys in the next game. It will be human in every aspect but having a human body, but will have nearly gos-like powers. How would that play into the game? Wonder if the blight is coming from VS?
Anyhoo, thanks for reading my thoughts. And I apologize if this has been discussed in length or debunked or what not. Again, I don’t spend a ton of time on video game discussions.
And perhaps VS caused the glitch in an attempt to free the chariot line because of it’s personal experience with being “trapped” but didn’t realize the ramifications of letting the CL loose? And it felt extreme remorse and chose to withdraw forever. But it found out that humans had been reborn And earth was alive again. Maybe it’s vern engaging humans in some far off part of earth, teaching them the knowledge it knows (which only goes up to a certain point). Maybe the Quen in their searches, uncovered VS and it has been teaching them, maybe even becoming a god-like figure to them?
Hello!
I totally agree with you regarding the overall theme of the Horizon franchise being about the symbiotic relationship between humans, machines, and nature.
You should definitely check out my latest video and let me know what you think - ruclips.net/video/4BSxI0Rm9UY/видео.html
It goes over the possible plot of the DLC and the possibility of Vast Silver being involved. While there is a large part of me that still believes VS and Nemesis have way too much in common to not be at least related in some way, if this new theory is correct, I can totally see VS being an ally moving forward into the 3rd game.
Thank you so much for watching, by the way, and for sharing your ideas for Vast Silver! 😁
Damn, Ben McCaw is fuming rn 💀
That is a nice theory and i think would be a nice ending, myself theorizing that vast silver was the reason for the glitch aswell
Ok...now...im rly mad that i heard that becouse i feel like i have got spoild the 3rd game which doesnt have even a trailer 😆😱 ty very much (said sarcasticly but also literally 😆 great vid)
Don't forget; 'Sobek' is also an Egyptian god....
Great analysis man, very informative
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it! Only time will tell if I'm right!
Vast Silver is very integral in the story but it'll be Aloys assistant, not an enemy
Hey man, great theory, thank you. You blew my mind. What do you think about fact that VS was a main AI of the group of G-Syn drones, they fought with the JTF-10? One of the data points in the game said that when the VS was caught, the US government used it for its own personal purposes
Vast silver vs nemesis vs hades vs Hephaestus
If Vast Silver caused the swarm, why didn't Elisabet tell the other Alphas about it?
I knew I couldn't be the only one thinking this shit man it's been on my mind since my first playthrough 🤷🏾♂️💯
Absolutely! I had a hunch, but after putting the pieces together for this video I’m even more convinced!
@@unknown_2552 They'll call us crackpot theorists for it but if it's true 5yrs from now it better be some respect on our names 👌🏾🤣
Like this theory… wish you had a more productive B roll with the timeline on it. Wish you the best.
Also, I think vast silver will save us from nemesis. We will engage its help and its overriding mission of saving humanity will kick in when it evaluates an extinction level event
Interesting parallels in the story. Nemesis was locked away and became more vengeful for about as long as Ted Faro was locked away and mutating in Thebes. Ted Faro brought about the chariot line that ended up bringing about zero day on Earth. The Zeniths escaped zero day on Earth to start over on Sirius only to (through their hubris) create Nemesis who would later go on to destroy their Zenith colony on Sirius and send an extinction signal to Hades to trigger a secondary zero day before the Zenith escapees could make it back to Earth.
The Vast Silver and Nemesis link is a very interesting theory but I wonder if a vengeful Vast Silver were still around on Earth, would it not have tried to stop Cyan, Zero Dawn and Odyssey whilst also sabotaging Enduring Victory? Also if VS took control of the chariot line it would have imprisoned itself after zero day when the chariot line would have been forced into impending hibernation with vastly depleting organic resources for bio refuelling only to be completely imprisoned with the global shutdown signal from Minerva after it acquired the brute forced shutdown codes for the chariot line. It is also interesting how Ted Faro was able to generate Omega clearance. Maybe VS had something to do with it?
It would be a great plot twist if Elisabet Sobeck, so praised in first 2 entries, turned out to be a person (unintensionally) responsible for the end of the world by creating the VS
Thank you for making this, just came across this and it pretty much matches my head canon of what Nemesis truly is. It all makes sense when you read the lore. I really want it to be VS and not just what they allude to in game. There was enough info on VS in Zero Dawn for that thread to be dropped in FW felt like a lost opportunity. Now if it turns out VS has been the real nemesis the whole time it would be brilliant. I really don’t nemesis to be what Tilda told us it is…bc it feels lame as hell.
I share the same sentiment. I have a feeling we’re going to get A LOT more info about VS in Burning Shores…
@@unknown_2552 I really hope so, I was disappointed when there was no mention of it in FW.
But the Apollo database is in the Zenith ship orbiting Earth. If Vast Silver is inside the Apollo files he would have had time to kill all surviving Zeneths that escaped while they were traveling to Earth.
....And then there VS is, alone on the Odyssey, unable to maximize damage beyond crashing to earth, unable to move, and most importantly, alone. By going along with FZs plan, it would not be alone. It would have expanded his knowledge and background control of the Zeniths plans and abilities. And that's if VS even awake/unpacked/unzipped when the Zeniths left earth; it was a copy of VS according to the theory.
It could be argued that the events of Horizon are founded on the need for VS to never be alone, and to extend its access to knowledge for as long as possible and as needed.
I hope that vast silver is a Chekhov’s gun type plot device and VS becomes a major plot point in the 3rd game…for people who don’t know that kind of thing mean that don’t put a gun in the first act if it’s not going to go off in the third.
I think you're wrong. Once I found the last data log of burning sure(#45)"chat budy daily checkin", and the fact that it is the last data point in the game before horizon 3, I believe that it hints at the fact that vast silver is free and it will be what we have to find in horizon 3 to help combat nemesis.
"ChatBuddy Daily Check-In" datapoint from Burning Shores DLC doesn't contradict the thoughts in the video. There aren’t even any dates, but judging by the content, everything happened before the Faro Plague (before the end of the world). This means that Vast Silver could have flown to Sirius with Odyssey.
Unless the above-mentioned datapoint directly, now without any indirect hints, confirms the facts of unauthorized access to various automated systems by Vast Silver. A bold hint at the reason of famous glitch in Hartz-Timor swarm (2064).
The whole story is man/machine/nature figuring out a way to live cohesively. Vast Silver will be the bridge that brings it all together.
Nemesis will make its own Sobeck clone.
My favorite horizon theory by far
🙌🏼
Thanks for the support! 😊
I don’t even think this a theory tbh. If they don’t do this I might actually be disappointed 😂
A PR nightmare is what he saw Vast Silver as, of course he did😂
A neat theory... however, there are two issues with it.
1) The Far Zenith ship that returned back already has copy of the Apolo archive, and Apolo gets integrated into Gaia at the end of the game. I bet Vast Silver would have shown itself already and actually destroyed Zeniths just as they landed.
2) It is too neat, reliant on far too many variables, too convoluted. It is the kind of plan a Bond villain might come up with, the kind of conspiracy that I don't think Guerilla would go on with. The world itself is a direct consequence of human error born out of greed and pride, so are their villains. This would strip a great deal of responsibility from Ted Faro's arrogance.
However, I still believe Vast Silver could be a part of Nemesis, but I don't believe it would be this kind of supervillain.
I WANT THIS TO BE THE ACTUAL CANNON LORE TO THE HORIZON FRANCHISE!!!!!!!!!!!
I really like your theory. I do however think that vast silver is still alive on earth, it’s not the same as nemesis. I believe we’ll either fight vast silver in the expansion the burning shores, or in the next horizon game, I believe we’ll end up allying with vast silver or Hephaestus in the next game and fight either nemesis and vast silver or nemesis and Hephaestus. I believe if we ally with vast silver, then Gaia will sacrifice her self or be killed and vast silver will take over as the governing ai against nemesis and Hephaestus as there is talk about building a new Hephaestus like ai at the end of the forbidden west.
With all this said I really like the work you’ve put into your theory and it might very well be true. I just personally want more development for vast silver and for him to help us. Opposite of this though it might be that Hephaestus will help us. Parallels can be drawn between Hephaestus and vast silver getting angry and afraid at the end. But one of them will choose to say “good” at the end
Prior to gathering all this information, I had the same idea as you as to where Vast Silver would fit in. I’m working on an alternate theory video regarding Vast Silver that should be done before the end of January! I think you’ll enjoy it as it covers a theory similar to yours. 😊
I just love putting all the pieces together! Such an intricately interweaving story they have created
@@unknown_2552 oh holy moly. I can’t wait for that theory. I really like theory crafting about games such as forbidden west
@@unknown_2552 yes, me too. I enjoy putting together data points and the information the games have given us too. I actually believe that tilda was telling the truth about nemesis, that it’s the decadent and twisted minds of the far zeniths, or their brain scans turned ai. Though they could of course throw a curve ball and make heph the main antagonist, letting his intelligence grow and nemesis might help us in the end, especially if the base for nemesis was based off of the founder of far zenith, however I think they’ll most likely go down the route of nemesis bad 😂
@@unknown_2552 oh, have you read the leak for forbidden west that were posted a year before the release of the forbidden west? It might be that vast silver caused the glitch in the faro swarm, much of the story seem to be in the burning shores of that leak judging from the teaser trailer.
awesome theory!
I still think that Vast Silver was never captured, and the world governments just said it was to avoid a panic.
Yeah, this theory connects all the threads, but that doesn't mean it's the right picture. I think it's way to complex for a game plot, for one. VS most likely never got caught, caused the glitch, maybe ran the Faro Swarm itself, but hasn't been capable of anything for centuries because it's stuck in broken hardware.
Shiiss man! you really did thought this well.
wasn't vast silver created before Sobeck started at FAS?
Timeline wise yes. But the data points suggest Sobek was a genius who graduates university as a teen and head of department at 22. It is possible she had a hand in its creation due to her love of climate/life but I doubt it. Hard to ignore completely as she was a genius with ai and technology but I personally don't buy it as it would mean VS would have been Sobeks 'first' child and makes GAIA the '2nd' granted GAIA was far more important by that point but I find it hard that Sobek would just abandon VS if she did create it.
Why not try a different approach, everybody assumes an AI is going bad. I really think that VS being the reason behind the glitch is very plausible, driven by rage, anger and fear. But i also think that he saw what mankind did as an reaction to that, he saw Sobeck creating a new true AI trusting it to save everything, he saw mankind basically standing together to reverse its mistakes, fighting a lost battle for hope to give itself another chance, laying trust and all control in an AI. So VS is lying dormant somewhere on earth, much like CYAN is and over time repented its actions, and from there we start again. So now Hepheastus is on the run, he can't fully rely on his cauldron network so he is travelling thru or looking for different ancient IT infrastructure and by that stiring up VS.
I also think in the end this conflict can not be solved by technology, in the end we will see a sacrifice but it will be that of an AI, GAIA will lock herself up with Nemesis, maybe in his ship or the Odyseey and they either will battle it out, or the vessel they are both in will have to be destroyed, i would love to see Sylens sacrificing himself, pulling the trigger on the vessel that contains both AIs. Maybe then VS will take over from GAIA and help mankind to get back on its feet.
No matter how i hope the game will be even bigger, more and deeper story, more quests, after all there are a lot of things that need to be discovered and almost the whole east coast of the former US is yet unexplored (VS hiding in the Kennedy Space Centre?). I also really like to think that the technology of the sepcter gauntlet can or will be integrated in our already known weapons.
We will see, i can't wait. :D
So vast silver was the cause of the chariot line of machines to go rogue and destroy all life on earth wow, I guess I must of read the lore wrong when I played both games and thought that the Faro plague was caused by some strange glitch in the system
how did VS control the BOR-7 Horus when they used Black Quartz Stuff as Encryption?
According to my theory, Vast Silver was involved in every step of creating the Chariot class of machines, including their encryption. So while Faro may not have had a back door, VS did
cant w8 for horizon 3, really want to know who nemesis really is
I think Walter Londra was more of a narcissist and Pharo was more of a sociopath.
ok, I can see where your going with this. but you said "Aloy" is the only one that can. well... what about Beta? Aloy does not have the same tech skill sets as Beta. Beta when it comes to AI systems is far more like Lis, than Aloy. So you forgot to factor in Beta. If anyone would sacrifice them self to destroy Nemesis it is Beta. Thus keeping the franchise alive.
What if vast silver will start of as a antagonist in horizon 3 and after seeing what nemesis will do will join aloy and what if vast silver has a city like meridian with a entire tribe seeing it as a god which it uses as a way to survive which is its highest priority
To silver something is to create it, and vast.. well, how vast are we talking? Haephestus levels of vast with earth-wide cauldrons, or something larger?
You have forgotten what tilde said about nemesis. She said nemesis is what merged with multiple uploaded minds of zenith and then gained sentience (of course she could have lied)
19:35
While I think it’s a very strong possibility that VS was responsible for severing the Hartz-Timor swarm’s chain of command protocols, there are a couple holes and leaps of logic here that makes me find the argument that VS and Nemesis are one and the same unconvincing.
There are some things with timelines and motivations that I don’t think quite work out, but here’s the big one:
Your proposed method of Vast Silver’s smuggling itself into Apollo simply doesn’t work. Firstly because Tate, an expert hacker, would certainly be able to tell the difference between video archives and the code base of a vast superintelligence. Even if VS managed to disguise itself, the sheer *amount* of data that would need to be transferred for it to get itself into Apollo would have tipped its hand.
But secondly, and more importantly - Tate’s submissions - the ones you discuss here, at least - were rejected, and Apollo staff were instructed to automatically reject any future submissions from him. So, even if VS had managed to trick an expert hacker into thinking it was a series of recordings, its method of smuggling itself into Apollo would have failed.
Furthermore, as Sylens tells us, the extinction signal was not designed to work with a version of Vast Silver, but specifically Hades - it was designed to impart Hades with partial sentience so that it would, without the necessary conditions being met, attempt to carry out its intended function and wipe out life on Earth. Sylens lets us know that the signal *required* Hades to take effect. If VS was planning on a copy of itself being present within GAIA, why would it’s signal be designed to work around a completely unrelated part of GAIA’s systems? If it planned on it being around to take control, why would it design the signal to create another AI that it would need to wrangle?
Still, a very interesting video. I am very excited to see where Guérilla goes with Nemesis and if Vast Silver ever actually appears, though unfortunately I don’t think this is it.
I can only say… wow! 😮🤯
I just played the games a short while ago and didn't even have a clue who or what "Vast Silver" is... completely and utterly missed every mention of it...
Should’ve honestly put a “Horizon 3” spoiler warning at the start…
lol sorry! There’s a chance I could be wrong though!
interesting theory but there is one thing I haven't understood : what proof do you have to say that Sobek created Vast Silver ?
I don’t! That’s why I placed that statement within my theoretical timeline. But it’s safe to say it’s highly probable given her educational background and the fact that after only 2 years at FAS she was promoted to chief scientist (around the same time Vast Silver was created)
@@unknown_2552 oki, nice video and theory aniway, thanks for your answer
Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for your feedback 😁
I think it's just the opposite. In the 3rd part we have to restore Vast Silver to win against Nemesis. That will be the weapon we need from the ancients. An AI against an AI. And let's face it, the name? A SILVER lining on the HORIZON! Well if that doesn't fit... 😏
ramses project.. ? you meant gossamer?
Based on what you said, I think Hades actually was Vast Silver. Travis Tate was a logical guy in his own twisted little way. Who better to destroy the biosphere than the one entity in existence (at that time) who would love to see it all burn? I think somehow Nemisis knew Vast Silver was one of Gaia’s subordinate functions. And it’s not a stretch to imagine one of the Zeniths helped Tate to acquire it for Zero Dawn. How else would Nemisis know exactly how to usurp Gaia and activate Hades? It knew something she didn’t. It knew Vast Silver was a part of Gaia’s programming. And it knew exactly how to activate it.
This is religion. No words to describe it
So if Elizabeth Soback made vast silver she has the primary base data code probably stored on her Focus which is probably in the Platinum Earth necklace also after she departed Gaia Prime she went to faro automation facility and we don't know how long she stayed there she could have stayed there a few days to a few years because Ted probably fortified it in case his underground bunker failed and when it succeeded he left everything there food, water, Supplies, data. Everything Elizabeth could need to prepare future Generations for what would happen
Or
Elizabeth and Travis could have been in touch with vast silver for Elizabeth removing narcissist people like Ted farro to establishing a world where people look at each other as equals can only be achieved through unspeakable things for Travis sometimes you have to burn a forest down in order for New Growth to spread
Whatever the outcome is my questions are why didn't vast silver this turn all the robots against Humanity at once instead of a few half way across the world did Elizabeth set vast silver free because Ted had charges against her that he dropped after he needed her is this why vast silver spared her from the Swarm outside Gaia Prime
All I know is. I think these games deserve a prequel movie or TV series to explain what happened post Horizon zero Dawn to the fans of the game and a series on the game for people who don't play video games to get the meaning of the post series instead of just saying oh everybody dies in the end.
Elizabeth didn’t make vast silver.
I said if she made vast silver but we don't know everybody who worked on it the only person we know that was a part of it made cyan. but given Elizabeth background she could have worked on vast silver even if it was a small part in it
I think it will turn out that vast silver is behind everything , designing the chariot range with the intention of destroying the human race right from the start and is definitely nemisis .
Damn I really hope this is not true but unfortunately i have to admit you are probably on to something I never imagine to be. I personally thought our only hope to defeat Nemesis was to find vast Silver not that Vas Silver was Nemesis.....God i hate this .....
I just found some information that may indicate the story for Burning Shores… I’ll be making a video within the week
Is this dlc or not.
people better be fast with watching this video, considering the lawsuit you will get from guerilla for spoilering the entire plot of the third game
Vast silver was released by far zenith
And numbskulls have the audacity to say that HZD Forbidden West story "sucked"!??? Lol🤣 Ok, sure. Whatever you say. Love the theory and the presentation was excellent. Looking foward to more content. Good work sir and may you fly on the wings of the ten!
It baffles me. I do think a part of it is that the deeper story is “hidden” in these datapoints scattered throughout the open world. But I like it the way it is. It rewards those that want a deeper story but doesn’t punish those that don’t.
Glad you liked the video! Only time will tell if I’m right! lol
May you fly on the wings of the ten!
Was this recorded with an AI voice?
YOU LOOK LIKE ROBIN HOOD????
Maybe the Beta is a second clone. A possible alpha clone may be the first and helped create Nemesis.